PREVIEW SCREENING & DISCUSSION 

Tues., September 27 — 5:30 p.m.
Prohibition
a new documentary series from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick,
with John Shelton Reed, UNC-Chapel Hill, co-sponsored with UNC-TV

» For more information about this film.

Prohibition is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed. The film raises vital questions that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago—about means and ends, individual rights and responsibilities, and the proper role of government.

The event will begin with introductory comments from noted sociologist John Shelton Reed, professor emeritus from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in 1983-84. Following the screening, Reed will lead a discussion with attendees. A prolific scholar and writer, Reed is the author or editor of eighteen books, and a regular contributor to publications such as the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Oxford American.

» Reserve space for this event, Tuesday, September 27, 5:30 p.m.

PUBLIC LECTURES at the National Humanities Center 

Thurs., October 6 — 5:00 p.m.
"A Semi-Exclusionary Empire? British Colonial Ideals in the Caribbean and India"
Martin Wiener, Rice University

Martin J. Wiener is the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of History at Rice University where his research and teaching focus on the history of criminal justice and the British Empire. His publications on these topics include Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (2004), which won the NACBS Albion Book Prize; An Empire on Trial: Race, Murder and Justice under British Rule, 1870-1930 (2008); as well as English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980 (1981), which won the Robert Livingston Schuyler Prize of the American Historical Association for the best book on British history published that year. Wiener served as president of the North American Conference on British Studies from 2001 to 2003. This year he is the Birkelund Fellow at the National Humanities Center.

Wiener's talk will draw on his current work on the role of liberal ideas in the history of the British Empire. Specifically, he will explore how these ideas were simultaneously used to protect the privileged position of white planters in one part of the Empire—Trinidad—and to advance the position of colonized people in another part—Bengal.

» Reserve space for this lecture, Thursday, October 6, 5:00 p.m.

Thurs., November 3 — 5:00 p.m. 
"From Social Work to Global Activism in Britain, 1918-1940"
Ellen Ross, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Ellen Ross is professor of history and women's studies at Ramapo College where her research has focused on the contributions of women in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Britain. Her extensive writings on these subjects include the volumes Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870-1918 (1993) and Slum Journeys: Lady Explorers "In Darkest London" (2007). She will be working on her current book length project, Missionaries, Social Workers and 'Valiant Warrior Queens': From Social Service to Global Activism in Britain, 1914-1950, as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow this year at the National Humanities Center.

Professor Ross's talk will focus on the interwar period in Britain when significant numbers of philanthropic women "repackaged" traditional female voluntary activity. Most, whether volunteer or salaried, had been social workers of some kind working in poverty areas. But in response to four decades of European violence significant numbers were recruited to work on an international scale. They provided housing and medical care to war refugees, helped alleviate post World War I famines (the traditional soup kitchen on a gigantic scale), supported the threatened Spanish Republic in the 1930s, and rescued Jews and Socialists fleeing from Nazi Germany or its approaching armies. In the process they created new kinds of international aid and advocacy organizations, now called NGO's, the first of which was Save the Children (1922).

» Reserve space for this lecture, Thursday, November 3, 5:00 p.m.

Thurs., December 8 — 5:00 p.m. 
"Researching and Writing Nineteenth-Century African-American Biography"
Ezra Greenspan, Southern Methodist University

Ezra Greenspan, the Edmund and Louise Kahn Chair in Humanities and Professor of English at Southern Methodist University, is a literary and cultural historian who studies the history of print culture in its various manifestations in the United States, both its central activities (writing, reading, printing, and publishing) and its institutions (such as libraries, bookstores, and schools). Long engaged with the work of Walt Whitman, he also has an active scholarly interest in the culture of letters of nineteenth-century African Americans and is currently working on a comprehensive literary biography of the versatile nineteenth-century African-American writer, William Wells Brown. Among his many publications are volumes on Walt Whitman and the American Reader (1990); George Palmer Putnam: Representative American Publisher (2000); "Song of Myself": A Sourcebook and Critical Edition (2005); and William Wells Brown: A Reader (2008). Greenspan is also the co-editor of the journal Book History. This year he is the John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center.

His talk will provide an account of the practical and theoretical challenges of recreating the lives of nineteenth-century African Americans. It draws on his extensive fieldwork in tracking the wide-ranging African-American writer William Wells Brown across the United States and Great Britain as well as through their archives. 

» Reserve space for this lecture, Thursday, December 8, 5:00 p.m.

ON EXHIBIT

Keepers of Your Destiny
Size: 34" x 34"

September 6 - December 16
"Sauda A. Zahra: Journey of an Evolving Art Quilter,
Works from 1998-2011"

Sauda A. Zahra, a master fiber artist, has been actively exhibiting her art since 1999 in local, national, and traveling exhibits. This solo exhibition, featuring over 40 quilts, is the first time the artist's work has been exhibited as a collective body of work. The quilts, varying in design, style, materials, and techniques, focus on narrative, commemorative, and improvisational subjects. "Journey of an Evolving Art Quilter" exemplifies the artist's mastery in her art form and examines how she uses quilting to construct a visual vocabulary to stimulate conversations between the artist and the work, her art and the viewer.

Ms. Zahra is a 2007 recipient of the Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Award and is a member of the African American Quilt Circle in Durham and the Professional Art Quilters Alliance-South. Her work has appeared in several quilting publications, including Textural Rhythms: Constructing the Jazz Tradition, African American Quilts (2007); Quilting African-American Women's History: Our Challenge, Creativity and Champions (2008); and Journey of Hope: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama (2010).

Lectures and exhibits at the National Humanities Center are free and open to the public. They are supported by the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Educational and Cultural Outreach Endowment Fund.

For more information, please contact Martha Johnson by phone (919) 549-0661, ext. 110 or e-mail mjohnson@nationalhumanitiescenter.org.

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