Michael Joyce

September 18, 2019 (SEASON OPENER).

Michael Joyce, acclaimed novelist, poet, critic, media wayfinder,  and Professor of English at Vassar College, talks about his most recent novel, Remedia: A Picaresque (Steerage, 2018), and about creative writing, teaching, hypermedia and other conceptual wormholes, and about his relationship with media and literature. 

Count on Michael Joyce to reinvent the genre of the picaresque novel in a mode suited to the 21st century! With a light touch and sure sense of prose rhythm, he introduces a leitmotif of randomly appearing doorways, thresholds into and out of the world, to puncture the narrative space of this engaging novel. Scenes appear within scenes as the tales unfold in true keeping with the genre that recounts a hero’s progress. The sequence of events is made to make sense by sheer deftness of Joyce’s skill as a narrator and his willingness to use the unexpected as a structuring device, as well as an excuse to delight. Making sense of the past through the telling of his tales, Joyce offers his readers a fresh experience of a classic form filled with contemporary references. — Johanna Drucker

James Merrell

Violet Oakley. "Quaker Legend of the Latch String" Mural for the Pennsylvania State House, 1919.

May 16, 2018.

Season Finale:  James Merrell, Professor of History at Vassar College on the Lucy Maynard Salmon Chair, talks about historical vocabulary and his article "Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and American Indians" (William and Mary Quarterly July 2012), as well as his two monographs The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal  (North Carolina, 1989) and Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier(Norton, 1999), both winners of the Bancroft Prize.

"This stunning history of the Catawbas―and their black and white neighbors―sets a new standard for the field. Merrell's book bristles with new insights and skilled decoding of difficult evidence. After reading this book, all those involved in teaching early American history should want to alter their perspective." ―Gary B. Nash, University of California, Los Angeles

"The Indians' New World is closely argued from an astonishing amount of evidence, and it is lucidly written.... It emphasizes the ingenuity and strength of will by which the Catawbas coped with disaster and preserved their identity as a people. Only a genuine scholar and fascinating writer could have paid tribute as James Merrell has done." ―Francis Jennings, Director Emeritus, D'Arey McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, The Newberry Library

"James Merrell's Into the woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier is an account of the "go-betweens," the Europeans and Indians who moved between cultures on the Pennsylvania frontier in efforts to maintain the peace. It is also a reflection on the meanings of wilderness to the colonists and natives of the New World. From the Quaker colony's founding in the 1680s into the 1750s, Merrell shows us how the go-betweens survived in the woods, dealing with problems of food, travel, lodging, and safety, and how they sought to bridge the vast cultural gaps between the Europeans and the Indians. The futility of these efforts became clear in the sickening plummet into war after 1750. "A stunningly original and exceedingly well-written account of diplomacy on the edge of the Pennsylvania wilderness."--

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Emily S. Warner

April 18, 2018.

Emily S. Warner, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art at Vassar College, talks about the exhibition she composed with her students in Art 385,  Surveys and Souvenirs: American World's Fairs 1876-1939, on view in the Vassar College Art Library March 12-June 29, 2018. 

"Sell the cookstove if necessary," novelist Hamlin Garland wrote to his parents in 1893; "You must see the fair." Garland's comment captures the excitement and urgency that drew 27 million visitors to the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, one of several world's fairs that dominated American cultural life around the turn of the century.  From 1876 to 1039, over 15 world's fairs opened in American cities, showcasing the nation's industry and art, and introducing Americans to a world of foreign goods and accomplishments.  Drawn chiefly from materials in the Archives and Special Collections Library at Vassar College, this exhibition presents the rich material culture of American world's fairs, from surveys and guidebooks to photogaphs, children's literature, poster stamps, and souvenirs.  Many of these objects tell official stories from the fairs, promoting messages of American progress, imperial expansion, or scientific advancement.  They also tell more personal stories, as material objects that were used, gifted, inscribed, and collected.  Together, they paint a vivid picture of American world's fairs during a time of intense national growth and consolidation, as the country celebrated its centennial, closed its Western frontier, and arrived at the eve of World War II.

Gargoyle Bulletin post with images from the exhibit.

American World's Fairs 1876-1939 videos on Youtube 

Maureen Millea Smith

Rosemary Furtak and Maureen Millea Smith

February 1, 2017.

Minnesota writer and librarian Maureen Millea Smith, talks about her book of short stories, The Enigma of Iris Murphy (Livingson, 2016).

“Astonishing and original, these stories draw us into the singular world of Omaha public defender Iris Murphy and the interconnected relationships she shares with family, lovers and friends. Characters from all phases of her life serve as disparate lenses through which Iris and her fearless, compassionate vision is revealed. Iris is a force of love and sacrifice, guiding those around her to transform and redeem their lives.  Maureen Millea Smith gives us an unforgettable character who forever changes her corner of the world." -- Marianne Herrman, Signaling for Rescue.

“In her collection of linked stories, The Enigma of Iris Murphy, winner of the Tartt First Fiction Award, Edina author Maureen Millea Smith unpacks the enigma that is Iris by delving into the lives and the psyches of her friends, family members and lovers. The title story, for example, introduces us to Iris's confidant Paul Simmons, a gay recovering alcoholic ‘shoved out of the closet' by his ex-wife, newly in love with a man from his investment club. 'Life would have been far easier for him if he had married and divorced Iris Murphy,' he reflects over dinner, although he is not blind to her more irritating qualities. (‘It is the Irish in Iris that tends to make her a good girl martyr,' he observes, both annoyed and impressed.)" -- Rachel Sugar,  Minneapolis Star Tribune

57:56 minutes.

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Michael V. Pisani

October 2, 2007

Michael Pisani, music historian and professor of music at Vassar College, talks about his book Imagining Native America in Music, published by Yale University Press.


60:27 min.

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