Mary Anna Barbey

September 14, 2022: SEASON OPENER

Mary Anna Barbey (VC 58, 73) discusses her life as a journalist and novelist in Switzerland and her new English translation of her 2004 French novel Prosperity Mill (Independently published 2022).

Susannah Marshall was fourteen when the strike broke out at Prosperity Mill. For months, her small town in North Carolina would be shaken by scenes of conflict, terror and even murder.

Sixty-five years later, a renowned historian, Susannah returns to her hometown in a final attempt to understand the world-famous walkout led by the communists. Will she discover some clue, some piece of information that will put her mind at rest? What role did her own family play in the tragic events? And if she finds the truth, will anyone want to hear her story?

Based on the history of the 1929 textile strike in Gastonia, North Carolina, this work of fiction explores the way historical conflict can impact individual lives. By reviving events almost forgotten, Susannah's quest also reaffirms the importance of passing on stories from one generation to the next.

Mary Anna Pope Barbey was born in Durham, North Carolina. She grew up in Connecticut, then married and moved to Switzerland where she has lived for over sixty years. She has published twelve books in French. Her translation of Prosperity Mill is her first publication in English.

Listen

Robert O. McClintock

Morningside Park Stairway with Seligman Fountain, New York City

May 3, 2017.  

We continue our series on the value of the liberal arts in contemporary society with a conversation with Robert O. McClintock, John L. and Sue Ann Weinberg Professor Emeritus in the Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education at Teacher's College, Columbia University in the City of New York, about his monograph, Formative Justice: To Make of Oneself What One Can and Should Become.

Text of Formative Justice (pdf).

44:28 minutes.

Listen

Martha C. Nussbaum

September 28, 2016.

Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, discusses her book Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice, just published by Oxford University Press.

"Written with her usual mix of grace, precision, passion, and breathtaking scope, Nussbaum probes two seemingly polar emotions underlying our notions of justice-anger and forgiveness. She finds them part of the same vindictive drama, and each problematic. Her call is to move beyond them to become 'strange sorts of people, part Stoic and part creatures of love.' The book offers an important and timely challenge, a most worthwhile and enlightening read for those interested in philosophy, psychology, law, politics, religion-or simply living in today's world." -- C. Daniel Batson, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Kansas

45:14 minutes.

Listen

Nicholas Adams

April 15, 2015.

Mary Conover Mellon Professor of Art Nicholas Adams discusses his new book: Gunnar Asplund's Gothenburg: The Transformation of Public Architecture in Interwar Europe (Penn State, 2014).


“This brilliant book offers a unique insight into one of the most cherished models of modern monumentality: the Gothenburg Courthouse extension, designed by Swedish architect Gunnar Asplund and completed in 1936. Setting his subject in an international perspective, Nicholas Adams carefully addresses questions on modern law and modern architecture, reaching far beyond the actual case. Through his inclusively contextual approach, we learn that the introduction of modernism in public architecture was a difficult task, operating on different levels of a democratic society through the interplay of architect, commissioner, and—not least—public opinion.”   -- Anders Bergstöm, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

46:54 minutes.

Listen

Michael H. McCarthy

February 27, 2013.

Michael H. McCarthy, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Vassar College, discusses one of the Twentieth Century's most important political philosophers, Hannah Arendt, and his book: The Political Humanism of Hannah Arendt, published in 2012 by Lexington Books.

“In this penetrating analysis, McCarthy reveals how anti-political biases within the Western philosophical tradition spawned 'anthropologies' that Arendt regarded as profoundly at odds with human dignity, plurality, and freedom. Rejecting both the reductionism that conflates people with beasts and the romanticism that conflates them with gods, Arendt emerges as a civic republican whose highest political virtue is devotion to a common world that, by uniting and separating us, allows us to actualize the full range of human possibilities."   -- Sandra K. Hinchman.

79:49 minutes 

Listen

Grace Roosevelt

January 30, 2007

Grace Roosevelt, Professor of History and Education at Metropolitan College of New York and author of Reading Rousseau in the Nuclear Age, talks about the history of the liberal arts curriculum, the encroachment of market forces on higher education, and the relation between liberal education and liberal politics.

42:12 min.
Listen