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The Newberry
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The Newberry is a renowned research library that offers lectures, workshops, and teacher programs, fostering research, teaching, and lifelong learning in an atmosphere of free inquiry.

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The Newberry

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Timothy Harrison, Finding Subjectivity in Paradise Lost

The Newberry

What, in Milton’s view, is the nature of self-awareness? Professor Harrison tries to answer this question by showing how Milton’s depiction of human subjectivity in Paradise Lost emerges from his anthropological convictions about human nature. When Milton wrote Adam and Eve’s first-person accounts of awakening in Eden, he poetically concretized a widespread seventeenth-century philosophical fantasy that sought to combine the evidence of experience...

(4) All levels 18 and older
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Go Boldly Forth – Adventures in Self-Discovery

The Newberry

The Newberry Library’s Fitzgerald Collection contains a fascinating and expansive array of books, manuscripts, and maps documenting polar exploration as early as the 17th century through today. The expeditions of great polar explorers- Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen, and Robert Scott, to name a few- are all documented in this collection. Continuing in this storied and adventurous tradition is John Huston, professional polar explorer and author...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War

The Newberry

"This is a one time free course" From the acclaimed, best-selling author Adam Hochschild, a sweeping history of the Spanish Civil War told through a dozen unforgettable characters: a tale of idealism, suffering, and a tragically doomed yet noble cause. For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world, as volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a Fascist...

(4) All levels 18 and older
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Make Music Chicago 2016 in Washington Square Park

The Newberry

This is a one time free course. The Newberry Library and the Washington Square Park Advisory Council invite you to come out to the park for a day-long celebration of music on the first day of summer! We have created an exciting lineup that, like last year’s Make Music event, will feature spirited performances around a piano in the park. From jazz to Medieval compositions; kid-friendly jams to classical masterpieces, this year’s Make Music Chicago...

(4) All levels 18 and older
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The Townshend Duties and Origins of American Revolution

The Newberry

In 1767, the British Atlantic community experienced a “moment” of sorts. In that year, Charles Townshend assumed the role of Chancellor of the Exchequer. He used his position to try to reshape all the empire and to transform the relationship between Britain and America. Ultimately, he passed a series of duties on select goods, the revenue from which would be used to create the bases of a new imperial system. He did so as his brother George, named...

(4) All levels 18 and older
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FamilySearch.org Primer

The Newberry

Loren M. Knowles spent more than fifty years researching his descendants and those of his wife. His daughter, Carol Knowles of Southern California, will speak about the highlights and trials of that endeavor, the results of which were donated to the Newberry Library over the last year. His massive archives have been declared among the most comprehensive, cohesive, and extensive collections of Americana. She will also address “the good, the bad...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Equivocation in 1606

The Newberry

When Shakespeare first used the word “equivocation” in Hamlet it was in the neutral sense of “ambiguous.” Seven years later he would make much of this word in Macbeth (whose protagonist complains of the ‘equivocation of the fiend /That lies like truth”). By then the word “equivocation” was understood to mean something duplicitous, a device by which Catholics in particular could justify lying under oath.  This talk traces the...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Shakespeare on Screens in the 21st Century

The Newberry

Live performances streamed to movie theatres across the world. Movies watched on television, computer screen and smartphones - and even, occasionally, on the kinds of screens for which they were intended. Plays reconstructed into text messages or as tweets or in blogs or vlogs. Everything from YOLO Juliet to a Downton Abbey Romeo. We watch Shakespeare in performance on a bewildering variety of screens, large and small, through a range of delivery...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Shakespeare Project of Chicago: Henry V

The Newberry

“And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be rememberèd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England, now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint...

(4) All levels 18 and older
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Re-Imagining Shakespearean Works in Opera

The Newberry @ 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL

Join experts from Chicago Opera Theater (COT), as well as musicologist Linda Austern, in a discussion, and sneak peek performance, of their 2016 production of The Fairy Queen, by Henry Purcell.  This adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dreampremiered in 1692, creating an opera based on the masques from the original play. COT, in partnership with Culture Clash, has taken the adaptation one step further...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
Free
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19th Nebenzahl Lectures: Maps, Their Collecting & Study

The Newberry @ 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL

The Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library cordially invites you to the Nineteenth Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the lectures series. The program is titled Maps, Their Collecting and Study: A Fifty Year Retrospective. In 1966, the Newberry Library invited Raleigh Ashlin Skelton, Keeper of the Map Room of the British Library, to...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
Free

3 sessions

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The Man, the Myth, the Works: Celebrating Shakespeare

The Newberry

2016 challenges us not to fall back on the clichés—“greatest writer in English,” “not of an age but for all time”– when we celebrate Shakespeare. No one can deny his myriad literary achievements, but something else is also at work in creating his cultural capital. Anniversary celebrations like the present one sustain him as a “timeless” icon even as tastes, technology, and politics change that very icon. What is the value, and what...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Coppélia Kahn, The Man, the Myth, the Works

The Newberry @ 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL

Coppélia Kahn, The Man, the Myth, the Works: The Challenge of Celebrating Shakespeare 2016 challenges us not to fall back on the clichés—“greatest writer in English,” “not of an age but for all time”– when we celebrate Shakespeare. No one can deny his myriad literary achievements, but something else is also at work in creating his cultural capital. Anniversary celebrations like the present one sustain him as a “timeless” icon even...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
Free
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A Cricket on the Hearth

The Newberry

The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home was written by Charles Dickens in 1845. It is the third of Dickens’ five short Christmas books (the best-known of which is A Christmas Carol). Featuring a cast of eight professional actors, Jeff Christian’s adaptation brings this heart-warming and touching tale of love, loss, empathy, and reunion to life. Join us for a cup of hot chocolate and a cookie to celebrate the holiday season....

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Shakespeare Project of Chicago: King John

The Newberry @ 126 E Chestnut Street, Illinois City, IL

“Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form: Then have I reason to be fond of grief.” A staged reading by professional actors from The Shakespeare Project of Chicago. An informative talk begins fifteen minutes before the performance, which is followed by a question-and-answer...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
Free
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Meet the Author:Catherine A. Stewart, Long Past Slavery

The Newberry @ 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL

Meet the Author: Catherine A. Stewart, Long Past Slavery: Representing Race in the Federal Writers' Project From 1936 to 1939, the New Deal’s Federal Writers’ Project collected life stories from more than 2,300 former African American slaves. These narratives are now widely used as a source to understand the lived experience of those who made the transition from slavery to freedom. But in this examination of the project and its legacy, Catherine...

(4) All levels 18 and older
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Free
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John M. Wing Lecture on the History of the Book

The Newberry @ 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL

The year 2017 marks the centenary of the death of John M. Wing, the remarkable and eccentric collector whose bequest founded the Newberry’s John M. Wing Collection on the History of Printing. Over the last one hundred years the collection’s curators have amassed an extraordinary group of materials ranging from incunables to modern artist’s books to everything in between. Together they represent one of the world’s best known collections related...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
Free
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Understanding Chicago's Planning History

The Newberry @ 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL

Understanding Chicago's Planning History using the Chicago Collections Consortium Learn about little-known aspects of the history of city planning in Chicago, drawing on the breadth and depth of resources available through the Chicago Collections Consortium and EXPLORE Chicago Collections.

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
Free
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What Dante Means To Me: A Critic's Life

The Newberry @ 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL

This is a one time FREE course. "What Dante Means To Me": A Critic's Life with the Comedy The Center for Renaissance Studies Dante Lectures have been held each year since 2001, bringing Dante scholars from throughout the United States and Europe to the Newberry to present cutting-edge research. From 1983 to 1997, multiple lectures were held each year under the series title Lectura Dantis Newberrania. Cosponsored with the Department of Theology,...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
Free
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Sites and Soundscapes in the Italian Renaissance

The Newberry @ 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL

How do sounds shape communities? How does noise—manmade and natural, organized and chaotic—intersect with architecture and urban space? What role do hearing and listening play in the understanding of self and one’s place in the world? “Sites and Soundscapes in the Italian Renaissance” is a day-long symposium exploring aural experience and the built environment in Renaissance Italy. Schedule 8:30 to 9 am Coffee and Continental Breakfast 9...

(4) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
Free
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