March 2007 - Center for the Humanities

March 2007 | Vol. V. No. 7
I
Dr. Jian Leng
kept putting off writing
these notes by telling myself that I am too busy.
After all, our Center for
the Humanities at Washington University will
host in 2008 the annual conference
of the Consortium of Humanities
Centers and Institutes, and we are
bringing people together for the
planning stages of that event. We
also have another NEH Summer
Jazz Institute this year that demands my time. All this is true, but
in fact I procrastinated. There is no
torment like the one that comes
from procrastinating. I know these
notes must be written, that putting
them off just makes it harder, and
that the worry is worse than the
work. And yet I could not . . . quite
. . . get . . . started.
Procrastination takes many
forms, some of them almost constructive. My husband tends to
clean the house when he should be
working toward a deadline. I, on
the other hand, just sit and think
or read. One of the things I have
been thinking about arose from
the morning when two eighty-fouryear-olds made the front page of
the Post Dispatch (1/30/2007). One
story concerned an eighty-fouryear-old woman who drove into a
school building (causing the tragic
death of a student). The other story
was about an eighty-four-year-old
man who won the $254 million
Power Ball prize.
When I’m Eighty-Four
What a coincidence, I thought.
This trend is expected to reverse
Eighty-four is an ominous age in
beginning in 2011 as baby boomChinese culture. This stems from
ers (born from 1946 through 1964)
a traditional belief that people are
reach 65. Thus, by around 2019,
more likely to die at ages 73 and
a large percentage of our popula84. The tradition rests on anecdotal
tion will have lived longer than the
evidence regarding two sages who
sages. If current trends continue,
died at these ages: Confucius at
this long-lived group will be over73 and Mencius at 84. If the sages
whelmingly female. In 2000, the
cannot live longer than these ages,
male–female ratio was 83 men to
how could normal people expect
100 women among the 65- to 74to? Hence, when approaching these
year-old group, and 67 men to 100
two birthdays people used to celewomen in the 75- to 84-year-old
brate as if they were sneaking up on
group. Once one passes the ages of
these years rather than rejoicing in
the sages, the ratio is only 46 men
lon g e vto
100
ity. Afwomen.
Old age is what happens while
ter these
T h e
we are busy living, and we only
ages, the
question
rest of
notice it in fits and starts
of what to
one’s life
do with
could be seen as a reprieve: either
the remaining years of this reprieve
a bonus or a curse depending on
reminded me of an article I read the
health, wealth, and genetic endowday before those headlines caught
ment of the ancestors.
my attention. Joseph Epstein, a
These days quite a few of us are
living longer than the sages. During
the 1990s, the most rapid growth
of the U.S. older population was in
the oldest age groups. According to
the 2000 Census, the population
aged 85 years and over increased by
38 percent, from 3.1 million to 4.2
million. Due to the relatively low
number of births in the late 1920s
and early 1930s, fewer people
reached 65 from 1990 to 2000, and
the population aged 65 to 74 years
old increased by less than 2 percent,
from 18.1 million to 18.4 million.
past guest speaker at the Center,
discusses turning seventy in the
Weekly Standard (1/29/2007). He
says that when people reach seventy, they ought to recognize that
“they are no longer living (if they
ever were) on an unlimited temporal budget.” The next question is
just how much time is left? Epstein
likes the response of the French
editor’s notes
philosopher Alain in regard to this question, namely that no matter what one’s
age is, “one should look forward to living for another decade, but no more.” I
agree. But how are we to make sense of
the clock ticking away in the background
of that hoped-for decade? Epstein’s discussion evokes questions posed long ago
by another essayist. In 44 B.C., when he
was sixty-two, the Roman statesman Cicero wrote “De Senectute,” an essay on
principles we might use to support us as
we reach old age. Writing in the voice of
Cato the Elder when he was, coincidentally, eighty-four years old, Cicero identifies four reasons we fear old age: it forces
us to withdraw from public pursuits, it
makes our bodies weaker, it deprives us
of physical pleasure, and it is not far removed from death.
Yet, Cicero reminds us, “the great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of
body, but by deliberation, character, and
expression of opinion.” Older people often have more rather than fewer of these
attributes, “if only they keep their minds
active and fully employed.” Regarding
the decline in physical strength, Cicero
notes that one “should use what you
have, and whatever you may chance to
be doing, do it with all your might.” Cicero presages what our doctors now tell
us: we “must look after our health, use
moderate exercise, take just enough food
and drink to recruit, but not to overload,
our strength.” Cicero’s answer to the
third charge, that old age lacks sensual
pleasure, is to welcome the loss because
“when appetite is our master, there is no
place for self-control; nor where pleasure reigns supreme can virtue hold its
ground.” Age, he claims, frees us from
this danger and allows us still to enjoy
the reasonable and modest pleasures of a
life guided by more important aims. As
to the last reason old age causes fear, its
nearness to death, Cicero reminds us that
only a few will reach old age, so earlier
periods in our lives are just as near to
death (a point given even more credence
because only a year after writing
this essay Cicero was executed for
being on the losing side of a po-
continued
litical dispute). In fact, death can come
at any time, and while a young person
can only hope to live long, an old person
already has. Death is inevitable, but Cicero asks why “should I be afraid if I am
destined either not to be miserable after
death or even to be happy?”
Epstein reminds me just how all this
sneaks up on us by describing it as an
odd thing happening to the five-year-old
boy he remembers being. Old age is what
happens while we are busy living, and we
only notice it in fits and starts: a wrinkle
here, an odd ache there. Still, as both
Epstein and Cicero remind us, one of
the positive things about growing older
is the wisdom and peace it can bring to
our lives. With this comes the power to
make choices that are in our best interests. When we are young, we are reckless about our health and our lives. By
the time we reach our thirties and forties
and beyond, we realize that time is both
precious and finite. When we reach the
age of the sages, we face hard facts about
the circumference of our lives and enjoy
life despite that knowledge. We stay busy
meeting weekly to quilt with friends, and
optimistic enough to buy lottery tickets,
subconsciously hoping that these things
will help us procrastinate because we are
not . . . quite . . . finished.
Jian Leng
Associate Director
The Center for the Humanities
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book of the m
Horace Greeley: Champion of American
Freedom
By Robert C. Williams
New York University Press, 2006
411 pages including notes, index, photos,
and illustrations
I. The Agony of Being Horace Greeley
[Horace] Greeley is not fit for a leader. He is
capricious, crotchety, full of whims, and as
wrong-headed as a pig.
—William Herndon,
Abraham Lincoln’s law partner, 1858
I am too sick to be out of bed, too crazy to
sleep, and am surrounded by horrors.
—Horace Greeley to his editor,
Charles Dana, 1856
On Wednesday, October 30, 1872, at 4
o’clock in the morning, Horace Greeley’s
long-suffering wife of thirty-six years,
Molly (born Mary Youngs Cheney), died.
It was no easy marriage: she was an invalid
for most of the years they were together,
suffered from depression (largely misunderstood at the time) and hypochondria,
was addicted to several different drugs,
and had a difficult, ill-tempered, easily
offended personality in any case. (Writer
and Transcendentalist heroine Margaret
Fuller lived with the Greeleys, in what she
called “Castle Doleful,” for a time in the
mid-1840s and found Molly increasingly
impossible to live with, in “a sad state of
mind and body.”1) Greeley was addicted to
his work as a newspaper editor, working
sixteen-to eighteen-hour days, was, as a result, rarely home, wanted to have sex more
than she wanted to have it (a not uncommon dilemma of nineteenth-century married life), and probably never understood
her any more than she understood him.
Neither of them quite understood why
they married the other. They spent nearly
as much time apart as they did together.
They lost five of their seven children during childhood or infancy (another not uncommon dilemma of nineteenth-century
married life), which particularly unhinged
them both in different ways, especially the
loss of Pickie in July 1849, a favorite son of
both. Greeley, an Arminian of the Universalist persuasion, became more deeply religious and Molly became so interested in
month
by Gerald Early
spiritualism that she believed that she was
actually in communication with Pickie’s
spirit.
Less than a week after his wife’s death,
on Tuesday, November 5, Greeley lost the
presidential election to U. S. Grant. “Lost”
does not quite do justice in describing the
magnitude of what happened. Grant,
the Republican incumbent, won over 55
percent of the popular vote. Greeley, the
nominee of the Democratic and Liberal
Republican Parties, won only 44 percent.
(The size of Grant’s victory merely emboldened the thieves around him to steal all
the more from the public trough.) Greeley
hardly came within sniffing distance of
the presidency but he must be admired for
being the nominee of two different and,
to some considerable degree, oppositional
parties. He was, alas, a newspaper editor
who always lusted for public office but
could never win an election. Newspaper
editors are not commonly, nay, less than
rarely, chosen to be the standard bearer
for any major party in a presidential race.
Greeley was also an unusual man, a man
with pronounced, sometimes eccentric
and contradictory opinions that he expressed forcefully and frequently in his
paper. He lived a spartan life, swore by the
Graham vegetarian diet, and always wore
a white linen coat, its pockets bulging
with papers. He was a reformer who was
disliked and distrusted by most of the major reformists of the day; the abolitionists
largely despised him despite the fact that
he was antislavery even when the position
was greatly unpopular; the women’s rights
crowd of Stanton and Anthony found him
unbearable even though he hired many
women writers and was a supporter of the
Seneca Falls convention (though he opposed women having the right to vote.)
He was a literary broker and promoter and
he vigorously pushed the New England
Transcendentalist group of Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller. But he rarely had time
to read books. He was considered unstable
or flighty by most of his political friends
and foes, and he was not afraid to take
unpopular stances. He made a great deal
of money in his life and owned a number
of properties. (He was a strong believer in
the sanctity of property ownership as the
fifty years earlier.2 Few can claim to have
influenced antebellum America as much
as the meagerly educated Yankee editor
who helped to found a new political party,
advised a sometimes-wary Abraham Lincoln, funded utopian communities, bailed
Confederate president Jefferson Davis out
of jail while urging amnesty for Confederate leaders, opposed slavery and supported
voting rights for blacks while thinking Africans a clearly inferior people, and edited
a newspaper that became the most read
and talked-about paper in the country, the
New York Tribune.
cornerstone of democratic society and economic advancement.) But he died virtually penniless, as he lent money to anyone
who would ask and he invested in lots of
wild-eyed schemes. He was an easy mark
for con men and dreamers.
On Friday, November 29, three weeks
after the election, he died. Some say that
the campaigning killed him. He did travel
a great deal, delivering stump speeches at
a time when campaigning of this sort was
unusual, and he was, at 61, not in the best
of health to begin with. (As soundly as he
was beaten, it is likely he would have gotten the same percentage of the vote had
he done no campaigning at all.) Perhaps
he was heartbroken that he did not win.
Some say he died because he lost the will
to live after Molly died. He said as much
in his last letters.
His death marked the end of an era in
American journalism—a new period was
soon to dawn, the rise of Progressivism,
which would give us figures like Richard Harding Davis, H. L. Mencken, and
new activists like Upton Sinclair and the
muckrakers. To some extent, his death
was also the end of an era in American
politics—the passing from the scene of
the major reformists who had dominated
American highbrow and middlebrow cultures during the antebellum years. It is
surprising that there have not been more
books written about such a singular man,
an instantly recognizable figure in his
day. The last major book before Robert C.
Williams’s Horace Greeley: Champion of
American Freedom was written more than
Part II: Liberty versus Freedom
If any young man is about to commence the
world, we say to him, publicly and privately,
Go to the West; there your capacities are sure
to be appreciated, and your energy and industry rewarded.
—Horace Greeley, 1838
Greeley is remembered for saying something like “Go West, young man and grow
up with the country!” (No one has ever
been able to find this exact quote from
Greeley’s voluminous writings, but the
sentiment of it he expressed often enough
during his life in words close to those usually attributed to him.)
The West represented opportunity, freedom, virtue, although Greeley knew how
difficult it was to settle there, especially
after he visited Greeley, Colorado, in October 1870. He helped found the community in the hopes of creating a bourgeois
utopia of associated and cooperative families, another scheme where Greeley lost
money. He himself was never tempted to
move there. New York City was too much
in his blood and he did not have the right
type of wife, sick and unhappy as she was,
to endure such a lonely and harsh life as
that on the American Plains. The idea
that there could be some sort of middleclass community of free whites—removed
from the horrors of industrial capitalism
but practicing a kind of planned capitalism of private property but close association—was always his dream.
This new biography of Greeley by Robert C. Williams tells the story of a young
printer taken by the ideas of Henry Clay
announcemen
and the Whigs, or at least Greeley’s interpretation or reinvention of those ideas, as
he became an influence in the party—the
centrist liberalism of the nineteenth century that included skepticism about slavery, high protective tariffs, strongly antiMasonic feelings (although Clay was a
Mason), uplift of the masses, a stable currency, and internal improvements. Greeley
moved from being a paid mouthpiece for a
political party to becoming a remarkably
successful editor of an important newspaper where he actually shaped the Whig
Party platform. He also moved from being
a Whig to becoming a Republican, a centrist reform party built to stop the spread
of slavery. But for Williams, the story of
Greeley is the story of the transformation
of the United States from a land of liberty
to a culture of freedom.
Williams wound up writing a book on
Greeley; it was not his original intention.
He wanted to write a book about the “shifting meanings of the words liberty and freedom in trans-Atlantic political discourse
in the nineteenth century.” His research
led him to a number of people but “I soon
began to realize that all roads led through
them to Greeley. He and his newspaper . .
. were a kind of international switchboard
for a trans-Atlantic conversation about
liberty and freedom at a time when the
main issue of the day was no longer British tyranny but American slavery.”
Of course, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which borrows some language
from Greeley and the antislavery Unitarian minister Theodore Parker and uses
it much more concisely and incisively, is
the key document that illustrates the idea
that the United States had moved from
liberty to freedom. (Aspects of this idea
of political/rhetorical transformation in
American culture is explored in WU Professor of English Wayne Fields’s first-rate
study Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence.) Clearly, the address is
the intellectual culmination of Williams’s
book, because what the address is doing
is so clear in defining the Civil War as
continuing the American Revolution for
white male liberty as a revolution for human freedom.
On the whole, Williams’s consideration
of the change from liberty to freedom is
competent and insightful but it also, at
times, feels awkward and a little strained.
It is certainly repeated often enough in
the book to make a reader think that the
writer is convinced that if you repeat a
claim persistently it becomes more persuasive. The discussion of the 1848 European Revolutions and their influence
on Greeley and his circle, particularly, is
good. (It is intriguing and suggestive to
know that Marx and Engels wrote for the
Tribune for several years.) But the path of
the transformation never seems as clear as
the author intends. For one thing, Greeley
and others in the nineteenth century still
tended to use the words freedom and liberty, at times, interchangeably. Also, other
words like emancipation, manumission,
popular sovereignty, independence, and liberation—all commonly used during the
slavery crisis—tend to cloud the rhetorical picture. And what is freedom, anyway?
The slaveholders thought their freedom
was being impaired by being denied the
right to spread slavery, a sophistry, to be
sure, but powerful enough to drive the
country to civil war. Finally, Greeley’s
centrism, with its embrace of conservative and radical ideas, each as a kind of
brace for the other, was too knotted to be
clearly anything but a kind of conditional,
contingent liberalism based on the Protestant Christian ideological defaults of a
loving God and a virtuous bourgeois character. But Williams’s book is worth reading, although I feel that Glyndon G. Van
Deusen’s 1953 biography is better, and it is
hoped that Williams’s biography will spur
more books in the near future on Greeley
and his world.
A humorous story that Williams relates in his
Greeley biography, as does Glyndon G. Van Deusen
in his Horace Greeley: Nineteenth-Century Crusader
(1953), is one day on a New York City street Fuller,
wearing kid gloves, chanced to run into Molly, who
despised the wearing of animal skin. After they
shook hands, Molly yelled, “Skin of a beast!” as she
pointed to the gloves. “Why, what do you wear?”
asked Fuller. “Silk,” Molly responded. “Entrails of
a worm!” Fuller shrank back in horror.
1
In addition to Van Deusen’s biography, there was
Harlan Hoyt Horner’s Lincoln and Greeley published
by the University of Illinois Press in 1953 and James
H. Trietsch’s The Printer and the Prince: A Study of
the Influence of Horace Greeley upon Abraham Lincoln published in 1955 by Exposition Press.
2
The Center for the Hu
The events are free and open to the
public. Please call the Center at
314-935-5576 for a free parking
sticker and to reserve a seat so that we
can have an accurate count.
Refreshments will be provided.
Professor Akiko Tsuchiya
Tuesday, March 6,
Faculty Fellows Lecute
4 pm, Umrath Lounge
Akiko Tsuchiya, 2007 Center for the
Humanities Faculty Fellow, Associate Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance
Languages & Literatures will give a lecture,
“Consuming Subjects: Female Reading and
Deviant Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Spain.” Professor Tsuchiya’s presentation will focus on the representations of the
female reader in Restoration Spain (18751898)—a historical moment characterized by
a significant rise in female readership—and,
more specifically, on the identification between female reading and sexual desire. The
condemnation of female reading in medical literature, as well as in conduct manuals written for women, finds reflection in
literary and visual representations of women
whose uncontrolled reading awakens erotic
desire, leading ultimately to sexual deviance,
most typically, adultery or prostitution.
nts
umanities Faculty Fellows’ Lecture and Workshop Series
exemplify the Center’s mission of forging
intellectual bonds among disciplines in
the humanities.
— Patrick Burke
Professor Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.
Tuesday, March 20,
Guest Faculty Lecture
4 pm, Umrath Lounge
“Gendering Black Musical Genius”
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., is Associate Professor
of Music History in the Music Department at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Invited by 2007 faculty fellow Patrick
Burke, Assistant Professor of Music.
Professor Ramsey’s innovative work spans the
disciplinary boundaries of musicology, cultural
studies, film studies, cultural and social history, and African American and American studies to give us new insight into the power, complexity, and significance of African American
music. The breadth and rigor of his scholarship
Professor Ramsey will offer a thorough analysis of tragic jazz pianist Bud
Powell’s label of “genius” by the circle of
jazz critics, musicians, scholars, and aficionados in order to show that “genius”
in this instance is more than a description of an extraordinary endowment, it
is also the product of a complex social
process. “Genius,” in short, is a social
and political construction. The process
animating Powell’s genius--sexuality, physical malady, drug addiction,
Western musical aesthetics, African musical priorities, the debates circulating around
athletic prowess, bebop as a paradigm for a
generation of musicians, iconography and
visual culture--work together to make the
process a dynamic one. Gender and race,
too, form important, though under-analyzed, elements in the genius process.
Wednesday, March 21,
Guest Faculty Workshop
2-3 pm, Music Building, Room 102
“The Blues Muse”
Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., is Associate Professor
of Music History in the Music Department at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Friday, March 23,
Faculty Fellows Lecute
12-1pm, McDonnell Hall, Room 162
Gerry Izenberg, 2007 Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellow, Professor of the
History Department will give a lecture,
“The Varieties of ‘We’: Collective Identities
and their Conflicts.”
Professor Gerry Izenberg
Humans have always collected themselves
into groups identified as “we” and “they” but
it is only recently that this has been recognized as a universal aspect of identity rather
than a matter of absolutes, of “superior” and
“inferior.” Since the 1960’s the idea of collective identity has permeated every aspect
The Center for the
Humanities’ Library
Toys Added to the Toy Collection This
Month
1.Superman Returns: Kryptonite
Crisis Board Game for ages 6
and older, for two or four players,
Mattel
2.Superman Returns: Rocket
Launch Superman Figure, no age
specification but not for young
children, Mattel
3.Sing and Spin Pablo, a motorized
doll that sings and dances, Nick Jr.
The Backyardians, for children 18
months and older, Fisher-Price
New Books Added This Month
The Life of David by Robert Pinskey
Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints:
Essays by Joan Acocella
Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’
Guide edited by Mark Kramer
and Wendy Call
Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life by
Ralph Pite
The Things That Matter: What Seven
Classic Novels Have To Say About the
Stages of Life by Edward Mendelson
Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom by Robert C. Williams
of our lives from sex to politics, most recently and notoriously in the idea that international relations are ultimately about a
“clash of civilizations” or religious identities.
Collective identity raises other problems.
We may feel that we are more than one
thing—woman, American, Catholic—but
are conflicted about which takes priority
or how they harmonize within the self. We
may want to be defined by membership in a
group but don’t want our identity to be exhausted by it. And in a collective, who gets
to define its identity?
st. louis literary calendar
Events in
February
Join members of the St. Louis Publisher’s Association for a lecture on how to publish your
book. 7pm, Borders, 10990 Sunset Hills Plaza,
909-0300.
Sunday, March 4
All events are free unless otherwise indicated.
Author events are followed by signings. All phone
numbers take 314 prefix unless indicated.
Thursday, March 1
WU Assembly Series presents Michael Wolff,
Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court,
with the lecture “Race, Law, and the Struggle
for Equality: Missouri Law, Politics, and the Dred
Scott Case.” 4pm, Graham Chapel, WU Danforth
Campus, 935-4620.
The Big Read presents a Fahrenheit 451 book
discussion, led by a Washington University facilitator. 7pm, Schnucks Classroom, Missouri History Museum, Lindell & DeBaliviere in Forest Park,
935-4407.
Dresden Files author Jim Butcher signs his new
book, titled White Night, while his wife, Shannon
Butcher, signs her debut novel, No Regrets.
7pm, Borders 11745 Olive Blvd., 432-3575.
Saturday, March 3
The Big Read and SLPL present a Fahrenheit 451 book discussion led by St. Louis Public Library’s rare books librarian, Tom Pearson.
10am, meeting room on 3rd floor, SLPL-Main
Branch, 1301 Olive Street, 935-4407.
St. Louis Writers Guild will host Margo Dill of
the Missouri Writers Guild, who will present a
workshop titled “Creating Success—Steps Designed to Take Your Work More Seriously.” 10am,
Barnes & Noble Crestwood, 9618 Watson Road,
821-3823.
Author and historian Bruce Raisch will sign his
new book, Ghost Towns and Other Historical
Sites of the Black Hills. 2pm, Borders, 10990
Sunset Hills Plaza, 909-0300.
Author Kathleen Goodman will discuss and sign
her new book, Paris by the Numbers. 2pm, Borders, 11745 Olive Blvd., 432-3575.
Local author Jerry Clinton will sign his new autobiography, Accept the Challenge: The Memoirs of
Jerry Clinton. 2pm, Borders, 1519 S. Brentwood
Blvd., 918-8189.
Susan McBride will sign her fourth novel, Night
of the Living Deb. 2pm, Borders, 2040 Chesterfield, 636-536-1779.
Tiffani Nate Taylor will sign copies of her poetry
book, Poems in a Glass House. 3pm, Main
Street Books, 307 S. Main Street, St.
Charles. 636-949-0105 to reserve copies.
Historian Bruce Raisch will sign his new book,
Ghost Towns and Other Historical Sites of the
Black Hills. 2pm, Borders, 1519 S. Brentwood
Blvd., 918-8189.
Monday, March 5
LBB presents Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He
will sign and discuss his book, What a Party:
My Life among Democrats—Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators & Other Wild
Animals. 7pm, Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001
Clayton Rd., 367-6731.
River Styx celebrates its first annual Schlafly
Beer MicroFiction contest. The festivities will
feature readings by local fiction writers such as
Adam Cleary and Pushcart Prize winner David
Schuman. This one-of-a-kind event takes place
at the Schlafly Tap Room. 7pm, at 2100 Locust
Street, 241-2337, and admission is $5.
Tuesday, March 6
The Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellows Lecture & Workshop Series presents
Akiko Tsuchiya, with the lecture “Consuming
Subjects: Female Reading and Deviant Sexuality
in Late Nineteenth-Century Spain.” 4pm, Umrath
Lounge, WU Danforth Campus, 935-5576.
Webster Groves Public Library book discussion
group will meet to discuss Water for Elephants by
Sara Gruen. 6pm, WGPL, 301 E. Lockwood, 9613784.
LBB presents the author of Dreaming the Mississippi, Katherine Fischer, who will discuss and
sign her book. 7pm, Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, 367-6731.
Wednesday, March 7
WU Assembly Series presents Lauren Greenfield, to speak about American popular culture
with a lecture titled “Thin.” 11am, Graham Chapel, WU Danforth Campus, 935-4620.
Borders Book Club will be meeting to discuss
All the Numbers with the author, Judy Merrill
Larsen. 7pm, Borders, 10990 Sunset Hills Plaza,
909-0300.
LBB and SLCL present Jerry Clinton, a local
businessman and author. He will discuss and sign
his book, Accept the Challenge: The Memoirs of
Jerry Clinton. 7pm, SLCL-Headquarters Branch,
1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd., 367-6731.
Thursday, March 8
LBB and SLPL present author Zelda Lockhart,
who will discuss and sign copies of Fifth Born
and her new release, Cold Running Creek. 7pm,
SLPL-Schlafly Branch, 225 N. Euclid, 367-4120.
Observable Readings presents John Woodward, John Gallaher, and Wayne Miller, who
will read from their work. 8pm, Schlafly Bottleworks, 7260 Southwest, 241-2337.
LBB and SLCL present Richard Burgin, a local
fiction writer and author. He will discuss and sign
his book Conference on Beautiful Moments. 7pm,
SLCL-Headquarters Branch, 1640 S. Lindbergh
Blvd., 994-3300.
SLPL and LBB present Susan McBride, who
will discuss and sign her book, Night of the Living
Deb: A Debutante Drop-out Mystery. 7pm, SLPLBuder Branch, 4401 Hampton Ave., 367-6731.
Saturday, March 10
St. Louis author Dr. Joseph R. Rosenbloom will
sign his new book, The Secret Bible: A Secular
Approach to the Bible. 2pm, Borders, 10990
Sunset Hills Plaza, 909-0300.
Author Kathleen Goodman will discuss and sign
her new book, Paris by the Numbers. 2pm, Borders, 1519 S. Brentwood, 918-8189.
Mark Usler will sign his new book, Hometown
Revelation. 2pm, Borders, 6601 N. Illinois, 618397-6097.
Join members of the St. Louis Publisher’s Association for a lecture on how to publish your
book. 7pm, Borders, 11745 Olive Blvd., 4323575.
Sunday, March 11
Join the St. Louis Art Museum for an enchanting
reading series, “Dramatic Dreams: Inspiring Literature of the Pre-Raphaelite Period.” 2pm, One
Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, 721-0072.
Borders presents author Scott Gamboe, as he
signs his new book, The Killing Frost. 2pm, 6601
N. Illinois, 618-397-6097.
The BookClub will have their 374th discussion
on the book Snow by Orhan Pamuk. For time and
venue, visit http://www.klinedinst.com/.
Tuesday, March 13
Join members of the St. Louis Writers Guild for
Open Mic Night. Come to listen or read. 7pm,
Wired Coffee, 3860 S. Lindbergh, Sunset Hills,
821-3823.
LBB presents Krista Tippett, creator and host
of National Public Radio’s “Speaking of Faith.”
She will discuss and sign her book, Speaking of
Faith: Listening for God. 7pm, Ethical Society of
St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd., 367-6731.
Thursday, March 15
LBB presents Washington University’s professor
of Persian and comparative literature, Fatemeh
Keshavarz. She will discuss and sign her book,
Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in
Tehran. 7pm, Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid,
367-6731.
Friday, March 16
LBB presents Jonathan Lethem, who will discuss his newest novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet.
7pm, Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, 367-6731.
Sunday, March 18
Join the St. Louis Art Museum for an enchanting
reading series, “Dramatic Dreams: Inspiring Literature of the Pre-Raphaelite Period.” 2pm, One
Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, 721-0072.
Award-winning author and poet Carol Rose will
sign and read from her work, including Behind
the Blue Gate. 2pm, Borders, 11745 Olive Blvd.,
432-3575.
Monday, March 19
The Big Read and SLCL present a Fahrenheit
451 book discussion, led by a Washington University facilitator. 2pm, SLCL-Thornhill Branch,
12863 Willowyck Dr., 878-7730.
River Styx presents poets Josh Kryah and
Donna Biffar. 7:30pm, Duff’s Restaurant, 392
North Euclid, 361-0522. $5 at the door; $4 members, students, and seniors.
LBB and SLPL present Nikki Giovanni, who will
discuss and sign her book, Acolytes. 7pm, SLPLCentral Branch, 1301 Olive St., 367-6731.
Tuesday, March 20
The Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellows
Lecture & Workshop Series presents Guthrie
Ramsey, with the lecture “Gendering Black Musical Genius.” 4pm, Umrath Lounge, WU Danforth
Campus, 935-5576.
The Tuesday Night Writer’s Critique Group
will meet; open to writers of fiction and nonfiction,
published or not. 7pm, meeting room at B&N,
9618 Watson Road, 843-9480.
Wednesday, March 21
WU Assembly Series presents Gerald Izenberg, with his lecture titled, “Is Identity Necessary? Is Identity Possible?” 11am, Graham Chapel, WU Danforth Campus, 935-4620.
The Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellows
Lecture & Workshop Series presents Guthrie
Ramsey, with the workshop on “Gendering Black
Musical Genius.” 2pm, Room 102, Music Classroom Building, WU Danforth Campus, 935-5576.
The Kingshighway Library Book Discussion
Group will meet to discuss A Complicated Kindness
by Miriam Toews. 6:45pm, SLPL-Kingshighway
Branch, 2260 South Vandeventer Ave., 771-5450.
Poetry reading at UMSL: Joshua Kryah, author
of Glean, will read and discuss his work. 7pm,
Gallery 210, 44E. Drive, One University Blvd.,
516-6845.
Thursday, March 22
WU Assembly Series presents prominent archaeologist Lord Colin Renfrew, author of Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, with his lecture titled “Becoming
Human: The Cognitive Archaeology of Humankind.” 4pm, Graham Chapel, WU Danforth Campus, 935-4620.
Join the Shlafly branch of SLPL for their Book
Discussion Group, where they will talk about
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. 7pm, SLPLSchlafly Branch, 225 N. Euclid, 367-4120.
WU Writing Program presents poet and visiting Hurst Professor David Baker, who will read
from his poetry. 8pm, Hurst Lounge, WU Danforth
Campus, 935-5190.
St. Louis Writers Guild monthly lecture series
presents Dan Dillon, author of So, Where’d You
Go to High School? Baby Boomer Edition. He
will talk on “Picking Up the Pieces: How I Turned
a Failed Project into a Successful Book.” 7pm,
B&N, 8871 Ladue Rd., 821-3823.
LBB presents the author of Neck Deep and Other
Predicaments, Ander Monson, who will discuss
and sign his book. 7pm, Left Bank Books, 399 N.
Euclid, 367-6731.
Friday, March 23
The Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellows
Lecture & Workshop Series presents Gerald
Izenberg, with the lecture, “The Varieties of ‘We’:
Collective Identities and Their Conflicts”. Room 162,
McDonnell Hall, WU Danforth Campus, 935-5576.
Saturday, March 24
Susan McBride, author of the Debutante Dropout series, will sign copies of her latest mystery,
Night of the Living Deb. 1pm, Main Street Books,
307 S. Main Street, St. Charles. 636-949-0105 to
reserve copies.
Borders presents author Mark Usler, who will
sign his new book, Hometown Revelations. 2pm,
1519 S. Brentwood Blvd., 918-8189.
Sunday, March 25
The Bookmark Society’s Contemporary Fiction and Nonfiction Reading Group will meet to
discuss Dark Voyage, a novel by Alan Furst. WU
West Campus Library, 7425 Forsyth, 481-0730.
The Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellows Lecture & Workshop Series presents
Gerald Izenberg, with the lecture “The Varieties
of ‘We’: Collective Identities and Their Conflicts.”
12pm, Room 162, McDonnell Hall, WU Danforth
Campus, 935-5576.
Tuesday, March 27
The Big Read and SLCL present a Fahrenheit
451 book discussion, led by a Washington University facilitator. 3:30pm, SLCL-Indian Trails
Branch, 8400 Delport, 428-5424.
Wednesday, March 28
LBB and SLPL present Laurie Halse Anderson,
award-winning young adult fiction writer. She will
discuss and sign her book Twisted. 7pm, SLPLBuder Branch, 4401 Hampton Ave., 367-6731.
Thursday, March 29
LBB presents local poet Jane O. Wayne, who will
discuss and sign her book From the Night Album.
7pm, Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, 367-6731.
Saturday, March 31
Saturday Writers presents author and teacher
William J. Donnelly, who will discuss “What to
Do When the Engine Stalls: Pressing Past Writer’s Block.” 11am, St. Peters Community and Arts
Center, 1035 St. Peters-Howell Road, 636-3976903.
Borders presents author Abdul Sinno, who will
sign his new book, Treasures of the Mississippi.
2pm, 1519 S. Brentwood Blvd., 918-8189.
Illinois native Erin Zweigart will sign her new
book, Identity Crisis. 2pm, Borders, 660 N. Illinois, 618-397-6097.
Author Abdul Sinno will sign his new book, Treasures of the Mississippi. 7pm, Borders, 10990
Sunset Hills Plaza, 909-0300.
Notices
COCA, in conjunction with the St. Louis Community Big Read Program, presents work from
COCA’s Urban Arts Storytelling Workshop, 5pm.
Members of the COCA Theater Company will present dramatic readings, 6pm. They will repeat these
readings at 1pm on Saturday and again on Sunday. Running March 23, 24, and 25. COCA, 524
Trinity Ave., 725-6555. For more information, visit
http://bigread.wustl.edu/resources.php.
Want a vacation this spring? The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is hosting
the Missouri Spring Retreat! Running March
9–11, this small-scale event provides an intimate
opportunity to work on your craft as well as to get
to know Randi Rivers, an associate editor
of children’s books at Charlesbridge. More
The Center for the Humanities
Advisory Board 2006–2007
info and registration at http://www.geocities.com/scbwimo.
The Missouri Writers Guild Conference will be held at the
St. Charles Convention Center April 20–22. Speakers include Philip Gulley, Debra Peppers, Harry Jackson, Jr.,
Pat Smith, poet Harvey Stanbrough, and movie and TV
producer David K. Zuckerman. Also in attendance: literary
agents Ashley and Carolyn Grayson and Cherry Weiner,
and publishers and editors from Unbridled Books, Knopf
Books, Tigress Press, and Ozarks Magazine. Conference is open to all. Contact Margo Dill-Balinski at conferenceinfo@missouriwritersguild.org for registration information. E-mail Donna Volkenannt at donna@saturdaywriters.
org for conference brochure.
SLWP Guild Writers, Performers, and Publishers’ Conference will be held June 1–2. Call 868-8824 or e-mail StLouisWPGuild@aol.com for more information, $25 registration
fee.
The NSN National Storytelling Conference will be held July
11–15 in St. Louis. Call 997-3474 for additional information.
Hold the Date
The Center for the Humanities 3rd Annual
Children’s Film Symposium
Friday, April 27 and Saturday, April 28
Room 100, Brown Hall, WU Danforth Campus
Abbreviations
B&N: Barnes & Noble; LBB: Left Bank Books; SLCL:
St. Louis County Library; SLPL: St. Louis Public Library;
SCCCL: St. Charles City County Library; UCPL: University City Public Library, WU: Washington University,
WGPL: Webster Groves Public Library.
Check the online calendar at cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu for
more events and additional details. To advertise, send
event details to litcal@artsci.wustl.edu, or call 935-5576.
The Center for the Humanities
Campus Box 1071
Old McMillan Hall, Rm S101
One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
Phone: (314) 935-5576
email: cenhum@artsci.wustl.edu
http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu
Nancy Berg
Associate Professor of Asian & Near
Eastern Languages & Literatures
Angela Miller
Associate Professor of Art History and
Archaeology
Ken Botnick
Associate Professor of Art
Dolores Pesce
Professor and Chair of Department of
Music
Gene Dobbs Bradford
Executive Director of
Jazz at the Bistro
Lingchei (Letty) Chen
Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese
Language and Literature
Joe Pollack
Film and Theater Critic for KWMU,
Writer
Sarah Rivett
Assistant Professor of English
Elizabeth Childs
Associate Professor of Art History
Bart Schneider
Editor of Speakeasy
Mary-Jean Cowell
Associate Professor of Performing Arts
Robert Vinson
Assistant Professor of History and
African and African American Studies
Michael Kahn
Attorney at Law
Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin LLP
Chris King
Editorial Director
The St. Louis American Newspaper
Olivia Lahs-Gonzales
Director
Sheldon Art Galleries
Paula Lupkin
Assistant Professor of Architecture
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual
Arts
Larry May
Professor of Philosophy
Steven Meyer
Associate Professor of English
James Wertsch
Marshall S. Snow Professor of Arts and
Sciences
Director of International and Area
Studies
Ex Officio
Edward S. Macias
Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean
of Arts & Sciences,
Barbara and David Thomas
Distinguished Professor in Arts &
Sciences
Zurab Karumidze
Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia
International Fellow
Financial assistance for this project has
been provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency, and the Regional Arts
Commission.
Non-Profit Org.
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