Free Programs at Cullman CenterFree Spring Programs at NYPL's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers

Highlights Include Panel Discussion on "The Changing Face of Harlem" (March 30); John Jeremiah Sullivan on "Blood Horses" (March 31); Carol Armstrong, on "Victorian Era Nature Camera-less Photography" (April 28); Doron Ben-Atar and Amy Chua (May 11); Renowned Novelists Francisco Goldman and Colm Tóibín (May 19)

New York, NY, March 5, 2004 -- Present and former fellows of The New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers will conduct a series of free public presentations at the Library this spring. The series begins on Tuesday, March 30 with The Changing Face of Harlem, a panel discussion featuring current fellow Michael Henry Adams. Other panelists include J. Max Bond, Raymond Gastil, Thelma Golden, and moderator Mary Schmidt Campbell.

Fast-rising writer and editor John Jeremiah Sullivan will discuss his upcoming book, Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriters Son, on March 31, and on April 27 Carol Armstrong will give a talk related to The Drawing Center's exhibition on botanical drawings and camera-lass photography. The series concludes Wednesday, May 19 with the renowned novelists and former fellows Francisco Goldman and Colm Tóibín on, Writing the Historic Novel.

The programs are held in the Center's Margaret Liebman Berger Forum, on the second floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, with the exception of the March 30 panel, which will take place in the Library's South Court auditorium, on the lower level. Members of the public interested in attending the talks must register by calling 212-930-0084 or sending an email to csw@nypl.org. Seating is limited.

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Contact:    Raul Ramos 212.704.8600.
The New York Public Library
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers
Schedule for Spring Program Series

All programs are free and start at 6 p.m. in the Margaret Liebman Berger Forum, Room 227 Humanities and Social Sciences Library, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, with the exception of the March 30 panel, which will take place in the Library's South Court Auditorium, on the lower level.


The Changing Face of Harlem
Tuesday, March 30
South Court Auditorium -- 6 p.m.

Four distinguished panelists, each with something provocative to say, will talk about the realities, possibilities, and challenges of Harlem's changing landscape.

Harlem has long symbolized the culture of the African-American experience in 20th-century America, but is now changing with stunning speed. What effect does the arrival of Starbucks, Staples, Old Navy, Magic Johnson's theater and the office of former President Bill Clinton have on that storied community?  Does this signal a new era of vitality or the loss of a unique cultural history?  Is gentrification ultimately good or disastrous for the neighborhood? The panel will examine the realities, possibilities and challenges of Harlem's changing landscape.

Panelists:
Michael Henry Adams, 2003-2004 Fellow of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, author of Harlem Lost and Found
J. Max Bond, Jr., FAIA, partner, Davis Brody Bond
Raymond Gastil, Executive Director, Van Alen Institute
Thelma Golden, Deputy Director, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Curator of Harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor
Moderator: Mary Schmidt Campbell, Dean, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

This panel is co-sponsored by the Studio Museum in Harlem in conjunction with their exhibition, Harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor, on view January 28 through April 4.


John Jeremiah Sullivan
Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son
Wednesday, March 31
Margaret Liebman Berger Forum -- 6 p.m.

Current fellow John Jeremiah Sullivan will talk about his upcoming highly praised book, Blood Horses:  Notes of a Sportswriter's Son, to be published in April by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Sullivan has been an editor at the Oxford American magazine, Harper's Magazine, and GQ, where he currently works as a Writer-at-Large. His 1999 article "Feet in Smoke" was included in the 2002 Best of the Oxford American anthology, and his piece "Horseman, Pass By" (Harper's, 2002) won the 2003 National Magazine Award for feature writing and the 2003 Eclipse Award for the year's best magazine article about horse racing. It was subsequently expanded into Blood Horses. He is now at work on a non-fiction book about the discovery of prehistoric cave art in the southeastern United States, as well as a novel entitled The Key of the Fields.


Carol Armstrong
Blue Photography: Anna Atkins and the Photogenic Drawing
Wednesday, April 28
Margaret Liebman Berger Forum -- 6 p.m.

This lecture coincides with The Drawing Center's exhibition Ocean Flowers: Impressions from Nature on view from March 25 through May 22, which explores Victorian era botanical and natural history drawings, specimens, nature printing and camera-less photographs.

Carol Armstrong is professor of Art and Archaeology and Doris Stevens Professor of the Study of Women and Gender at Princeton University and a current fellow of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writes.  She is the author of Odd Man Out: Readings of the Work and Reputation of Edgar Degas, Scenes in a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 1843-1875 and Manet/Manette: The Difference of Painting.  She is currently working on a series of essays on fin-de-siécle art criticism in France on the theme of color as a critical and poetic trope rather than an optical science, and is co-curator of The Drawing Center's exhibition, Ocean Flowers: Botanical (Photogenic) Drawings.


Doron Ben-Atar and Amy Chua
Moderator: James Surowiecki
Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power
Tuesday, May 11
Margaret Liebman Berger Forum -- 6 p.m.

Doron Ben-Atar is an Associate Professor of History at Fordham University. Dr. Ben-Atar is the author of The Origins of Jeffersonian Commercial Policy and Diplomacy (1993); Trade Secrets: Intellectual Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power and editor, together with Barbara B. Oberg of Federalists Reconsidered. Dr. Ben-Atar has recently finished co-writing the memoirs of teenage years spent in the Nazi death camps. He is currently working on a study of the social and cultural history of Litchfield Connecticut. James Surowiecki, a columnist at The New Yorker, is the author of The Wisdom of Crowds (May 2004).

Professor Chua teaches at the Yale University Law School, and is the author of the New York Times bestseller World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (Doubleday, 2003).

James Surowiecki, a columnist at The New Yorker, is the author of The Wisdom of Crowds (May 2004).


Francisco Goldman and Colm Tóibín
Writing the Historical Novel
Wednesday, May 19
Margaret Liebman Berger Forum -- 6 p.m.

Two renowned novelists whose previous work has been set in the contemporary world have now applied their skills to the past:  Francisco Goldman, in The Divine Husband, follows the youthful Jose Martí from Central America to New York City, and Colm Tóibín, in The Master, dramatizes five years in the life of Henry James.

Colm Tóibín's previous books include The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1999 and filmed for Hallmark starring Angela Lansbury and Dianne Wiest. He was a Fellow at the Cullman Center in 2000-2001.  Francisco Goldman's first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens, won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; his second was The Ordinary Seaman. His books have been translated into nine languages. He received a 1998 Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and was a Fellow at the Cullman Center in 2000-2001.


Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
Frances Hodgson Burnett:  The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden
Wednesday, May 26
Margaret Liebman Berger Forum -- 6 p.m.

Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is professor of English and director of Pan African Studies at Barnard College, and an honorary fellow at the University of Exeter in Devon, England.  She hosts the nationally-syndicated radio program "The Book Show."  Her own books include Carrington: A Life (about the Bloomsbury figure Dora Carrington); Black London (about the black population of eighteenth-century Britain); and (as editor) Black Victorians/Black Victoriana. At the Cullman Center she will talk about her new book on Frances Hodgson Burnett, which Rutgers University Press will publish in April, 2004. The original manuscript of The Secret Garden, which The New York Public Library owns, will be on display during Professor Gerzina's talk.

           
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Contact: Raul Ramos at 212.221.7676






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updated 03-25-04