Friday, April 4, 2025
HQ 131 (320 York Street)
Join us for a symposium on the 50th anniversary of John Ashbery’s volume, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975). Free and open to the public.
Schedule:
Mohammed Sadegh Ansari will present his new book The Science of Music: Knowledge Production in Medieval Baghdad and Beyond (2025). Introduction by Kevin van Bladel. Response by Giulia Accornero.
A conversation with a co-curator of Beinecke’s current exhibition: Roberta L. Dougherty, Yale Library’s librarian for Middle East studies.
Zoom webinar registration link: https://bit.ly/42J0SjC
Jennifer Rycenga recovers a pioneering example of antiracism and Black-white cooperation. Founded in 1833 by white teacher Prudence Crandall, Canterbury Academy educated more than two dozen Black women during its eighteen-month existence. Racism in eastern Connecticut forced the teen students to walk a gauntlet of taunts, threats, and legal action to pursue their studies, but the school of higher learning flourished until a vigilante attack destroyed the Academy.
Zoom webinar registration link: https://bit.ly/42Nm6N5
A conversation with the co-curators of Beinecke’s latest exhibition: Roberta L. Dougherty, Yale Library’s librarian for Middle East studies, Özgen Felek, a lector of Ottoman in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Agnieszka Rec, curator at the Beinecke Library.
Zoom webinar registration link: https://bit.ly/3Q7CPTS
A special community day at the New haven Museum, 115 Whitney Avenue, will be held Saturday, February 15, 2025, offering tours and conversation around the New Haven Museum’s exhibition, “Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery,” prior to its closing on Saturday, March 1, 2025. Presented by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Library, the exhibition highlights the essential role of enslaved and free Black people in New Haven and at Yale.
All are welcome to attend the opening reception for the new exhibition, Taught by the Pen: The World of Islamic Manuscripts. The reception is on Wednesday evening, February 26, from 5pm to 7pm. The exhibition is on view at Beinecke Library beginning on Monday, February 24, through August 10.
About the exhibition:
TThe Social Network (David Fincher, 2010, 35mm, 120 mins)
Basic Computer Terms (Sheldon Renan, 1976, DCP, 15 mins)
In the new book “Becoming Belle da Costa Greene: A Visionary Librarian through Her Letters” (Florence: I Tatti - The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies , 2024), Deborah Parker chronicles the making and empowerment of a female connoisseur, curator, and library director in a world where such positions were held by men. Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) was Pierpont Morgan’s personal librarian (1908–1913) and the first Director of the Morgan Library (1924–1948). She was also the daughter of two mixed-race parents and passed for white.
A discussion with the curatorial and design team for the exhibition, “Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery,” on view through March 1 at the New Haven Museum. The exhibition opened nearly one year ago on February 16, 2024. It presents evidence of the essential role of enslaved and free Black people in New Haven and at Yale. It celebrates Black resistance and community building. And it illuminates knowledge kept alive in archives and memory for more than three centuries—even when the dominant culture chose to ignore, bury, or forget.
