New! Discover: Start here for books, articles & more
FSCL News & Events
Spring 2012 Events
Dorothy Wickenden: 
Nothing Daunted
Thursday, March 1, 2012, 4:30 p.m., Campus Center Carroll Room
Author and executive editor of The New Yorker, Dorothy Wickenden will discuss her book Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. The two “society girls” are 1909 Smith alums, Dorothy Woodruff (Wickenden’s grandmother) and Rosamond Underwood. Several years ago, Wickenden came across a collection of letters that Woodruff had written home to Auburn, New York, from the small community of Elkhead, Colorado, where the two Smith friends had gone to teach in 1916. The letters became fodder for an article in The New Yorker in 2009 and then became the backbone of Nothing Daunted. For more about their story, read the press release and the SC Alumnae Association interview with the author.
A book-signing will follow.
Co-sponsored by the Friends of the Libraries, the Smith College Archives, and the Sophia Smith Collection.
Robert Darnton: Books, Libraries, and the Digital Future
Monday, March 12, 2012, 4:30 P.M. Neilson Library Browsing Room
Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian at Harvard. Darnton was a pioneer in the study of the history of the book, and today writes and speaks about e-publishing. He is the driving force behind the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) project and was a founder of the Gutenberg-e program, sponsored by Mellon Foundation. From 1968 to 1997, Darnton served on the European History faculty at Princeton. He has written extensively on the literary world of Enlightenment France. Among his honors are a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award and election to the French Legion of Honor.
Sponsored by the President’s Office
Kathy Walkup: Your hands will always be covered with ink! Nuns, widows, mavericks & other passionate printers
Monday, March 26 at 4:00 P.M. Neilson Library Browsing Room
Kathy Walkup directs the Graduate Book Art Program at Mills College in California. Walkup’s teaching and writing focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century women printers and the history and practice of typography. This is the annual McGrath Lecture in Book Arts. A reception will follow.
Sponsored by the Mortimer Rare Book Room
Michael Suarez: The Future for Books in the Digital Age
Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 4:30 p.m., Neilson Library Browsing Room
Michael F. Suarez is Director of the Rare Book School, Professor of English, University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special Collections, all at the University of Virginia. A leading scholar of the history of the book, Suarez’s most recent publication is The Oxford Companion to the Book (2010), a million-word reference work on the history of books and manuscripts from the invention of writing to the present day. The Sunday Telegraph in London called it “colossal” and “a paradise for book lovers;” while The Wall Street Journal praised it as “a fount of knowledge where the Internet is but a slot machine.” A Jesuit priest, Michael is currently co-General Editor of The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO), perhaps the largest digital humanities projects extant today.
Sponsored by the Friends of the Libraries
For current exhibitions and other news, see the libraries News and Events page.
Fall 2011 Event
Redwood & Wildfire: A Performance Reading by Andrea Hairston with Pan Morigan
Thursday,October 13, 2011, 7:30 p.m. Neilson Browsing Room
"Redwood & Wildfire" tells the story of an African American woman and a Seminole Irish man who journey from Georgia to the bright lights of Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. Gifted blues musicians and performers, they find opportunities in minstrelsy,vaudeville and the early film world that flourished in Chicago at that time. Along the way, Hairston shows how itinerant theater, featuring immigrants and ethnic minorities, left an indelible imprint on American culture. Her reading will be accompanied by Pan Morrigan performing original bluegrass compositions.
Andrea Hairston is Louise Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor of Theatre and Afro-American Studies at Smith College. She is the Artistic Director of Chrysalis Theatre and a science fiction and fantasy playwright and novelist. Ms. Hairston received the 2011 Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts. Her first novel, "Mindscape", won the Carl BrandonParallax Award and was shortlisted for the Phillip K. Dick Award and the Tiptree Award. She has also received numerous playwriting and directing awards. Pan Morigan is a vocalist, songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer.
Read more and view a video of Hairston discussing her book on the Aqueduct Press website.
Links to: