We hope you enjoy this month’s Humanities Broadsheet — a compilation of events organized by or featuring members of the Washington University community, as well as our colleagues in the greater humanities community in the St. Louis area.
Click through each event to see the organizer’s complete listing. As you’ll see below, there’s always something going on!
The Humanities Broadcast section spotlights virtual public events featuring WashU faculty and scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, organized by internal and external hosts. If you are a faculty member with an upcoming public lecture, please let us know and we will include it here! Email us at cenhumcal@wustl.edu and please include the URL for the event page at your host institution.
25 MARCH | 3 PM The History and Politics of Birth Control
SEANNA LEATH, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University, will discuss the history and politics of birth control, with a particular focus on Black women and reproductive justice. Reproductive justice (RJ) refers to: (1) the right not to have a child; (2) the right to have a child; and (3) the right to raise and nurture children in safe and healthy environments. She will urge audience members to consider how we can move towards a future where self-determination, healing justice and community care inform our conversations, social practices and governmental policies around Black women’s reproductive rights. Leath is a Black feminist scholar and community-based researcher whose expertise includes intersectional identity development, Black family socialization processes, and wellness practices among Black women and girls. She directs the Fostering Healthy Identities and Resilience (FHIRe) Collaborative, a research group of Black and Latina students and community partners in Charlottesville and St. Louis, and is a member of the Reproductive Justice Working Group, based at the Washington University Center for the Humanities. In-person and livestream viewing options available. St. Louis Public Library.
St. Louis Public Library – Central Library, 1301 Olive St., St. Louis, 63103
Rebecca Wanzo, Chair & Professor of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, African & African-American Studies, American Culture Studies, Washington University
Kimala Price, Chair & Professor of Women’s Studies & Co-Director of the Bread & Roses Center for Feminist Research & Activism, San Diego State University
Mellissa Linton, Assistant Professor, Women & Gender Studies (reproductive justice, comparative race and ethnic studies & materialist feminism), Arizona State University, and
Marlon Bailey, Associate Chair & Professor, African & African American Studies, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Performing Arts & the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity, Washington University (moderator).
This is a virtual-only event, please join us via Virtual Roundtable Zoom Link. Department of African and African-American Studies.
ZOOM
1 MARCH | 4 PM Recipe as a Bodily Text
SUYOUNG SON is an associate professor in Asian studies at Cornell University. How were women’s cooking recipes read and transmitted in Chosŏn Korea? Son’s talk focuses on two 16th-century cookbooks of the elite women and examines how the collection of women’s recipes served as a precious family monument and analog for women’s feminine virtue. While the material shape of the collections reveals the primacy of Confucian patriarchal impulse to shape women’s writing as legitimate patrimony, it does not diminish the significance of the corporeality of female work — that is, women’s cooking and penmanship as practice of physical handiwork, bodily discipline, and embodied skill and knowledge. Instead of being encapsulated as the undervalued female knowledge within physical bounds, the cookbooks in fact embraced a broader sense of text than the lettered signification and proliferated their meanings via the interplay of verbal and physical textualities. Department of East Asian Literatures and Cultures.
VIRTUAL – RSVP
2 MARCH | 4 PM Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Origins of Sexual Technologies
BO RUBERG (they/them) is an associate professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and affiliate faculty in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. They are also the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Technologies designed for sex and intimacy are on the rise, from wifi-enabled sex toys to sex robots. Along with this boom in “sex tech” devices has come a set of cultural narratives about the history of sex tech itself. These histories repeatedly situate the origins of today’s sexual technologies in the story of the very first sex dolls: the dames de voyage, supposedly rudimentary dolls stitched together by sailors on long, lonely sea voyages. Quirky and anecdotal as it may seem, the tale of the dames de voyage does serious cultural work for proponents of contemporary sex tech, who use the story to make sexual technologies seem like the long-established realm of inventive, lusty, heterosexual white men. But did these sailors’ dolls really exist? Program in Film and Media Studies.
Washington University, Seigle Hall, Room L004
2 MARCH | 5 PM Public Lecture: Sarita Sundar
SARITA SUNDAR is the founder of Hanno, a heritage interpretation and design consultancy. Her practice and research spans heritage studies, popular and visual culture, and design theory. As part of a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship (August 2022 to May 2023), Sundar co-taught a course called “Visualizing India” in the history department of the University of Vermont. Her project as part of the fellowship examines the intersectional design histories between the U.S. and India. Sundar is visiting faculty at the National Institute of Design, National Institute of Fashion Technology, Srishti Manipal School of Design and Technology, and Indian Institute of Craft Development. Sam Fox School.
Washington University, Steinberg Hall, Auditorium
2 MARCH | 5:30 PM Middle East / North Africa Film Series - The Unorthodox The Unorthodox is a 2018 film directed by Eliran Malka. The year is 1983 and Yaakov Cohen, the owner of a Jerusalem printing press, is tired from being pushed around. It seems that he was born on the wrong side, with the wrong family name, and in a moment’s decision he decides to establish a Sephardic-ultra-Orthodox list that will run the Jerusalem municipality. He gathers two friends, and together they improvise a campaign — no means, no connections, no money, but with much rage, passion and a sense of justice. The viewing will be facilitated by Ayala Hendin, postdoctoral research associate, and Younasse Tarbouni, teaching professor, both in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies. Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies.
Washington University, McDonnell Hall, Room 162
2 MARCH | 6 PM Mapping Xinjiang: A Mongol-Banner Cartographer and the Qing Geographic Knowledge of Central Eurasia in the Late Eighteenth Century
LING-WEI KUNG is an assistant research fellow at the Institute of History and Philology in Academia Sinica. The Institute of History and Philology collects a huge map of Xinjiang made by a Qing Mongolian banner officer called Suningga in 1773. As the only existing copy in the world, this colorful manuscript map has plentiful cultural and heritage value. Additionally, it also contains significant historical meaning in providing abundant pictorial and literary information on Xinjiang under the rule of the Qing dynasty in the late 18th century. The map meticulously illustrates the natural and human landscape of South Xinjiang, especially the infrastructure and social situation of Altishahr after the Qing conquest of the Zunghars. These records provide critical clues to understand the diversity of cartography, geography and worldview in the Qing empire. Based on historical and philological studies on the Qing map, Ling-Wei Kung has reconstructed the Qing traffic route of South Xinjiang by mapping it in a geographic information system (GIS). Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
VIRTUAL – RSVP
3–5 MARCH The Oresteia
The House of Atreus is burdened by an old curse and trapped in a cycle of retributive violence. How can justice be achieved without piling new crimes on top of old ones? Ellen McLaughlin’s
gripping adaptation of the trilogy by Aeschylus explores the intimacy of violence and the centrality of actions by women in this ancient Greek story about the foundations of the law. The performance is translated by Ellen McLaughlin and directed by Pannill Camp. Tickets required; performances take place at 8 pm on March 3 and 4, and at 2 pm on March 5. Performing Arts Department.
Washington University, Edison Theatre
3 MARCH | 4 PM Looking at the Creative Process Through the Lens of Scenic Design
ROBERT MARK MORGAN, teaching professor of drama, Washington University. Based on his 30 years of experience in stage design, exhibit design, art direction for film, and theme park and industrial design, Robert Mark Morgan’s talk will highlight the lessons in creativity included in the text of his new book, The Art of Scenic Design: A Practical Guide to the Creative Process. The talk will demonstrate that while a design process for creating these types of works can seem like niche applications, the lessons learned in collaboration, testing and re-testing ideas, prototyping concepts, overcoming fears, venturing guesses, divergent thinking and the creative process in general are applicable – and valuable – in nearly all disciplines and professions both inside and outside of the entertainment industry.
Washington University, McMillan Hall, Room G052
3 MARCH | 7 PM Welcome Reception and Installation: Nuh-Mi-Bee-Uhn
Miriam Gleckman-Krut and Kavena Hambira are currently in residence with the Memory for the Future (M4F) Studiolab, a yearlong graduate seminar and practicum supported by the Center for Humanities’ RDE Initiative. Gleckman-Krut and Hambira are collaborating on written and cinematographic work to think across Germany’s 20th-century genocides, including the genocide of Herero and Nama in Namibia in 1905 and the Holocaust. During their residency, they will work with M4F students and faculty and the St. Louis public to explore artistic and scholarly representations of the struggle for reparations and reconciliation and other forms of reparative memory. The event will take place in the studiolab classroom at the Lewis Collaborative, steps north of the University City Public Library in the Delmar Loop. Shuttle from WashU campus and free parking available; see website.
Washington University, Lewis Collaborative, 725 Kingsland Blvd., University City, 63130
6 MARCH | 5 PM The Objects that Remain: Criminal Evidence, Holocaust Artifacts, and Work of Doing Justice
LAURA LEVITT is a professor of religion, Jewish studies and gender at Temple University. Building from her book, The Objects That Remain, Levitt will consider the ways in which the material remains of violent crimes inform our experience of, and thinking about, trauma and loss. She will do this by focusing on artifacts in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and evidence in police storage facilities across the United States. What might it mean to do justice to violent pasts outside the juridical system or through historical empiricism, the dominant ways in which we think about evidence from violent crimes and other highly traumatic events? What do the objects that remain and the stories that surround them enable, and what forms of intimacy are possible in our lives after? Levitt offers a form of companionship as a different kind of reckoning where justice becomes an animating process of telling and holding. While addressing the afterlives of trauma, she will also consider the relationship between traumatic once ordinary objects and those we continue to live with. What possessions do we let go of and which ones do we keep? RSVP required; see website. Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies and the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.
Washington University, Umrath Hall, Lounge
9 MARCH | 7 PM Meet the Makers, An Insider’s Look at OTSL’s New Works Collective
Last winter, more than 130 artists applied to create new operas with Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Ultimately, just three multi-genre teams were selected by a panel of St. Louis artists, advocates and community leaders. Meet the artists who are pushing the boundaries of opera, hear musical excerpts from their works and learn more from acclaimed scholars at Washington University about the context surrounding each story. Co-sponsored by Opera Theatre and Washington University’s CRE2 and Department of Music.
Washington University, 560 Music Center, Pillsbury Theatre
10 MARCH | VARIOUS TIMES African Modernism in America African Modernism in America is the first major traveling exhibition to examine the complex connections between modern African artists and patrons, artists and cultural organizations in the United States, amid the interlocking histories of civil rights, decolonization and the Cold War. Opening, March 10, 6:30 pm; tour, March 11, 2 pm; Chinese-language tour, March 19, 2 pm; tour, March 25, 2 pm. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
Washington University, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
10 MARCH | 5:30 PM Panel Discussion: Collecting and Exhibiting Modern African Art
As part of the opening festivities for African Modernism in America, exhibition co-curators Perrin Lathrop, assistant curator of African art at the Princeton University Art Museum, and Jamaal Sheats, gallery director and curator, and professor of art at Fisk University, are joined by Bukky Gbadegesin, associate professor of art history at Saint Louis University, for a discussion exploring histories of collecting and displaying modern African art in the United States, including the 1961 landmark exhibition Art from Africa of Our Time organized by the Harmon Foundation and the role of Fisk University in exhibiting African artists of the mid-20th century.
Washington University, Steinberg Auditorium
15 MARCH | 3 PM Virtual Book Club: The Book of Madness and Cures
In the world of 16th-century Venice, medicine is predominantly the profession of men. Yet Gabriella Mondini, herself the daughter of a renowned physician, manages to make her way into the ranks of practitioners — until her father disappears in the midst of researching his encyclopedia on disease. Her position in jeopardy and guided by the letters he left behind, Gabriella sets out to find her father, keeping her own medical notes on diseases and treatment as she follows the trail through Europe. A presentation of materials related to medicine in early modern Europe will precede the discussion. University Libraries.
VIRTUAL – RSVP
18 MARCH | 2 PM Public Tour: Power of Place
Student educators lead interactive tours of the permanent collection designed to prompt discussion and reflection on the power of place in relationship to works by such artists as Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Torkwase Dyson and Martín Chambi, as well as early travel photography. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
Washington University, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
23 MARCH | 2 PM Black Feminist Activism & Politics in Brazil: A Conversation & Documentary Screening
Join Kia Caldwell, Black Latin American feminist scholar, professor of African & African American studies, and vice provost for faculty affairs & diversity at Washington University, alongside Black feminists and activists Velma Reis and Monica Cunha as they discuss the current and future political state of Brazil, specifically centralizing the conversation around black feminism and how it fits into the political, health equity, public defense, and congressional Brazilian landscape. Department of African and African-American Studies.
Washington University, Wrighton Hall, Room 300
23 MARCH | 4 PM The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire
JOSEPH SASSOON is a professor of history and political economy at Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. A spectacular story, the making of a dynasty, one of the great untold sagas of a gilded Jewish Bagdadi family — the merchant princes of the orient, that built a vast empire through finance and trade: opium, cotton, oil, shipping, banking, that reached across three continents, and ultimately changed the destinies of nations. Inaugural Stern Family Lecture. Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies.
Washington University, Busch Hall, Room 100
23 MARCH | 7 PM The First World Festival of Negro Arts Screening & Discussion
Join us to open the Washington University African Film Festival with a screening of The First World Festival of Negro Arts, the official documentary of the Festival Mondial des Arts Negrès (FESMAN) held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966. Over 2,000 artists, dancers, intellectuals, performers and writers from Africa and the African diaspora gathered to celebrate Black culture in the newly independent nation of Senegal. Director, producer, actor and writer William Greaves documented this historic event that included exhibitions of classical, modern and contemporary African art, performances and theatrical productions, along with a colloquium of philosophers, authors and cultural critics. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with faculty from the Department of African and African-American Studies. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.
Washington University, Steinberg Auditorium
23 MARCH | 8 PM Visiting Writer: Eula Biss
EULA BISS’ most recent book, Having and Being Had, is described as a roguish and risky self-audit of the value system she has bought into. Biss is the author of four books: Having and Being Had, On Immunity, Notes from No Man’s Land and The Balloonists. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages and has been recognized by a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library. As a 2023 National Fellow at New America, she is at work on a collection of essays about how private property has shaped our world. For the past 20 years, Biss has taught writing in large lecture halls, small community bookstores, public elementary schools and private universities. She is a founding editor of Essay Press and a member of the Penny Collective. Department of English.
Washington University, Duncker Hall, Room 201 (Hurst Lounge)
24–26 MARCH African Film Festival
Each year, the Department in African & African American Studies, Film & Media Studies and the African Students Association partner to present the African Film Festival to the Washington University and larger Saint Louis communities. The festival showcases films, less than two years old, that have fared well at international festivals.
Fri., March 24, 7 pm: Precious Hair & Beauty (English and Yoruba with English; John Ogunmuyiwa, United Kingdom, 2021, 11 min.) and Saint Omer (French with English subtitles; Alice Diop, Senegal/France, 2022, 122 min.)
Sat., March 25, 7 pm: La Star (Lingala and French with English subtitles; Kevin Mavakala, Senegal, 2022, 14 min.) and Tug of War/Vuta N’Kuvute (English and Swahili with English subtitles; Amil Shivji, Tanzania and South Africa, 2021, 92 min.)
Sun., March 26, 7 pm: Egúngún/Masquerade (Yoruba and English with English subtitles; Olive Nwosu, Nigeria, 2021, 14 min.) and Xalé (Wolof and French with English subtitles; Moussa Sene Absa, Senegal, 2022, 101 min.)
Washington University, Brown Hall, Room 100
25 MARCH | 8 PM 2023 MFA Student Dance Concert: No Boundaries
This year’s concert, No Boundaries, celebrates the sixth year of the MFA in Dance final project with choreography by Kendra Key and Erin Morris and artistic direction by Christine Knoblauch- O’Neal. The program brings to our audience an outpouring of choreographic inspirations. Each creation offers a particular perspective on contemporary topics and abstract concepts, both historic and current. These original works look at collaborative articulations that move beyond existing expectations of what dance should be. One is the innovative and collaborative process that comes from sourcing material when the rules are developed as the dance is designed. The other is an exploration of the creative and performative spectrum of social and avant-garde jazz dance. Performing Arts Department.
Washington University, Edison Theatre
27 MARCH | 4 PM Working at the Intersection of Art, Activism, and Anti-Carcerality: Sarah Shourd and Shubra Ohri in Conversation
The Washington University Prison Education Project is delighted to present the 2023 Maggie Garb Memorial Lecture, featuring playwright and journalist Sarah Shourd in conversation with Shubra Ohri, an attorney with the Missouri office of the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center. Join us for a discussion of the state of anti-carceral efforts locally and nationally and the role of journalism, art, and public activism in resisting mass incarceration. Registration is required for this event. Washington University Prison Education Project.
Washington University, Duncker Hall, Room 201 (Hurst Lounge)
27 MARCH | 7 PM The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler
Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Kertzer will discuss his new book, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler, and his research based on newly opened Vatican archives with Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics. There will also be time for audience Q&A. When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, his papers were sealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, leaving unanswered questions about what he knew and did during World War II. Those questions have only grown and festered, making Pius XII one of the most controversial popes in Church history, especially now as the Vatican prepares to canonize him. In 2020, Pius XII’s archives were finally opened, and David Kertzer — widely recognized as one of the world’s leading Vatican scholars — has been mining this new material ever since, revealing how the pope came to set aside moral leadership in order to preserve his church’s power. Based on thousands of never-before-seen documents not only from the Vatican, but from archives in Italy, Germany, France, Britain and the United States, The Pope at War paints a new, dramatic portrait of what the pope did and did not do as war enveloped the continent and as the Nazis began their systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The book clears away the myths and sheer falsehoods surrounding the pope’s actions from 1939 to 1945, showing why the pope repeatedly bent to the wills of Hitler and Mussolini. John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.
Washington University, Graham Chapel
28 MARCH | 8 PM Craft Talk: Renee Gladman, Visiting Hurst Professor
RENEE GLADMAN is a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds and geographies as they play out at the intersections of poetry, prose, drawing and architecture. Gladman is the author of 14 published works, including a cycle of novels about the city-state Ravicka and its inhabitants, the Ravickians, as well as three collections of drawings, Prose Architectures; One Long Black Sentence, a series of white-ink drawings on black paper, indexed by Fred Moten; and Plans for Sentences, an image/text-based meditation on black futurity and other choreographies of gathering. She has been awarded fellowships, artist grants and residencies from the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Lannan Foundation and KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), among others, and is the recipient of a 2021 Windham-Campbell prize in fiction. Gladman will give a reading on Thurs., March 30, 8 pm, also in Hurst Lounge.
DUNCKER HALL RM. 201 | HURST LOUNGEDepartment of English.
Washington University, Duncker Hall, Room 201 (Hurst Lounge)
29 MARCH | 3 PM Continuing Presence of Discarded Bodies: Occupational Harm and Necro-Activism
EUNJUNG KIM, associate professor of women’s and gender studies and disability studies, Syracuse University. Starting from the two activist campsites set up in Seoul, one by the coalition of disability organizations and the other by the Supporters for the Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor Industry, Eunjung Kim explores a history of occupational health movements and their intersections with disability rights movements in South Korea. Against the bureaucratic technology of rating the degree of disability and harm, necro-activism emerges in the form of persistent involvements of dead bodies, mourning, and other-than-human presence, making claims for justice as an ongoing practice of everyday life and afterlife.
ZOOM
29 MARCH | 4 PM 50 Years of Title IX with Vanessa Grigoriadis
Visit University Libraries’ 50 Years of Title IX exhibition and hear from speaker Vanessa Grigoriadis on Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus. Refreshments will be served. University Libraries.
Washington University, Olin Library, Room 142
30 MARCH | 4 PM Inglorious, Illegal Bastards: Japan’s Self-Defense Force During the Cold War
In Inglorious, Illegal Bastards, Aaron Skabelund, an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University, examines how the Self-Defense Force (SDF) — the post–World War II Japanese military — and specifically the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), struggled for legitimacy in a society at best indifferent to them and often hostile to their very existence. From the early iterations of the GSDF as the Police Reserve Force and the National Safety Force, through its establishment as the largest and most visible branch of the armed forces, the GSDF deployed an array of public outreach and public service initiatives, including off-base and on-base events, civil engineering projects and natural disaster relief operations. Internally, the GSDF focused on indoctrination of its personnel to fashion a reconfigured patriotism and esprit de corps. These efforts to gain legitimacy achieved some success and influenced the public over time, but they did not just change society. They also transformed the force itself as it assumed new priorities and traditions and contributed to the making of a Cold War defense identity, which came to be shared by wider society in Japan. As Inglorious, Illegal Bastards demonstrates, this identity endures today, several decades after the end of the Cold War. Annual Stanley Spector Memorial Lecture. Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
Washington University, Busch Hall, Room 100
30 MARCH | 4 PM Left in the Midwest Author Talk
Join University Libraries for a virtual book talk about the newly published book Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Hear from contributing authors Clarence Lang, Luke Ritter and Nina Gilden Seavey. Benjamin Looker, one of the volume’s co-editors, will help moderate the discussion. University Libraries.
VIRTUAL - RSVP
30 MARCH | 5 PM Americanist Dinner Forum: Public Humanities Workshop, Part I: A Conversation with Malinda Maynor Lowery
All are invited for dinner and conversation with Malinda Maynor Lowery, the Cahoon Professor of American History and head of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Emory University. Lowery is well known for her scholarship on the history of the Lumbee tribe; her career has also taken her in new directions, including film production, curatorial work, public writing and more. Join us for a conversation with Lowery as we discuss the challenges and pleasures of leveraging one’s expertise in new formats. Moderated by Paige McGinley, director of American Culture Studies, Washington University. Program in American Culture Studies.
Washington University, Danforth University Center, Orchid Room
30 MARCH | 6 PM Noodle Screening & Discussion
With a discussion facilitated by Noa Weinberg and Eyal Tamir, lecturers of Hebrew in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies, this presentation features Noodle, a 2007 film directed by Ayelet Menahemi. At 37, Miri is a twice-widowed, El Al flight attendant. Her well-regulated existence is suddenly turned upside down by an abandoned Chinese boy whose migrant-worker mother has been summarily deported from Israel. The film is a touching comic-drama in which two human beings — as different from each other as Tel Aviv is from Beijing — accompany each other on a remarkable journey, one that takes them both back to a meaningful life. Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies.
Washington University, Crow Hall, Room 204
31 MARCH | 12 PM Public Humanities Workshop, Part 2: A Forum for Practitioners with Malinda Maynor Lowery
This hands-on workshop is designed for individuals or small teams currently engaged in public-facing work in the humanities. A Washington University affiliation is not required. Curators, filmmakers, podcasters, writers, programmers and more are all welcome. Projects can be at any stage of development. Participants will briefly share the discoveries and challenges of their work, and receive feedback from Distinguished Visiting Scholar Malinda Maynor Lowery, the Cahoon Professor of American History and head of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Emory University. Moderated by Laura Perry, assistant director for research and public engagement, Center for the Humanities. Lunch will be served. RSVP required, space is limited. Program in American Culture Studies.
Washington University, Whitaker Hall, Room 218
31 MARCH | 3 PM Near-Songs, Audio Spaces, and the Exploded Lyric
CHRISTOPHER DOUTHITT is a lecturer in electronic music at Washington University. Douthitt will discuss his recent compositions and scholarly projects, which explore the connections between audio manipulations, songlike expression and the spatial perception of sound. Department of Music.
Washington University, Music Classroom Building, Room 102
31 MARCH | 4 PM On the Aesthetics of Black Inexpression
TINA POST is an assistant professor at the Department of English at the University of Chicago. In her book Deadpan, Post argues that inexpression is a gesture that acquires distinctive meanings in concert with blackness and that the performance of purposeful withholding is a critical tool in the work of black culture makers. This talk, drawn from the book’s introduction, Post introduces some of the ways that deadpan aesthetics function in and between opacity and fugitivity, minimalism and saturation, excess and insensibility. Post’s work is preoccupied with racial performativity, especially (though not exclusively) the ways that black Americans perform racial identity. What modes of embodiment assert belonging or dis-belonging and how? When do racialized subjects confirm and when do they subvert the expectations of their identitarian positions and to what end? How do other factors of embodiment (gender, dis/ability, hybridity and so forth) color these performances? Post approaches such questions primarily through the lenses of affect and performance studies, using literature, visual culture, fine art, theater and movement as examples and objects of study. Performing Arts Department.
Washington University, Whitaker Hall, Room 218
St. Louis Community Events
1 MARCH | 6 PM Lucy Ferriss, Misconceiver (Author Talk)
This fresh release of an epochal novel from the late 1990s unlocks the dystopic world of the United States circa 2026, when Roe v. Wade has been overturned and abortion finally banned in all 50 states. Following in the steps of her dead sister and mother, narrator Phoebe Masters works in the computer industry by day and at night performs illegal “misconceptions” in her basement, restoring to desperate women some measure of control over their own bodies. Outside, technology has progressed, but social change has moved backward. Married women tend to stay home. Amniocentesis is illegal. The worst punishment for rape is a paternity suit. Homosexuality is back in the closet. Yet despite her profession and the connection she sees between her job stamping out malware and her illicit vocation terminating pregnancies, Phoebe holds few political beliefs until a love affair forces her to choose between closing herself off and revealing her secret. Left Bank Books.
Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid Ave., Saint Louis, 63108
2–30 MARCH | VARIOUS
Black Cowboys: An American Frontier Story
Using library resources, explore the lives of enslaved and free black men, women and children who labored and settled the American Wild West. St. Louis County Library. Thurs., March 2, 2 pm: Oak Bend Branch, Meeting Room, 842 S. Holmes Ave., St. Louis, 63122 Thurs., March 9, 7 pm: Eureka Hills Branch, Meeting Room, 500 Workman Rd., St. Louis, 63025 Thurs., March 30, 6:30 pm: Jamestown Bluffs Branch, Meeting Room 1, 4153 N. Highway 67, Florissant, 63034
2 MARCH | 5:30 PM The Business of Fashion
From the late 19th century through the end of World War II, St. Louis was outmatched only by New York City in garment manufacturing. Much of the industry was located on Washington Avenue — the street that boasted more shoe manufacturers than any other street in the world and was the birthplace of junior wear. St. Louis’ shoe and garment industry began a long decline in the 1950s, but the last several years have seen a reversal of that trend. Join Missouri History Museum curator Adam MacPhàrlain for a presentation about St. Louis’ fashion history, followed by a roundtable conversation with some of the fashion professionals who are working to put St. Louis back on the fashion map. Panelists include Paulette Black (editor of Coverings Magazine), Felia Davenport (associate professor and owner, of Kaleesi Rose Kollection), Audra Harrold (executive director at STL Fashion Alliance), Mary Ruppert-Stroescu (designer and associate professor at Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts), and Susan Sherman (co-founder, St. Louis Fashion Fund). Missouri Historical Society.
Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 63112
2 MARCH | 6:30 PM Jennifer Maritza Macauley, When Trying to Return Home: Stories; Janelle Williams, Gone Like Yesterday; David Haynes, Right by My Side (Author Talks)
The stories in Maritza Macauley’s When Trying to Return Home dig deeply into the question of belonging: a young woman torn between love for her mother and the need to break free from her damaging influence; a man, his wife and his mistress confront the borders separating love and hate, obligation and longing; and a college student grapples with the space between chivalry and machismo in a tense encounter with a nun. Janelle Williams’ Gone Like Yesterday employs magical realism to explore the majestic and haunting experience of being a Black woman in today’s America. The story follows two Black women — Zahra, a listless college prep coach, and Sammie, a teenage girl and budding activist soon off to college — who are drawn to each other through the songs of gypsy moths. With wit and realism, David Haynes presents a different kind of Holden Caulfield in 15-year-old Marshall Field Finney, an ordinary, sullen teenager who discovers storytelling as a way to ease his adolescent anger and family tensions. Left Bank Books.
Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid Ave., St. Louis, 63108
3 MARCH | 7 PM C.J. Box, Storm Watch: A Joe Pickett Novel (Author Talk)
C.J. BOX returns with a new thriller in his series starring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. When a prominent professor goes missing, authorities are stumped. That is, until Joe finds his frozen body while hunting down a wounded elk. When he attempts to learn more, his investigation is obstructed by federal agents and an extremist organization. Meanwhile, Joe’s best friend Nate Romanowski is lured in by a shadowy group of local militants. As an epic spring storm descends upon them, Joe and Nate confront it in different ways and maybe, for the first time, on opposite sides. St. Louis County Library.
St. Louis County Library — Daniel Boone Branch, 300 Clarkson Rd., Ellisville, 63011
4 MARCH | VARIOUS TIMES See STL Walking Tours
See STL’s fun and creative tours mix engaging storytelling and a deep well of historical knowledge with an infectious enthusiasm for the exciting changes the city is currently undergoing. Tours are 2 hours in length and are wheelchair accessible. $15–$20. Tour starting/ending points are included in your booking details. Missouri Historical Society.
March 4: Downtown Origins; March 4: Gay Liberation in the Gateway City; March 5: Central West End; March 5: Soulard North and LaSalle Park; March 9: Forest Park; March 11: Soulard South; March 11: More than an Arch; March 11: Tower Grove; March 12: Downtown Origins; March 18: Downtown Origins; March 18: Musical St. Louis; March 18: Downtown Origins; March 18: Dutchtown; March 19: Soulard North and LaSalle Park; March 21: Soulard North and LaSalle Park; March 25: Cherokee Street; March 25: Art Under the Arch; March 26: Benton Park
4 MARCH | 1 PM St. Louis in Service Exhibit Tours
Explore St. Louis’ military history from the American Revolution through the present day. Your group’s guide will introduce you to artifacts, places and stories of individuals featured in the galleries at Soldiers Memorial. Groups have the option to add on a 15-minute tour of the outdoor memorials honoring St. Louisans who made the ultimate sacrifice. Missouri Historical Society.
Soldiers Memorial, Court of Honor, 1315 Chestnut St., St. Louis, 63103
4 MARCH | 2 PM Vietnam: At War and At Home Exhibit Tours
Your guide will walk you through the exhibit, exploring the Vietnam War’s origins, evolution and legacy. The exhibit will present a diverse and holistic snapshot of the turbulent times in Vietnam, America and the St. Louis region. Groups have the option to add on a 15-minute tour of the outdoor memorials honoring St. Louisans who made the ultimate sacrifice, including those who served in Vietnam. Missouri Historical Society.
Soldiers Memorial, Court of Honor, 1315 Chestnut St., St. Louis, 63103
4 MARCH | 3 PM Exploring West African Dance
Presented by Pinx Academy of Dance. Enjoy movement and exercise while learning about the history and culture of African Dance. In celebration of Black History Month.
St. Louis County Library — Grand Glaize Branch, Meeting Room 1, 1010 Meramec Station Rd., Manchester, 63021
6 MARCH | 7 PM St. Louis Women’s Literary History
Presented by Regina Barbeau of the Missouri History Museum. Explore St. Louis’ incredibly rich history of women writers, playwrights, poets and even a muse or two. In celebration of Women's History Month.
St. Louis County Library – Prairie Commons Branch, 915 Utz Ln., Hazelwood, 63042
7–22 MARCH | VARIOUS
Negro League Baseball in St. Louis
Celebrate the start of baseball season with a look at the rich history of negro league baseball in St. Louis. Equal parts tragedy and triumph, you'll use library resources to learn about Cool Papa Bell, the St. Louis Stars, and the missing history of our national pastime. St. Louis County Library. Tues., March 7, 2 pm: Grant’s View Branch, Meeting Room 2, 9700 Musick Rd., St. Louis, 63123 Thurs., March 9, 6 pm: Thornhill Branch, Meeting Room 1, 12863 Willowyck Dr., St. Louis, 63146 Wed., March 22, 4 pm: Bridgeton Trails Branch, Meeting Room, 3455 McKelvey Rd., Bridgeton, 63044
7 MARCH | 7 PM Rafael Frumkin, Confidence (Author Talk)
Southern Illinois University professor and author Rafael Frumkin will discuss this queer take on a thrilling caper about scams, schemes and the absurdity of the American Dream. Best friends (and occasional lovers) Ezra and Orson are teetering on top of the world after founding a company that promises instant enlightenment. At 17, Ezra is on his way to Last Chance Camp, the final stop before juvie. But his summer at Last Chance turns life-changing when he meets Orson, brilliant and Adonis-like, with a mind for hustling. Together, the two embark upon what promises to be a fruitful career of scam artistry. But when they try to pull off their biggest scam yet — Nulife, a corporation that promises its consumers a lifetime of bliss — things start to spin wildly out of control. Left Bank Books.
Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid Ave., Saint Louis, 63108
7 & 25 MARCH | VARIOUS
Skin Stories: Tattoos in the United States
From New Zealand to Japan, Morocco to the United States, tattoos have played a role in cultural traditions around the world. Through library resources, we will discuss how tattoos have marked societal roles, counterculture, traditions and rebellion in the United States. Tues., March 7, 7 pm: Daniel Boone Branch, Program Room, 300 Clarkson Rd., Ellisville, 63011 Sat., March 25, 2 pm: Lewis & Clark Branch, Meeting Room, 9909 Lewis-Clark Blvd., St. Louis, 63136
8–29 MARCH | VARIOUS
St. Louis Changemakers: Lecture and Discussion
Elizabeth Eikmann, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Study of St. Louis and the American Story, Program in American Culture Studies at Washington University, shares the stories of three women who have changed the course of history right here in St. Louis. In celebration of Women’s History Month. Wed., March 8, 2 pm: Oak Bend Branch, Meeting Room, 842 S. Holmes Ave., St. Louis, 63122 Wed., March 8, 7 pm: Florissant Valley Branch, Meeting Room 1 & 2, 195 New Florissant Rd., S. Florissant, 63031 Mon., March 13, 7 pm: Cliff Cave Branch, Meeting Room, 5430 Telegraph Rd., St. Louis, 63129 Mon., March 20, 7 pm: Rock Road Branch, Meeting Room 1, 10267 St. Charles Rock Rd., St. Ann, 63074 Wed., March 29, 10:30 am: Jamestown Bluffs Branch, Meeting Room 2, 4153 N. Highway 67, Florissant, 63034
8 MARCH | 7 PM Step Into Irish Dance
Come celebrate St. Patrick’s Day at the St. Louis County Library! Learn the history of the beautiful and traditional art form of Irish dancing and see a demonstration from the local Clarkson School of Irish Dance. The Clarkson School’s dancers compete at the local, regional, national and world levels in solo, ceili and choreography dancing.
St. Louis County Library – Daniel Boone Branch, Meeting Room 1, 300 Clarkson Rd., Ellisville, 63011
9 MARCH | 7 PM Rebecca Serle, One Italian Summer (Author Talk)
When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend. Their planned mother-daughter trip to Italy looms, and now Katy is faced with embarking on the adventure alone. But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. And then Carol appears — in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and 30 years old. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. St. Louis County Library.
St. Louis County Library — Grant’s View Branch, 9700 Musick Ave, St. Louis, 63123
10–25 MARCH | VARIOUS TIMES Drop-in Collection Tour: Marvelous Metalwork
Marvelous Metalwork highlights the fine artistry and skill present in metalwork across cultures and time. Join a Saint Louis Art Museum docent for a lively and engaging tour of the museum’s collection. Tour themes change monthly. Tours begin at the Information Center in Sculpture Hall, and they are limited to 10 visitors on a first-come, first-served basis. Saint Louis Art Museum.
Saint Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Dr., St. Louis, 63110
10 MARCH | 7 PM The Black Rep Presents Frankie Muse Freeman
A new play celebrating the life and work of Frankie Muse Freeman, an African-American civil rights attorney and the first female U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner, told from the perspective of her daughter. In celebration of Women's History Month.
St. Louis County Library – Florissant Valley Branch Meeting Room 1 & 2, 195 New Florissant Rd. S., Florissant, 63031
11 MARCH | 9 AM Discovery Tour: 1904 World’s Fair Revisited
Join tour guide Linda Koenig from Gateway Tours as we revisit the complexities of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, better known as the 1904 World’s Fair. Adam Kloppe, Missouri Historical Society public historian, will start the day with a preview of the Missouri History Museum’s new World’s Fair exhibit, scheduled to open in spring 2024. Linda Koenig, World’s Fair enthusiast and professional tour guide, will lead this full-day excursion to some original sites and find remnants of the fair in and around St. Louis, with possibly a new discovery or two. $80–$90. Missouri Historical Society.
Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 63112
11 MARCH | 2 PM Power and Freedom of Art: Local Artists’ Panel
In honor of Women’s History Month and the celebration of innovators, inventors, artists and rebels, join us for a local St. Louis artists’ panel, as artists talk about the importance of art and the power of expression and freedom it offers to the artists themselves and their audiences. St. Louis Public Library.
St. Louis Public Library – Buder Library, 4401 Hampton Ave, St. Louis, 63109
12–16 MARCH St. Louis Jewish Film Festival
The J’s St. Louis Jewish Film Festival showcases national and international cinema that explores universal issues through traditional Jewish values, opposing viewpoints and new perspectives. Ticket purchase required. St. Louis Jewish Film Festival.
Marcus Des Peres Cinema, 12701 Manchester Rd., Des Peres, 63131
12 MARCH | 11 AM Germany’s Forgotten Genocide: A film screening and discussion of Kavena Hambira’s Nuh-Mi-Bee-Uhn
The St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum will present the film Nuh-Mi Bee-Uhn, directed by Kavena Hambira. The film “focuses on the twentieth century’s first genocide—the Herero and Nama Genocide, carried out by Germany in 1905 in his family’s native Namibia. Hambira bridges geography and time to describe the indelible and far-reaching impacts of the genocide and the ongoing struggle for reparations and reconciliation.” The film will be accompanied by a discussion with Hambira and his colleague, Miriam Gleckman-Krut, both of whom are artist-scholars-in residence at the Memory for the Future Studiolab at Washington University. The discussion will examine the linkages between the history and memory of this and other genocides and the Holocaust. Registration required; see website.
St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, 36 Millstone Campus Dr., St. Louis, 63146
13 MARCH | 5 PM Irish Traditional Music
Join us for a concert featuring Irish traditional music and also learn about its roots and the instruments that are part of that tradition.
St. Louis County Library – Grant’s View Branch, Meeting Room 1, 9700 Musick Rd., St. Louis, 63123
14 MARCH | 11 AM Women in St. Louis Architecture
St. Louis’ rich architectural history includes many important, and often unrecognized, contributions from women — not just as architects and designers, but as patrons, engineers and even muses. Community tours manager Amanda Clark will explore and highlight the achievements of women including Ray Eames, Chloethiel Woodard Smith and others. Missouri Historical Society.
Missouri History Museum, Lee Auditorium, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 63112
14 MARCH | 7 PM Sarah Lyu, I Will Find You Again (Author Talk)
SARAH LYU will discuss her twisty teen thriller with YA author E. Lockhart. Welcome to Meadowlark, Long Island — expensive homes and good schools, ambition and loneliness. Meet Chase Ohara and Lia Vestiano: the driven overachiever and the impulsive wanderer, the future CEO and the free spirit. Best friends for years — weekend trips to Montauk, sleepovers on a yacht — and then, first love. True love. But when Lia disappears, Chase’s life turns into a series of grim snapshots. Anger. Grief. Running. Pink pills in an Altoids tin. A cheating ring at school. Heartbreak and lies. A catastrophic secret. The shocking truth will change everything about the way Chase sees Lia and herself. Left Bank Books.
VIRTUAL
14 MARCH | 7 PM Saket Soni, The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America (Author Talk)
In 2006, Saket Soni, an Indian-born community organizer, received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker living in squalid conditions inside a Mississippi labor camp. Lured by the promise of good work and green cards, 500 men had desperately scraped together up to $20,000 each to apply for this “opportunity” to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina. In The Great Escape, Soni traces the workers’ march on foot to Washington, D.C., and their 23-day-hunger strike to bring attention to their cause. Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of 21st-century forced labor, Soni takes us into the hidden lives of the foreign workers the U.S. increasingly relies on for cheap skilled labor to rebuild after climate disasters. St. Louis County Library.
The J’s Staenberg Family Complex Mirowitz Performing Arts Center, 2 Millstone Campus Dr., St. Louis, 63146
15 MARCH | 2 PM Lore and Legend of Herbs
Presented by St. Louis Herb Society Discover fascinating stories behind familiar herbs. Participants will receive Zoom information via email immediately after registering. St. Louis County Library.
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15 MARCH | 7:30 PM Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Tell the Rest (Author Talk)
American Library Association Stonewall Award winning author Lucy Jane Bledsoe will be in conversation with National Center for Lesbian Rights’ Amy Whelan. Two estranged childhood friends find themselves on parallel paths to return to the site of the conversion therapy camp that tore them apart. Delia Barnes and Ernest Wrangham met as teens at Celebration Camp, a church-supported conversion therapy program — a dubious, unscientific Christian practice meant to change a person’s sexuality. After witnessing a close friend suffer a devastating tragedy at the hands of the camp counselors, they escaped in the night only to take separate roads to their distant homes. They have no idea how the other has fared through the years. Delia is a college basketball coach who prides herself on being an empowering and self-possessed role model for her players. But when she gets fired from her elite East Coast college and loses her wife to another woman in rapid succession, she returns to her hometown of Rockside, Oregon to coach the girls' basketball team at her high school alma mater. Ernest, meanwhile, is a renowned poet in New York City who’s left behind his loving husband for a temporary teaching job in Portland, Oregon. His work has always been boundary-pushing and fearless, but the poem he’s most wanted to write — about his dangerous escape from Celebration Camp — remains stubbornly out of reach. As events find them hurtling toward each other once again, they both grapple with the necessity of remaining steadfast in one’s truth — no matter how slippery that can be. Left Bank Books.
VIRTUAL
16 MARCH | 5:30 PM Finding Frank Moore
In 1923, the Elaine Twelve, a group of sharecroppers who had survived the famed Elaine massacre in Arkansas, were defendants in the U.S. Supreme Court rulings Moore v. Dempsey and Ware v. Dempsey. Despite the Court’s determination that the men had been denied due process when an angry mob assembled outside the courthouse and demanded their executions, the sharecroppers remained in prison and the governor refused to overturn their death sentences. Their sentences were eventually commuted, and the Elaine Twelve were released from prison in 1925. Fearing that they would be lynched if they remained in Arkansas, most immediately fled north, where they found sanctuary and reinvented themselves in their new homes of Chicago, St. Louis, East St. Louis, Springfield and Topeka. Join historian Brian Mitchell to learn how the lives of the Elaine Twelve have challenged researchers to critically examine the roles that debt peonage, racialized violence and fear played in the Great Migration and to find ways to commemorate their struggles. Annual James Neal Primm Lecture in History, Missouri Historical Society and University of Missouri–St. Louis.
Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 63112
16 MARCH | 7 PM Chosen Screening & Discussion
In 2020, five Korean Americans of vastly diverse backgrounds with competing political views run for U.S. Congress, the most in U.S. history. David Kim is the only underdog, with limited resources vying to be the first Korean American representative for LA’s Koreatown. Registered attendees will be provided with a secure film link, giving them the opportunity to watch Chosen during a four-day screening window, March 13-16. Join us for a conversation and post-film Q&A with director Joseph Juhn, a lawyer-turned-filmmaker with passion for diasporic narratives. Gateway Korea Foundation.
VIRTUAL
18 MARCH | 10 AM One Day Symposium: IN/Justice and the Built Environment
This daylong program will explore how structural inequities intersect with the physical structures that make up St. Louis. From real estate redlining; to the erasure of lands, neighborhoods and cemeteries; to the ways that rethinking design can help close the gaps of injustice, this program will offer thought-provoking perspectives and a historical context for understanding the impact of the built environment and how it affects us all. Missouri Historical Society.
Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 63112
18 MARCH | 11 AM If It Wasn’t for the Women: Grounded Perspectives
Join the Saint Louis Art Museum for our annual panel celebrating women of color in the arts. This year’s program explores depictions of landscapes. Panelists will discuss their relationships to the environment and how it informs their practice. Panel moderated by Charlie Farrell, the 2022–24 Romare Bearden Graduate Museum Fellow, with artists Allison L. Norfleet Bruenger, Sarah Sense and Tiff J. Sutton. In-person and livestream viewing available; see website for ticket and registration details.
Saint Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Dr., St. Louis, 63110
19 MARCH | 1:30 PM Sunday Workshop: Andrea Scarpino
ANDREA SCARPINO has published the poetry collections Once Upon Wing Lake, What the Willow Said as it Fell and Once, Then and the co-edited anthology Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice. She is also co-editor of Nine Mile Magazine and served as Poet Laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula 2015–17. She is the executive director at the Noble Neighbor. Saint Louis Poetry Center.
High Low, Conference Room, 3301 Washington Ave., St. Louis, 63103
21 MARCH | 7 PM Laurell K. Hamilton, Smolder (Author Talk)
Author of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, Laurell K. Hamilton will discuss and answer audience questions about her new novel, Smolder. Vampire hunter Anita Blake is no stranger to killing monsters. It’s part of her job as a Preternatural U.S. Marshal, after all. But even her experience isn’t enough to stop something that is bent on destroying everything and everyone she loves. Anita is engaged to Jean-Claude, the new vampire king of America. Humans think she’s gone over to the side of the monsters. The vampires fear that their new king has fallen under the spell of the most powerful necromancer in a thousand years. In the midst of wedding preparations — including getting Edward, aka U.S. Marshal Ted Forrester, fitted as best man — Anita gets a call that the local police need her expertise at a brutal murder scene linked to a nationwide slaughter of vampires and humans, dubbed the Sunshine Murders. But there is more than just a murderer to catch: an ancient evil has arrived in St. Louis to challenge Jean-Claude for his crown, his life, Anita and all they hold dear. Even with Jean-Claude’s new powers as king and Anita’s necromancy, it isn't enough; they must embrace their triumvirate or allow primeval darkness to spread across the country, possessing first the vampires and then the humans. Evil will triumph unless Jean-Claude and Anita can prove that love conquers all. Left Bank Books and Hi-Pointe Theatre.
IN PERSON & VIRTUAL: Hi-Pointe Theatre, 1005 McCausland Ave., St. Louis, 63117
23 MARCH | 5:30 PM I Define ME Movement: Women’s Empowerment
Women have always worked to uplift others and create opportunities for their families and communities to thrive on local, national and international levels. Join St. Louis’s own Tracie Berry-McGhee of the Sistakeeper Empowerment Center’s I Define ME Movement for a deep dive into women’s and girls’ empowerment and entrepreneurship through the lenses of support, collective practice and community vision. Over the past 25 years, the Sistakeeper Empowerment Center has grown from Sistakeeper Circles to the internationally known I Define ME Movement. This program will discuss the movement’s successes, challenges and intentionality in partnering with other organizations. Missouri Historical Society.
Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 63112
23 MARCH | 6 PM Devin Johnston, Dragons: Poems and Martin Riker, The Guest Lecture (Author Talk)
DEVIN JOHNSTON is the author of seven books of poetry. He has also published Creaturely and Other Essays, meditations on the natural world. He works as an editor of Flood Editions, a nonprofit publishing house, and he teaches at Saint Louis University. Martin Riker is the author of two novels, The Guest Lecture and Samuel Johnson’s Eternal Return. In a hotel room in the middle of the night, Abby, a young feminist economist, lies awake next to her sleeping husband and daughter. Anxious that she is grossly underprepared for a talk she is presenting tomorrow on optimism and John Maynard Keynes, she has resolved to practice by using an ancient rhetorical method of assigning parts of her speech to different rooms in her house and has brought along a comforting albeit imaginary companion to keep her on track — Keynes himself. Yet as she wanders with increasing alarm through the rooms of her own consciousness, Abby finds herself straying from her prepared remarks on economic history, utopia and Keynes’ pragmatic optimism. A lapsed optimist herself, she has been struggling under the burden of supporting a family in an increasingly hostile America after being denied tenure at the university where she teaches. Confronting her own future at a time of global darkness, Abby undertakes a quest through her memories to ideas hidden in the corners of her mind — a piecemeal intellectual history from Cicero to Lewis Carroll to Queen Latifah — as she asks what a better world would look like if we told our stories with more honest and more hopeful imaginations. Riker teaches in the Department of English at Washington University and is co-founder of the feminist press Dorothy, a Publishing Project.
Subterranean Books, 6271 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 63130
23 MARCH | 7 PM Elizabeth Berg, Earth’s the Right Place for Love (Author Talk)
This new novel by the author of Open House tells the story of two young people growing up in Mason, Missouri, and how Arthur Moses, a shy young man, becomes the wise and compassionate person readers have loved in Berg’s previous novels. Earth’s the Right Place for Love shares the story of Arthur’s first love with childhood friend Nola McCollum. Unfortunately, Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses — Arthur’s older brother, Frank. When a sudden tragedy rocks the family’s world, Arthur struggles to come to terms with his grief. In the end, it is nature that helps him to understand how to go on, beyond loss, and create a life of forgiveness and empathy. But what can he do about Nola, who seems confused about what she wants in life, and only half aware of the one who loves her most? St. Louis County Library.
St. Louis County Library — Grant’s View Branch, 9700 Musick Ave., St. Louis, 63123
23 MARCH | 7 PM Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions for You (Author Talk)
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Rebecca Makkai will discuss her highly anticipated new novel. A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past — the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers — needs — to let sleeping dogs lie. But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn’t as much of an outsider at Granby as she’d thought — if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case. Left Bank Books.
IN PERSON & VIRTUAL: Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Rd., St. Louis, 63117
24 MARCH | 11 AM Edwin Moise, The Myths of Tet: The Most Misunderstood Event of the Vietnam War (Author Talk)
Fifty-five years ago, during the height of the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson made the astonishing announcement that he would neither seek nor accept a nomination for the presidency. Edwin Moise examines the intersection of the Tet Offensive, Johnson’s announcement and other aspects of the Vietnam War. Missouri Historical Society.
VIRTUAL
24 MARCH 24 | 6 PM Natural Inspirations: A Conversation about Monet and Mitchell
The exhibition Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape is a unique collaboration among several organizations: the Musée Marmottan Monet, the Fondation Louis Vuitton and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Curators will discuss how both artists depicted similar subjects of the natural world as well as the connections, both in subject matter and technique that Impressionist Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) and Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell (American, 1925–92) shared. $5 (free for members). Free public preview of the exhibition opens 4 pm.
Saint Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Dr., St. Louis, 63110
25 MARCH | 11 AM You Can Skate, Sew, or Swim: History of the Phyllis Wheatley Branch of the St. Louis YWCA
The Phyllis Wheatley Branch of the St. Louis YWCA came into being through the initiative of Black women concerned about young women in their community. Learn what role women of this Branch played in changing racial attitudes and navigating the complexities of segregation. Presented by Tullia Hamilton, PhD. Sponsored by the West End Neighbors and the Cabanne History Project.
St. Louis Public Library – Cabanne Library, 1106 Union Blvd., St. Louis, 63113
28 MARCH | 6 PM StitchCast Studio LIVE!
Watch and be a part of Story Stitchers live podcast discussions, presented on the state-of-the-arts stage of 3524 Washington Ave. Story Stitchers artists and guest artists will round out each presentation with live art interludes. Youth, ages 16-24 years old, discuss current topics in live podcast recordings on stage. Live art interludes are incorporated into the presentations. Learn about the community through the words of young leaders.
High Low, 3301 Washington Ave., St. Louis, 63103
28 MARCH | 6:30 PM The Architecture of Dublin, Ireland
ESLEY HAMILTON, past preservation historian, St. Louis County Parks. 2023 SAH STL/Steedman Library Lecture Series. St. Louis Public Library.
VIRTUAL
28 MARCH | 7 PM Battles over the Holocaust: Polish-Jewish Memory Wars
In the aftermath of World War II, Jews and Poles formulated separate histories and memories of their wartime experiences. While Poles claimed that Polish Catholics and Jews suffered equally, in the Jewish narrative, Polish antisemitism and indifference was instrumental in making the Holocaust possible. Actions and reactions from both sides have made for a particularly volatile environment. Despite the dangers, attempts at reconciliation have been made and continue today. This talk will uncover how we have gotten to this point and where we can go from here to resolve one of the thorniest issues in memory politics. Zachary Mazur earned his PhD at Yale University and is currently a Senior Historian at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. His research interests are in 20th century East Central Europe, national identity, law and economics. St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum.
St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, 36 Millstone Campus Dr., St. Louis, 63146
28 MARCH | 7:30 PM Poetry at the Point
Poetry at the Point will feature Paul Stroble, Robert Lowes and Floyd Boykin Jr. Stroble teaches at Webster University and Eden Theological Seminary and has written several books, especially church curriculum. His poetry books are Dreaming at the Electric Hobo, Little River, Small Corner of the Stars, Backyard Darwin, Walking Lorton Bluff, Four Mile and Galápagos Joy. Lowes’ first poetry collection, An Honest Hunger, was published in 2020. He recently has branched out into haiku while still writing poems in traditional European forms and free verse. A former president and board member of Saint Louis Poetry Center, he coordinated the organization’s high school poetry contest for nine years. Boykin Jr. is a father, award-winning poet, author, musician, recording artist, performer, producer, filmmaker, youth group organizer and lupus awareness advocate. He is the founder of SpokenVizions Entertainment Group, LLC, and the producer of Project LIFE. He is the author of nine books and creator of five studio albums, including EARTHOLOGY, a collaboration with Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Saint Louis Poetry Center.
The Focal Point, 2720 Sutton Blvd., St. Louis, 63143
29 MARCH | 7 PM Sarah Penner, The London Séance Society (Author Talk)
In 1873, acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire is known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them. Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult. When Vaudeline is beckoned to England to solve a high-profile murder, Lenna accompanies her as an understudy. But as the women team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Séance Society, they begin to suspect that they are not merely out to solve a crime but perhaps entangled in one themselves. St. Louis County Library.
St. Louis County Library — Grant’s View Branch, 9700 Musick Ave., St. Louis, 63123
30 MARCH | 6 PM Liam Callanan, When in Rome (Author Talk)
Meet Claire: 52 years old, desperate to do something new and get a fresh start. Enter the chance to go to Rome. Home to a struggling convent facing a precipitous end, the city beckons Claire, who’s long had a complicated relationship with religion, including a “missed connection” with convent life in her teens. Once in Rome, she finds a group of funny, fearless nuns in a gorgeous villa, beautiful runs throughout a color-saturated city and a chance to reflect. It all leads her to an unexpected question — should she join the convent — and an answer that startles her as much as it does those closest to her. It also startles Marcus, a once-buzzy and devastatingly handsome actor, who is eternally in love with Claire. Marcus has come and gone from Claire’s life since college but now reappears in Rome just as she’s about to decide what’s next. As Claire searches for her higher calling, she finds the key to her future may lay in her past and involves an actual key. The nuns swear it unlocks nothing, but on a night when choices and voices swirl, Claire finds a long-hidden lock. Left Bank Books.
Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid Ave., St. Louis, 63108
30 MARCH | 7 PM Celebrating Poetry Daily Practice Kickoff
Learn more about this month-long practice and receive daily writing prompts and poetry reading recommendations. Use the hashtag #SLCLpoetry to share your favorite poem with the St. Louis County Library community. In celebration of National Poetry Month.
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