Yale Prof. of History Joanne B. Freeman's talk at the Newberry entitled "Hunting for Hamilton: A User's Guide to Understanding a Confounding Founder," on October 20, 2016. Prof. Freeman specializes in the politics and political culture of the revolutionary and early national periods of American History.

Hunting for Hamilton, Joanne Freeman

James Shapiro's talk at the Newberry Library. He traces the strange history of the word "equivocation" as Shakespeare used it, examining how its sea-change in meaning came about in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot and discovery of a “Treatise of Equivocation.” The talk focuses in particular on Shakespeare’s complex handling of “equivocation,” and how his use of the word in Macbeth spoke powerfully to this fraught cultural moment.

James Shapiro is the Larry Miller Professor of English at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985.

Equivocation in 1606, James Shapiro

Pulitzer Prize-winner Stacy Schiff, author of the #1 bestseller Cleopatra, discusses her new book, "The Witches: Salem, 1692". Drawing on years in the archives and hewing closely to extant papers and first-person accounts, Schiff examines the legal and social ramifications of the trials, the truth about witchcraft, the adolescent mind, and how in curious ways the events of 1692 shaped America’s future. She discovers stunning parallels between 1692 and our world today, between oral culture and an Internet one, noting the contagious nature of terror, bullying, and public shaming. The result is a gorgeously written, deeply nuanced, and powerful book that will stand as the definitive account of Salem.

The Witches: Salem 1692, Stacy Schiff

Before and during the Revolutionary War, taverns in colonial America became important intersections of oral and print culture. Broadsides, pamphlets, and newspapers were posted there, read aloud, and discussed by individuals on all sides of the conflict. After a dramatic recreation of the “pamphlet war” between the young Alexander Hamilton and the Anglican cleric and royalist, Samuel Seabury,  scholars and experts Liz Garibay, Kyle Roberts, and Bill Savage discussed the crucial role of taverns in revolutionary discourse.

Thinking (and Drinking) with Hamilton: Tavern Culture and the American Revolution

According to Peter Stallybrass, the vast majority of letters written between the 1530s and the 1920s consist mainly of blank paper. In a free public lecture recorded at the Newberry, Stallybrass argues that, despite the endless rhetoric about the significance of long letters, letters usually aspired to be telegrams, postcards, or emails.

What Is a Letter?

Performing early music today is a feat of historical reconstruction as much as musical adaptation. Adding to the musical-historical challenge is the fact that some songs (by Bach, for example) were tailored to the strengths of particular choirs and weren’t intended to outlive their creators. In this episode, we speak with Matt Dean, managing director of Schola Antiqua early music ensemble, and Ikumi Crocoll, Newberry reference librarian, about what goes into reviving early music, why it’s worth the effort, and how there are technical reasons for medieval and Renaissance music being as catchy as Top-40 pop songs.
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(Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)
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Visit www.newberry.org/shelf-life for more information about this episode.

Shelf Life

Early Modern Earworms

Chasing Phil: The Adventures of Two Undercover Agents with the World’s Most Charming Con Man, by David Howard, is a thrilling true crime caper, bursting with colorful characters and awash in ‘70s glamour, that spotlights the FBI’s first white-collar undercover sting.

Howard visited the Newberry on March 20, 2018, to discuss his book.

Chasing Phil

Pizza. Alinea. Wrigley Spearmint. Soul food. Rick Bayless. Hot Dogs. Koreatown. Everest. All served up A-Z, and all part of the ultimate reference on Chicago and its food.

Listen to a conversation between editors of the Chicago Food Encyclopedia (Carol Mighton Haddix, Bruce Kraig, and Colleen Taylor Sen) and Bill Daley, Chicago Tribune food writer and a contributor to the Encyclopedia.

2018

Chicago Food Encyclopedia

The second panelist in the symposium, Rachel Bohlmann, discusses Frances Elizabeth Willard, her work in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in Illinois, and the entrenched opposition Willard faced in her talk, “Frances Willard and Gospel Temperance Politics in Illinois during the Gilded Age.”

Women Religion Social Change

Women, Religion, and Social Change in Chicago: Part 2, Rachel Bohlmann

The daughter of academics, Hanna Holborn Gray fled Hitler’s Germany with her parents in the 1930s, emigrating to New Haven, where her father was a professor at Yale University. She has since lived her entire life in the world of higher education. She was the first woman to serve as provost of Yale. In 1978, she became the first woman president of a major research university when she was appointed to lead the University of Chicago, a position she held for fifteen years.

Her new memoir, An Academic Life, speaks to the fundamental issues of purpose, academic freedom, and governance that arise time and again in higher education, and that pose sharp challenges to the independence and scholarly integrity of each new generation.

In this installment of “Conversations at the Newberry,” Gray and Newberry President and Librarian David Spadafora discuss her life experiences.

Hanna Holborn Gray: Reflecting on an Academic Life

Between the 1890s and 1920s, clubs and small arts organizations proliferated in Chicago. In a city that often seemed indifferent to aesthetics, these clubs sought to establish the city’s cultural significance in a spirit of civic uplift. How did clubs--and the idea of “club-ability” itself--contribute to Chicago art and design in the first decades after the Great Fire, and what sort of lasting impact did these clubs have?

In this panel discussion, three experts on Chicago’s cultural history--Liesl Olson, Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry; Paul Durica, Director of Programs at Illinois Humanities; and cultural historian Celia Hilliard--offered differing perspectives on these questions.

Newberry Lectures

Collective Thought: Chicago Clubs and Their Patrons, 1880-1920

In the late 1860s, when acclaimed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. visited the site chosen for Chicago’s Jackson Park, he did not consider it promising. Indeed, he would later write that “if a search had been made for the least parklike ground within miles of the city, nothing better meeting that requirement would have been found.”

Yet, despite his private feelings, Olmsted managed to create three magnificent sets of plans for Jackson Park: the original 1871 layout for 1,055-acre South Park, the scheme for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and plans for transforming the fairgrounds back into parkland. In this lecture held at the Newberry, historian Julia Bachrach discusses the early development of Jackson Park, exploring the ways in which natural features, recreational needs and expectations, Olmsted's social philosophy, and collaborations with designers such as architect Daniel H. Burnham shaped Jackson Park during the late nineteenth century.

From White City to Green Haven: Jackson Park in the 19th-Century

Jorge Federico Osorio, piano

Part of Rudolph Ganz Fest 2019, held at the Newberry on Saturday, March 23, 2019.

Selections from Preludes (Debussy)

Adam Neiman, piano

Part of Rudolph Ganz Fest 2019, held at the Newberry on Saturday, March 23, 2019.

Gaspard de la nuit (Maurice Ravel)

Built in 1897 by the architect Samuel A. Treat, Bronzeville's Forum Hall played a significant role in Bronzeville’s cultural scene before it was shuttered almost half a century ago.

Yet despite 40 years of vacancy, Forum Hall still carries layer upon layer of the history of the Bronzeville community, from the craftsmanship that went it 120 years ago, to labor and civil rights meetings, to the musical performances of Nat King Cole, Captain Walter Dyett, Muddy Waters, and many others.

At this event, held at the Newberry on September 26, 2019, we heard from a team currently working to rebuild the Forum, including Jada-Amina Harvey, Aaisha Haykal, Bernard Loyd, and Erica Ruggerio. Musicologist Karen Stafford joined the group and discussed the great musicians who carried their tunes from the South, throughout the Midwest, and to Chicago’s Forum Hall.

2019

Great Migration Music

Photographer Lee Bey and artist Amanda Williams discuss Bey’s latest book, "Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side."

This conversation was held at the Newberry on October 23, 2019.

Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of the South Side

On November 12, 2019, Andrew Sandoval-Strausz visited the Newberry to debut and discuss his latest book, "Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City."

We are commonly told that a “creative class” of young professionals revived a moribund urban America in the 1990s and 2000s. But this stunning reversal owes much more to another, far less visible group: Latino and Latina newcomers. 

Award-winning historian Sandoval-Strausz reveals this history by focusing on two barrios: Chicago’s Little Village and Dallas’s Oak Cliff. These neighborhoods lost residents and jobs for decades before Latin American immigration turned them around beginning in the 1970s. 

As Sandoval-Strausz shows, Latinos made cities dynamic, stable, and safe by purchasing homes, opening businesses, and reviving street life. Barrio America uses vivid oral histories and detailed statistics to show how the great Latino migrations transformed America for the better.

Andrew Sandoval-Strausz is Associate Professor of History at Penn State, where he teaches courses in Latino studies, urban history, spatial theory, sociability, and immigration. He is a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar and a Distinguished Lecturer of the Organization of American Historians.

Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City

The 1969 occupation of Alcatraz was a watershed moment for the Red Power movement. It ushered in an era of American Indian protest, and the historic Indigenous-led protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline signaled a rebirth of the Indigenous movement in the twenty-first century. 

On November 20, 2019 (the 50th anniversary of Alcatraz), Nick Estes delivered a stirring lecture that put the protests at Standing Rock into a longer historical context of the Red Power movement, mapping out its aims, trajectory, and future within North American and global decolonization struggles against resource extraction.

Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is an Assistant Professor in the American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico. Estes is the author of the book Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019). He edited with Jaskiran Dhillon Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement (University of Minnesota, 2019).

The Red Power Movement: From Alcatraz to Standing Rock & Beyond

Myths and stereotypes about the Midwest, often called the “Heartland,” have informed American culture for generations. Insulated. Homogenous. Flat. Flyover Country. “Real” America.  

These ideas have power, yet they all obscure important realities about the Midwest’s past and its present.

In this installment of “Conversations at the Newberry,” historians Kristin Hoganson and Timothy Gilfoyle examined myths about the “Heartland” and considered what these myths reveal about the local and the global, the urban and the rural, and the middle and periphery.

The Midwest as Place

Chicago architecture aficionados Kim Coventry, John Ronan, Pauline Saliga, and David Van Zanten discuss the significant architecture and urban design projects profiled in "Chicago by the Book: 101 Publications that Shaped the City and Its Image." 

The book, to which the speakers all contributed, is a recent publication by the Caxton Club, a Chicago-based bibliophilic society.

Books That Built Chicago

In his new book A New World Begins, Jeremy Popkin puts the reader in the thick of the French Revolution. At this Meet the Author event, Popkin discussed his book and the many characters who populate it: Mirabeau, Robespierre, and Danton, in all of their brilliance and vengefulness; Louis XVI, whose failed escape led to his execution; the women who demanded equal rights and the black slaves who wrestled freedom from revolutionaries who hesitated to act on their own principles; and Napoleon Bonaparte, who emerged from the ashes of the Reign of Terror.

Jeremy Popkin holds the William T. Bryan Chair Professorship at the University of Kentucky, where he teaches history, Jewish studies, and social theory. His research interests include the history of the French and Haitian revolutions and the genre of autobiographical literature. Popkin held a fellowship at the Newberry in 1982-83 and has taught National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored summer institutes here.

A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution

In this curator talk held at the Newberry, Katherine Litwin, Fred Sasaki, and Graham Lee gave visitors a behind-the-scenes overview of the development of our winter exhibition, Jun Fujita: American Visionary.

Co-presented by the Newberry and the Poetry Foundation, Jun Fujita, American Visionary focuses on the extraordinary accomplishments of poet and photojournalist Jun Fujita. An expanded version of Jun Fujita: Oblivion, first mounted at the Poetry Foundation in 2017, the exhibition explores Fujita’s poetry, photojournalism, landscape photography, and uncommon life.

Born outside of Hiroshima in 1888, Fujita came to Chicago in 1909, becoming the first Japanese American photojournalist in the city. As an English-language tanka poet, he published regularly in Poetry during the 1920s; as a photographer, he captured many of the most famous moments in Chicago history, including the Eastland Disaster, the 1919 race riots, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Throughout his work, Fujita put forward a vision of what “American” can mean, achieving unprecedented success in his profession despite the hostility, prejudice, and persecution he faced as a Japanese native.

Jun Fujita: American Visionary

This Valentine’s Day-themed program was devoted to the lives and love of early 20th-century poet and photojournalist Jun Fujita and the journalist Florence Carr and their struggles against the racist marital norms, miscegenation laws, and xenophobia that complicated their relationship.

In addition to discussing the relationship of Fujita and Carr and the social and legal challenges they faced, speakers Graham Lee, Ryan Yokota, and Takako Day read a selection of love letters exchanged between the two.

Love And Life June Fujita

These days, “Midwestern cuisine” is likely to evoke brats, gelatin-based salads, hot-dish casseroles, and perhaps a few regional specialties like deep dish pizza or deep-fried cheese curds. But the region’s culinary history is far more complex than these stereotypes suggest.

This symposium, held at the Newberry on March 7, 2020, explored the complex histories that have shaped the real and quite varied cuisines of the Midwest. 

In Part I, scholars cover the native foodways of the Indigenous peoples of the region before discussing the foods that entered and shaped the Midwest culinary idiom through successive waves of migration, including traditions that arrived with groups of European immigrants; traveled north with the Great Migration; and accompanied Latino workers from Mexico and Latin America.

Newberry 2020

Foodways of the Midwest - Part I

These days, “Midwestern cuisine” is likely to evoke brats, gelatin-based salads, hot-dish casseroles, and perhaps a few regional specialties like deep dish pizza or deep-fried cheese curds. But the region’s culinary history is far more complex than these stereotypes suggest.

This symposium, held at the Newberry on March 7, 2020, explored the complex histories that have shaped the real and quite varied cuisines of the Midwest. 

In PartII, presenters explore the rich history and culture of midwestern beer and brewing, which played an integral role in the economic, social, and cultural development of the region. 

In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, immigrant groups brought their beer and beer cultures to the Midwest, creating a tapestry of styles, traditions, and drinking establishments that led to the area’s dominance in the US brewing industry.

Foodways of the Midwest - Part II

Music and lyrics by John L. McManus

Performed by Justin Amolsch, piano and vocals; Susie Inverso, vocals; Matthew Davis, tuba.

Featured in the Newberry's fall exhibition "Decision 1920: A Return to 'Normalcy.'"

"Mr Harding, We're All Here for You"

Lyrics by Henry F. Wells

Performed by Justin Amolsch, horns and vocals; Gus Friedlander, plectrum banjo; Matthew Davis, tuba

Featured in the Newberry's fall exhibition "Decision 1920: A Return to 'Normalcy.'"

"The GOP Looks Good to Me"

Music by Xavier Cugat

English lyrics by Al Stillman; Spanish lyrics by Emilio de Torre

Performed by Xavier Cugat and his Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra

Featured in the Newberry's fall exhibition "Decision 1920: A Return to 'Normalcy.'"

"Viva Roosevelt!"

Free and open to the public since 1887, the Newberry is a research library committed to sharing the humanities with a range of different audiences. Our world-class collection of maps, manuscripts, books, and other materials illuminates a variety of themes related to the history of Western Europe and the Americas. The collection, accessible to anyone who is at least 14 years old, comes to life when users engage with it in our reading rooms, and also when they peruse our exhibit galleries, attend public programs, or participate in adult education seminars. 

If anything you hear on our Soundcloud channel inspires you to learn more about the Newberry, please visit our website or other social media pages.

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