Category Archives: Readings and Talks

Events, Exhibits, Franklin Research Center, From Our Collections, Readings and Talks

Opening Reception for “Conscience of a Nation”

Date: Wednesday 20 January 2010
Time: 4:30 PM
Location: Perkins Library Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Karen Jean Hunt, 919-660-5922 or k.j.hunt(at)duke.edu

Join the exhibit curators and the staff of the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture as they celebrate the legacy of Professor John Hope Franklin (1915-2009).

Speakers will include Judge Allyson Duncan, a 1975 Duke Law graduate, and Dr. Walter Brown, former dean of North Carolina Central University’s School of Education.

Bingham Center, Events, From Our Collections, Readings and Talks

Zine Mania, Round One: Cristy Road

Date: Monday, 16 November, 2009
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Duke Women’s Center Lower Lounge
Contact Information: Kelly Wooten, 919-660-5967 or kelly.wooten(at)duke.edu

Cristy RoadYou know those issues of Greenzine you have stacked on your bookshelf? Now you’ll finally have your chance to meet writer and illustrator Cristy Road as she visits Duke’s Women’s Center for a reading and discussion.

Road, a Cuban-American from Miami, Florida, has been illustrating ideas, people, and places ever since she learned how to hold a crayon. Blending the inevitable existence of social principles, cultural identity, sexual identity, mental inadequacies, and dirty thoughts, she testifies to the beauty of the imperfect. Today, Road has moved from zines to illustrated novels, although her visual diagram of lifestyles and beliefs remain in tune with the zine’s portrayal of living honestly and unconventionally.

Stop by the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture during reading room hours to see issue #14 of Greenzine, one of some 4000 zines (and counting!) preserved in the center’s zine collection.

(Artwork courtesy of Cristy Road: “Hope Beyond Despair” from Greenzine 14, 2004)

Events, From Our Collections, Human Rights Archive, Readings and Talks

Witnessing Iran: 1979 and 2009

Date: Wednesday, 4 November, 2009
Time: 4:30 PM
Location: Perkins Library 217
Contact Information: Ilene Nelson, 919-660-5816 or ilene.nelson(at)duke.edu

On the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Iran Hostage Crisis, the RBMSCL will host a discussion of the changing role of the eyewitness account in the creation of historical narrative—with Iran as the context.

Mark Bowden, author of Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam, will talk about the interviews he conducted with hostages and hostage-takers in the 1979 crisis, as well as the information he obtained from military officials about 1980’s failed rescue attempt.

Negar Mottahedeh, associate professor in Duke’s Program in Literature, will speak about social networks and new media in the reporting of current events in Iran. Professor Mottahedeh posts frequently on Twitter about developments in Iran (follow her here).

The discussion will be moderated by Bruce Kuniholm, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy and a member of both the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Policy Planning Staff during the Carter administration.

Library staff have prepared a LibGuide in conjunction with this event. Of particular interest, the RBMSCL holds the interviews Mark Bowden conducted (collection guide here), as well as the interviews that author and Duke alum Tim Wells conducted with 36 of the the 1979 hostages (collection guide here).

Events, Jazz Archive, Readings and Talks

Jazz Conversations with John Brown and Vincent Gardner

Date: Thursday, 22 October, 2009
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Jeremy Smith, 919-660-5839 or jas5(at)notes.duke.edu

Join us as the Jazz Archive hosts this fall’s second installment of John Brown’s “Jazz Conversations.” Brown, Associate Professor of the Practice of Music and Director of the Duke Jazz Program, will discuss jazz history and contemporary developments in jazz with Vincent Gardner of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Guests are invited to bring their own lunches—but dessert and drinks are on us!

Events, Human Rights Archive, Readings and Talks

Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz at the RBMSCL

Date: Thursday, 15 October, 2009
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu

Ambassador Muñoz will read from and sign The Dictator’s Shadow: Life under Augusto Pinochet. The winner of the second annual WOLA-Duke Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America, this poignant and wide-ranging memoir recounts how Chileans brought the former dictator to account for his crimes. Ariel Dorfman, the Walter Hines Page Chair of Literature and Latin American Studies and a long-time friend of the ambassador, will give the introduction. Duke University’s Gothic Bookshop will sell copies of the book. This event is co-sponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Ambassador Muñoz was Deputy Foreign Minister of Chile from 2000 to 2002 and Minister Secretary General from 2002 to 2003 at La Moneda Presidential Palace before assuming his present post as Chile’s ambassador to the United Nations. He was imprisoned and exiled by the Pinochet regime for his political views.