Forum Network

Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:

Boston Athenaeum

The Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest and most distinguished independent libraries in the United States, was founded in 1807 by members of the Anthology Society, a group of fourteen Boston gentlemen who had joined together in 1805 to edit The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review. Their purpose was to form "an establishment similar to that of the Athenaeum and Lyceum of Liverpool in Great Britain; combining the advantages of a public library [and] containing the great works of learning and science in all languages." The library and Art Gallery, established in 1827, were soon flourishing, and grew rapidly, both by purchase of books and art and by frequent gifts. For nearly half a century the Athenaeum was the unchallenged center of intellectual life in Boston, and by 1851 had become one of the five largest libraries in the United States. Today its collections comprise over half a million volumes, with particular strengths in Boston history, New England state and local history, biography, English and American literature, and the fine and decorative arts. The Athenaeum supports a dynamic art gallery, and sponsors a lively variety of events such as lectures and concerts. It also serves as a stimulating center for discussions among scholars, bibliophiles, and a variety of community interest groups.break

http://www.bostonathenaeum.org

How Genomes and Other Forces are Changing Your Life

Thu, Dec 11, 2003

Juan Enriquez discusses his book, *As the Future Catches You*, which puts the reader face to face with a series of unprecedented political, ethical, economic, and financial issues, dramatically demonstrating the cascading impact of the genetic, digital, and intellectual revolutions of life. **Juan Enriquez** is recognized as one of the world's leading authorities on the economic and political impacts of life sciences. He is chairman and CEO of Biotechnology, a company dedicated to the research and funding of startups that enable the genomic revolution. Enriquez is the director of the Life Sciences Project at Harvard Business School, where he is building an interdisciplinary center focusing on how business will change as a result of the life sciences revolution.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum
William Clark and the Shaping of the West

Fri, Apr 23, 2004

Landon Jones discusses the life of William Clark, and describes the dark and bloody ground of America's early West, describing how the West was won and what we gained and lost by winning it. Between 1803 and 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark co-captained a fabled expedition across the vast, largely unexplored reaches of the North American continent. Lewis ended his life three years after returning to civilization, but Clark, as the highest-ranking federal official in the West, spent three decades overseeing the consequences of the historic journey, namely, Indian removal and the destruction of Native America.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum
Paths of Desire: Passions of a Suburban Gardener

Thu, Apr 15, 2004

Dominique Browning discusses her latest book, Paths of Desire: Passions of a Suburban Gardner.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum
Making a Case for Comic Fiction

Tue, Feb 3, 2004

Mameve Medwed, Tom Perrotta, and Stephen McCauley explain and defend comic fiction.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum
Race and Place

Tue, Mar 2, 2004

Ted Landsmark discusses how demographic and educational changes affect Boston's near-term future, and the unanticipated ways in which our cultural identities are evolving. The formation of racial and ethnic identities were key aspects of 20th century American culture. As traditional racial dichotomies dissolve in the 21st century, some new, and some very old, elements of cultural identity are taking precedence in American life: artisanry, class, education, and a sense of place are emerging as significant shapers of identity. Even as media and commercial homogeneity aggregate and level our differences, immigration and rediscovered cultural roots are churning our perceptions of who we believe we are as Americans. Boston, a city generally viewed as both a portal for new populations and as a staid community where relatively few ethnic or racial minorities achieve high levels of political or cultural visibility, is undergoing some of the largest demographic and educational changes in its history.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum
Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London

Tue, Mar 9, 2004

Lisa Jardine draws a portrait of the gifted but cranky English scientist Robert Hooke, known to history as much for losing quarrels with more prominent scientists as for his achievements. He was one of the founding fathers of the Royal Society and teamed with Christopher Wren in rebuilding London after the Great Fire of 1666. Hooke is perhaps best, and certainly unjustly, remembered for losing to Newton in a challenge for credit as discoverer of the inverse-square law of gravitational attraction.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum
Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living (1900-1939)

Thu, Mar 11, 2004

Virginia Nicholson explores the way of life of the Bohemian artists of the early 20th century - the majority of them artists, poets, writers, and composers - who were brave enough to jettison Victorian conformity and to invent a whole new way of living. Rebels and free spirits, they pioneered a domestic revolution, carrying idealism and creativity into every aspect of daily life. From Dylan Thomas to Robert Graves, Katherine Mansfield to Dora Carrington, they rejected tea parties, chaperones, monogamy, and mahogany. Deaf to disapproval, they painted, danced, and wrote poetry with passionate intensity, they experimented with homosexuality and open marriages, and often sacrificed comfortable homes to take to the road or to move into Spartan garrets. Yet their choice of a free life led all too often to poverty, hunger, addictions, and even death. This lecture brings to life the flamboyant, eccentric pioneers to whom we owe so many of our freedoms today.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum
American West: Lewis and Clark Expedition

Thu, Mar 18, 2004

Clay S. Jenkinson employs the Chautauquan methodology of a stand-up, unscripted monologue in his first-person portrayal of Meriwether Lewis. His educational, humorous, and delightful monologue is followed by an in-character question and answer session with the audience, and ends with Jenkinson sharing his own insights into the character of Captain Lewis and the expedition. The Federalist called the Louisiana Purchase "the wildest chimera of a moonstruck mind"; Thomas Jefferson referred to it as a "two ocean continental empire for liberty"; and Meriwether Lewis, captain of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition, thought it was the opportunity of a lifetime to be the first citizen of the United States to step foot on the unexplored wilderness of the American West.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum
Chasing the Masterpiece of Copernicus

Thu, Mar 25, 2004

Owen Gingerich one of the world's leading authorities on Galileo and Copernicus, shares his 30-year obsession with the fact that shortly before his death in 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published *De revolutionibu*. A groundbreaking scientific work, it revealed that we live in a sun - rather than earth - centered universe. Curious about the contention that the book went largely unread at the time, Gingerich undertook a trek around the world to hunt down the 600-odd extant first and second printings. The result is *The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Copernicus* - part travelogue, part science detective story, party biography of a book and its illustrious author.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum
Literacy and Picturacy

Thu, Jan 8, 2004

When literacy is the universal standard of cultural achievement in both nations and individuals, the ability to read a picture is so little recognized that we do not even have a name for it. On the contrary, the opposition between pictures and words commonly separates literate from illiterate, the educated elite from the barbarous idolators of the image. With examples ranging from the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux to the disturbing contemporary photographs of Sally Mann, James Heffernan seeks to complicate the cultural polarity by showing that pictures demand to be read quite as much as printed pages do, that we cannot "recognize" their meaning until and unless we learn to interpret their signs, which largely depend on the cultural conventions within which they are framed. But learning to read pictures also means listening to the questions they raise and the challenges they pose to authority of the word.

Forum Network

Partner:

Boston Athenaeum

Load More