Back to Upcoming Events & News

Past 2015 Events & News

JANUARY

Lecture

“The Popularization of Islamic Mysticism in Medieval Egypt”

Thursday, January 15, 2015, 4:00 p.m. - new time
LJ-113, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Kluge Fellow Nathan Hofer summarizes his forthcoming book on Sufism (Islamic mysticism). Sufism came to extraordinary prominence in Egypt after the 12th century. By the middle of the 14th century, Sufism had become massively popular. How and why did this popularization happen? Hofer's book is the first to address this issue directly, surveying the social formation and histories of several different Sufi collectivities from this period. Hofer is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri.

Co-sponsored by the African and Middle Eastern Division

Lecture

“ART FROM WAR: Documenting Devastation / Realizing Restoration”

Thursday, January 22, 2015, 4:00 p.m. - new time
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Veterans from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have found the arts as an outlet for making sense of their war experiences. Military hospitals also use the arts as a therapeutic treatment for those wounded in combat. Larson Fellow Tara Tappert discusses how the two distinctly different artistic approaches to the experiences of war trauma–documentation and restoration–can be traced to the devastations of the First World War. During and after WWI, veterans throughout the world made artwork that conveyed their war experiences, while hospitals, social agencies, and individuals used the arts to help the crippled and disabled find ways to face the future–through mask making, plastic surgery, and occupational therapy.

Co-sponsored by the Veterans History Project and the Prints and Photographs Division

MARCH

Lecture

“Family Matters: Testing Paternity in the Twentieth Century”

Tuesday, March 17, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Long before daytime television and celebrity tabloids, scientists from around the world sought to develop a test of biological paternity. ACLS Burkhardt Fellow Nara Milanich offers a social and cultural history that traces parentage testing from its origins in the 1920s to the present, exploring how and why identity and descent first became scientific problems and the consequences of testing for men, women, and children, states and societies, kinship and citizenship.

Kluge Conversations

Unique, cross-disciplinary dialogues among scholars at the Kluge Center

Blumberg Dialogues on Astrobiology - Part I

“Astrobiology and the Religious Imagination: Reexamining Notions of Creation, Humanity, Selfhood, and the Cosmos”

Thursday, March 19, 2015, 3:30 p.m. 
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Part one of a three-part dialogue series that will convene scientists, social scientists, humanities scholars and writers from across the country and around the world to investigate the intersection of astrobiology research with humanistic and societal concerns. Part of the Kluge Center’s Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology Program. Learn more

Participating scholars:

• Steven Benner – Distinguished Fellow, The Foundation For Applied Molecular Evolution
• John Hart – Professor of Christian Ethics, Boston University
• Susannah Heschel – Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
• Pamela Klassen – Professor, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto
• Donald S. Lopez Jr. – Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetian Studies, University of Michigan
• Jonathan Lunine – David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences, Cornell University
• Ebrahim Moosa – Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Notre Dame

APRIL

Lecture

“The Indians’ Capital City: Native Histories of Washington D.C.”

Thursday, April 2, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Kluge Fellow Joseph Genetin-Pilawa presents part of his larger study of the Indigenous histories of Washington, D.C. Genetin-Pilawa argues that far from the passive victims or violent interlopers depicted in much of the iconography of the capital, visiting Native diplomats and as well as residents in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries engaged with the messages encoded on the urban landscape. In so doing, they challenged narratives of settler colonialism, claimed and reclaimed the space of the city, and shaped the development of the United States’ capital as it evolved from a local village to a global metropolis.

Co-sponsored by the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution

Related links:

• Interview: Joseph Genetin-Pilawa on Native Americans in Washington, D.C. (C-SPAN)

Annual Jay I. Kislak Lecture

“Shedding Light on Antiquity: The Forensic Imaging and Study of Ancient, Medieval and Modern Manuscripts”

Thursday, April 9, 2015, 6:30 p.m. 
The L. Quincy Mumford Room, James Madison Memorial Building, 6th Floor (view map)

A lecture by Michael Toth, President, R.B. Toth Associates, followed by a roundtable discussion with Kislak collection curator John Hessler, Mike Toth, William Noel (University of Pennsylvania), Chet Van Duzer (John Carter Brown Research Fellow) and Fenella France (Chief, Preservation, Research & Testing Division, Library of Congress). Learn more

The Kislak Lecture is one component of the Kislak American Studies Program established at the Library of Congress in 2004 by the Jay I. Kislak Foundation. The Kislak gift includes an important collection of books, manuscripts, historic documents, maps and art of the Americas. It contains some of the earliest records of indigenous peoples in North America, as well as superb objects from the discovery, contact and colonial periods, especially for the areas of Florida, the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. Visit the online exhibition.

Lecture

“Birth of a Dancing Nation: Reflections on the Centennial of Denishawn, America’s First Dance Company and School”

Thursday, April 16, 2015, 12:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Between 1915-1930, dancers Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn founded and helmed Denishawn, the first U.S. modern dance company and school. ACLS Burkhardt Fellow Paul Scolieri examines one of the most radical experiments of the American stage, which transformed prevailing perceptions of dancing as a degenerate activity into a beloved national theatre art. The presentation will include archival films and photographs to illuminate the company’s enduring impact on American dance history.

Lecture

“Ten Meters Down: Moral Depth in a Chinese Tomb”

Thursday, April 23, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

In 2006, tomb robbers in Shaanxi discovered what is now recognized as the most complete eleventh century family cemetery ever found in China. The excavation of the site, and the story of the family buried there, raises profound questions about our responsibilities to the dead. Kluge Fellow Jeffrey Moser's talk considers the depth of burial, as a matter of moral practice, human labor, and the horizon of memory.

Lecture

“Diaghilev’s 'Time Travelling' Italian Scores”

Thursday, April 30, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-113, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Kluge Fellow Elia Corazza investigates the collaboration between Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929), founder of The Ballets Russes (1909-1929), and the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), which led to the production of La Boutique fantastique (Rossini-Respighi, 1919), Le Astuzie femminili (Cimarosa-Respighi, 1920), and the recently discovered La Serva padrona (Paisiello-Respighi, 1920). Corazza explores their contributions to the changes to musical style that followed the First World War, such as the emergence of the so-called neoclassicism, and argues that this stylistic shift inaugurated a new repertory of modernist music for ballet based on pre-romantic models.

Related links:

• "A Piece of Music Found, A Lost Opera Complete" - Elia Corazza on the Kluge Center blog

MAY

Lecture

“Navigating the Blood-Dimmed Tides: Was U.S. Military Intervention in the First World War Worth the Cost?”

Thursday, May 7, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

In the wake of US intervention in the First World War many American citizens were disillusioned with the results. When the Second World War followed little more than two decades later, the endgame of the First World War was, in the minds of American leaders, a tragedy not to play again. Now, with the centennial of US entry into war in 1917 approaching in 2017, and with Americans disappointed with the results of recent military efforts, the time is ripe for a new look at Woodrow Wilson’s immersion of the United States in the blood-dimmed tides of major warfare. Kissinger Chair Bradford Lee will perform a Clausewitzian critical analysis of how the United States waged war and negotiated peace from 1917 to 1919 and a strategic audit of whether the value of victory was worth the costs of achieving it. Learn more

Lecture

“The Digital Traces of User-generated Content: How Social Media Data May Become the Historical Sources of the Future”

Thursday, May 14, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Katrin Weller, one of two inaugural Kluge Fellows in Digital Studies at the Library of Congress, argues that big data from social media and online communication channels are valuable sources which need to be understood now in order to be preserved effectively for future historians.

Lecture

“Reflections on Issues of Race and Class in 21st Century America: Revisiting Arguments Advanced in The Declining Significance of Race (1978)”

Thursday, May 21, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

In his controversial book, "The Declining Significance of Race," published in 1978, scholar William Julius Wilson featured two major underlying themes—(1) the effect of fundamental economic and political shifts on the changing relative importance of race and class as a determinant of a black person’s life trajectory, and (2) the swing in the concentration of racial conflict from the economic sector to the sociopolitical order. In his lecture at The John W. Kluge Center, Wilson reflects on these themes and their application to more recent developments in American race and ethnic relations involving not only African Americans but also other groups, including whites and Latinos. Learn more

Co-sponsored by the American Sociological Association

Kluge Conversations

Unique, cross-disciplinary dialogues among scholars at the Kluge Center

Blumberg Dialogues on Astrobiology - Part II

“Rethinking Life on Earth and Beyond: Astrobiology and the Role of Paradigm Shifts in Science and Human Self-Understanding”

Thursday, May 28, 2015, 3:00 p.m. 
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Part two of a three-part dialogue series that will convene scientists, social scientists, humanities scholars and writers from across the country and around the world to investigate the intersection of astrobiology research with humanistic and societal concerns. Part of the Kluge Center’s Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology Program. Learn more

Participating scholars:

• Linnda R. Caporael – Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Brian Henning – Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies, Gonzaga University
• Paul Humphreys – Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia
• Sarah Stewart Johnson – Assistant Professor of Planetary Science, Georgetown University
• Mi Gyung Kim – Professor of History, North Carolina State University
• Eric Schwitzgebel – Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside
• Kelly Smith – Associate Professor of Philosophy and Biological Sciences, Clemson University

JUNE

#ScholarFest

Thursday, June 11, 2015, 9:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Thomas Jefferson Building (multiple rooms)

Seventy top scholars in foreign policy, history, ethics, religion and other fields convene on Capitol Hill. Read more

Participating scholars include:

• William Julius Wilson
• David Grinspoon
• Steven Dick
• Lamin Sanneh
• Marie Arana
• Maurice Jackson
• Pauline Yu
• Jennifer Hochschild
• Mark Noll
• Ambassador Teresita Schaffer
• Klaus Larres
• Jim Goldgeier
• John Witte, Jr.
• George Chrousos
• James Childress
• Abdolkarim Soroush
• and more

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Register to attend

Lecture

“The Shape of the Civil War”

Wednesday, June 24, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Today, the American Civil War seems settled, even inevitable. But a remarkable vision from 1897, held in the Library of Congress, challenges the way we usually think of the war and offers a bridge to our own digital era. A special lecture by Ed Ayers, author, historian and President of the University of Richmond. Read more

JULY

Lecture

Inaugural Daniel K. Inouye Distinguished Lecture
"Finding Shared Values for U.S. Foreign Policy"

Wednesday, July 8, 2015, 6:30 p.m. - seating on a first-come, first-serve basis
Coolidge Auditorium, Ground floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

The Library of Congress and the Daniel K. Inouye Institute will present a five-year Daniel K. Inouye Distinguished Lecture Series. The first lecture will occur on the evening of July 8, 2015 at 6:30 p.m. and will feature Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell in conversation with Ann Compton. Read news release

Lecture

“Decolonization and the Sexual Revolution”

Wednesday, July 15, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Historian Todd Shepard examines public debates about sex in France during the 1960s and 70s, and explores how what made this so-called revolution “French”—rather than "Western" or "late modern." Part of the Tenth International Seminar on Decolonization.

Lecture

“The Cinematic Dramaturgy of Rouben Mamoulian's Musical Theater”

Thursday, July 16, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-113, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Kluge Fellow Bradley Rogers explores the contributions of Rouben Mamoulian to the development of the "integrated musical” -- in particular how Mamoulian, the director of Oklahoma!, Carousel, and countless other works of stage and screen, brought his cinematic innovations to the theater.

Lecture

“Unsettled: Refugee Camps in Britain from the Suez Crisis to Idi Amin”

Wednesday, July 22, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Historian Jordanna Bailkin examines two sets of British camps that served the refugees of decolonization: Anglo-Egyptians in 1956 and Ugandan Asians in 1972. Part of the Tenth International Seminar on Decolonization.

Lecture

“Publicity, Celebrity, Fashion: Photographing Edna St. Vincent Millay”

Thursday, July 23, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellow Sarah Parker presents photographic representations of the American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, asserting that Millay consciously used her public image to promote her career and to subtly subvert expectations surrounding the ‘poetess’.

Lecture

“Before Trauma: Nostalgia, or the Melancholy of War”

Thursday, July 30, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Pickford Theater, Third floor, James Madison Memorial Building (view map)

Kluge Fellow Thomas Dodman discusses 18th and 19th century psychological designations of the impact of mass warfare on the human psyche– a predecessor of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)–and insights into the inner, emotional lives of common people at the dawn of the modern age.

AUGUST

Kluge Conversations

Unique, cross-disciplinary dialogues among scholars at the Kluge Center

Blumberg Dialogues on Astrobiology - Part III

“Stories about Life in the Cosmos: Historical, Cultural, and Artistic Perspectives on Astrobiology”

Thursday, August 6, 2015, 3:00 p.m. 
LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Part three of a three-part dialogue series that will convene scientists, social scientists, humanities scholars and writers from across the country and around the world to investigate the intersection of astrobiology research with humanistic and societal concerns. Part of the Kluge Center’s Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology Program. Learn more

Participating scholars:

• David Bates – Professor of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley
• D. Graham Burnett – Professor of History, Princeton University
• Andrea Hairston – Louis Wolff Khan Professor of Theatre and African American Studies, Smith College
• Ursula Heise – Professor of English, UCLA
• Kenneth Knoespel – McEver Professor of Engineering and the Liberal Arts, Georgia Tech
• Robert Marzec – Associate Professor of English, Purdue University
• Colin Milburn – Professor of English, Science and Technology Studies, UC Davis
• Marc Raboy – Professor of Ethics, Media, and Communications, McGill University
• Blakey Vermeule – Professor of English, Stanford University

Lecture

“Intangible Information Costs of Real and Digital Property: Ethical / Equitable Means of Ownership and Authorship in Architecture and Design”

Thursday, August 13, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Pickford Theater, Third floor, James Madison Memorial Building (view map)

Kluge Fellow in Digital Studies Wendy W. Fok investigates computational innovation and ethical/equitable application of technical methods, including issues of intellectual property law, ownership and authorship property rights in digital fabrication and commodisation, for architecture and the built environment. Her talk addresses the intersection of digital technology (especially in the realm of architecture), law, and the rapid advances in these fields that are creating areas of conflict.

SEPTEMBER

Lecture

“Images of the Earth in American Children’s Books”

Thursday, September 17, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Room LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

With German Fellow Sibylle Machat. Read more

Kluge Prize Ceremony

The Conferral of the 6th Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity

Tuesday, September 29, 2015, 7:00 p.m.
Thomas Jefferson Building
By invitation only. Live streaming will be available.
More information
Watch

OCTOBER

Lecture

“African Fiddle & Banjo Echo in Appalachia”

Thursday, October 1, 2015, 12:00 p.m.
Whittall Pavilion, Ground floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Alan Lomax Fellow Cece Conway delivers a multi-media presentation on the instrumental and musical history of Appalachian traditional music, with illustration from African and Appalachian musicians, instruments, videos, sounds and images.

Co-sponsored by the American Folklife Center

Lecture

“The Struggle for Fairness: National Origin Quotas and the Immigration Act of 1965”

Thursday, October 8, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Room LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

In October 1965, President Johnson signed into law the Immigration Amendments Act of 1965, ending U.S. immigration quotas based on race and nationality and establishing priorities that form the basis of our current laws on immigrant admissions. On the 50th anniversary of the Act, Kluge Staff Fellow and domestic policy specialist in the Congressional Research Service, Ruth Wasem, lectures on the history of the legislative drive to end race- and nationality-based immigration, from World War II to the passage of the Act, and the importance of the effort in defining the nation that America is today. With comment by Susan Martin, Donald G. Herzberg Professor of International Migration at Georgetown University and Marta Tienda, Maurice P. During Professor in Demographic Studies at Princeton University.

Lecture

“Imminence of Estrangement and Liability of Inner Emigration”

Thursday, October 15, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Room LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Distinguished visiting scholar Sreten Ugričić discusses the tensions between self-censorship and inner emigration, a form of political disassociation and dissidence, under totalitarian regimes.

Frederic R. and Molly S. Kellogg Biennial Lecture on Jurisprudence

“Justice, Neutrality and Law”

Thursday, October 29, 2015, 3:00 p.m.
Room LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Political philosopher and Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel will deliver the 2015 Frederic R. and Molly S. Kellogg Biennial Lecture on Jurisprudence. The lecture, titled "Justice, Neutrality and Law," will focus on such questions as whether the law should affirm certain moral judgments, or be neutral on moral and spiritual questions.

Co-sponsored by the Law Library of Congress

NOVEMBER

Lecture

“From Gospel to Law: The Lutheran Reformation and its Impact on Law, Politics, and Society”

Thursday, November 5, 2015, 3:00 p.m.
Room LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Legal scholar John Witte, Jr. discusses how the Protestant Reformation transformed not only theology and the church but also law and the state. Drawing on new biblical and classical learning, Protestant theologians and jurists brought sweeping changes to constitutional order, criminal law, family law, and the laws of education and social welfare. This lecture, offered in anticipation of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Reformation, explores the Reformation’s enduring impact, for better or worse, on Western life, law, and learning. Witte is Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North and Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law; McDonald Distinguished Professor; and Director, Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. Read more

Kluge Conversations

Unique, cross-disciplinary dialogues among scholars-in-residence at the Kluge Center

“Migration, Asylum and the Role of the State: Defining Boundaries, Redefining Borders”

Thursday, November 12, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Room LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Issues around immigration, migration, and asylum are pressing political, social and cultural concerns in the United States and Europe today. Three Fellows at the Kluge Center will discuss the role of the state in establishing geographic, technological and bureaucratic controls over the flow of peoples, cultures and beliefs across borders, and examine how the notions of national borders and state boundaries have evolved over the 20th and 21st century and how migrants and immigrants continue to challenge state-defined categories.

Featuring:

• Iván Chaar-López, researching databases, computers, and drones as instruments of border and migration control along the southern border (Digital Studies Fellow, University of Michigan)
• Katherine Luongo, researching witchcraft and spiritual beliefs among African asylum-seekers in Europe, Canada and Australia (Kluge Fellow, Northeastern University)
• Julia Young, researching early 20th century Mexican immigration to the U.S. (Kluge Fellow, Catholic University)

DECEMBER

Lecture

The Seventh Kissinger Lecture featuring the Rt Hon Tony Blair

Thursday, December 3, 2015, 6:30 p.m.
The Great Hall, Thomas Jefferson Building

The Right Honourable Tony Blair delivered the Seventh Kissinger Lecture at the Library of Congress hosted by The John W. Kluge Center. Mr. Blair spoke on the strategies to defeat Islamist extremism. The address was followed by a moderated discussion with the Honorable Martin Indyk.

Lecture

“A Bullet in the Chamber: The Politics of Catastrophe and the Declaration of World War I”

Thursday, December 10, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Room LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

As members of Congress gathered in April 1917 to decide whether to declare war on Germany, some legislators arrived with battle scars. For Civil War veterans, the memory of that catastrophic war would inform their understanding of a new conflict. Historian Mary Dudziak reveals what it would take to generate sufficient support to enter a faraway war: a politics of catastrophe. Dudziak is Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University. Read more

Co-sponsored by the National History Center of the American Historical Association

Conversation

“The Last Mission: The Legacy of a Lost World War II Bomber Crew”

Thursday, December 17, 2015, 4:00 p.m.
Room LJ-119, First floor, Thomas Jefferson Building (view map)

Journalist and author Gregg Jones reconstructs the lives and times of ten airmen aboard U.S. Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator 41-23711, Jerk's Natural, which disappeared over Austria on October 1, 1943. Jones traces the lives of the fallen servicemen, situates them within a larger story of air combat deaths in Europe in the summer and fall of 1943, and tells of his own personal journeys to the village in southern Austria where the men disappeared. Through his encounters in Austria and communities across America, Jones draws a portrait of the lingering impact of war and the ordeal of "ambiguous loss" and "unresolved grief" experienced by the loved ones of the missing crew. Jones has been a foreign correspondent and investigative journalist for more than 30 years. He is currently the Black Mountain Institute-Kluge Fellow for 2015-16, working on his fourth nonfiction book, about the multigenerational legacy of a lost World War II bomber crew. In conversation with Jason Steinhauer of the Kluge Center.

Co-sponsored by the Veterans History Project

Past Deadlines

April 17, 2015
Application deadline for the David B. Larson Fellowship in Health and Spirituality.

July 15, 2015
Application deadline for Kluge Fellowships.

October 15, 2015
Application deadline for Kislak Fellowships.

November 1, 2015
Application and nomination deadline for the Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations.

December 1, 2015
Application deadline for the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology.

December 6, 2015
Application deadline for the Kluge Fellowships in Digital Studies.

Back to top