Courses | Events Archive

All are welcome to join the group for a dramatic reading of the first 2 chapters of Great Expectations with Peter Wilfred Stine, Emeritus Professor of English and African Literature, Gordon College.   

Peter Wilfred Stine

Book donations accepted anytime through September 10th.  Volunteers needed for the entire day, 8:30 am to 2 pm. 

Please call ahead (978.744.2540) to register for the Scrabble Tournament on Saturday, 10 a.m. at the Athenæum.

Local author, Paul Harding, will launch the fall program season with a reading from Tinkers, his first novel and winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and numerous other accolades. 

About the Book
An old man lies dying. Confined to bed in his living room, he sees the walls around him begin to collapse, the windows come loose from their sashes, and the ceiling plaster fall off in great chunks, showering him with a lifetime of debris: newspaper clippings, old photographs, wool jackets, rusty tools, and the mangled brass works of antique clocks. Soon, the clouds from the sky above plummet down on top of him, followed by the stars, till the black night covers him like a shroud. He is hallucinating, in death throes from cancer and kidney failure.

A methodical repairer of clocks, he is now finally released from the usual constraints of time and memory to rejoin his father, an epileptic, itinerant peddler, whom he had lost 7 decades before. In his return to the wonder and pain of his impoverished childhood in the backwoods of Maine, he recovers a natural world that is at once indifferent to man and inseparable from him, menacing and awe inspiring.

Tinkers is about the legacy of consciousness and the porousness of identity from one generation the next. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, it is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature.
 

“[An] outstanding debut… The real star is Harding’s language, which dazzles whether he’s describing the workings of clocks, sensory images of nature, the many engaging side characters who populate the book, or even a short passage on how to build a bird nest. This is an especially gorgeous example of novelistic craftsmanship.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Paul Harding
Photo by Gary Ottley

Eric Jay Dolin returns to the Athenæum to give an illustrated presentation of the history of the fur trade in America, with particular emphasis on the importance of the fur trade to New England and Massachusetts history. 

The fur trade was a powerful force in shaping the course of American history from the early 17th century through the late 19th century, playing a major role in the settlement and evolution of the colonies, and in the growth of the United States.  Millions of beaver, buffalo, sea otters, and other animals were killed for their pelts, which were used according to the dictates of fashion--and human vanity.  This relentless pursuit of furs left in its wake a dramatic, often tragic tale of clashing cultures, fluctuating fortunes, bloody wars, and great damage to America's native peoples.  In his new book, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America, Eric Jay Dolin provides a comprehensive and compelling history of this important industry and its far-reaching effects. 

Eric Jay Dolin
Kimberly Drooks Photography

Similar to the Founders Symposium held in April with brief lectures about the Salem Athenæum founding members, the Collections Symposium will feature presentations about the Athenæum's books.  Sue Weaver Schopf will speak on the literature and travel collections; Charlie Newhall on Salem imprints and early printing, James Morris on the science and natural philosophy collections, and Jean Marie Procious on rare books and collecting and organizing the library throughout the Athenæum's history.  

"We are excited to be joining with the Salem Athenaeum to exhibit this wonderful piece of Massachusetts and American history,” says Josh Basseches, PEM deputy director. “This rare document helped establish the commonwealth and the country.”

The Endecott Charter, as it is called, was held by the Saltonstall family for many years, until June of 1810. At one of the first meetings of the Salem Athenaeum, Leverett Saltonstall gifted the Charter as a founding manuscript of the Athenaeum’s collections. It has been stored at PEM since at least 1921.

The four-page parchment will be on view in PEM’s American Art Gallery on Level 2, along with a brass sundial that belonged to Governor Endecott and other objects representing American art and culture of the 17th century.

Margaret H. Marshall

Harvard historian David Armitage will give the 2010 Adams Lecture focusing on the global vision of our founders, Salem's place in global circuits, and the plethora of different foundings in the period 1776-1815, the so-called "age of revolutions and constitutions."

Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies at Harvard University.  A prize-winning teacher and writer, he has lectured on five continents and has held fellowships and visiting positions in Britain, the United States, and Australia.  Among his eleven books are The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000), which won the Longman/History Today Book of the Year Award, and The Declaration of Independence:  A Global History (2007) which was chosen as Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year.

About the Adams Lecture
The Adams Lecture was established in 2004 in honor of John Adams, Librarian Emeritus of the Athenæum(1994-2005).  The lecture topics focus on aspects of New England or Early American history, literature and culture.  Past speakers include Margaret Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial, historians David Hackett Fischer, Nathaniel Philbrick and James Gaines; and literary scholar/critic Andrew Delbanco.


 

First Concert
Sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord
Ingrid Matthews (Bodky Laureate 1989), violin
Byron Schenkman (Bodky Laureate 1999), harpsichord

Saturday, November 13, 8:00 p.m.
TO RESERVE, see www.csem.org

Please join us for this conference examining current scholarship on visual arts in America influenced by increased global trade from 1780-1840s.  Hosted by Salem State College, Salem Athenæum, and Salem Maritime National Historic Site (National Park Service), this conference is funded by a grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.  A special exhibition will be on view at the Athenæum throughout the conference and during normal library hours.

In 1961, Forrest County, Mississippi, became a focal point of the civil rights movement when the United State Justice Department file a lawsuit against its voting registrar, Theron Lynd.  While 30 percent of the county's residents were black, only twelve black persons were on its voting rolls.  United States v. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court.  The case served as a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South and was an important influence in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote  is a comprehensive account of the groundbreaking case written by of the Justice Department's trial attorneys.  Gordon Martin, then a newly minted lawyer, traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd.  He met with and prepared the government's sixteen courageous black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers during the trial.

Decades later, Martin returned to Mississippi to find these brave men and women he had never forgotten.  He interviewed the still-living witnesses, their children, and friends.  Martin intertwines these current reflections with vivid commentary about the case itself.  The result is an impassioned, cogent fusion of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South.

Gordan A. Martin, Jr. of Boston, is a retired trial judge and an adjunct professor at New England Law Boston.  His work has been published in the Boston Globe, Commonweal,  the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, various law reviews, and other periodicals.  He has co-authored a civil rights casebook, and is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law.

Second Concert
Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin
Nicholas Kitchen, violin

Saturday, January 22, 8:00 p.m.
TO RESERVE, see www.csem.org

Third Concert
The Goldberg Variations
Peter Sykes (Bodky Laureate 1993), harpsichord

Saturday, March 19, 8:00 p.m.
TO RESERVE, see www.csem.org

Courses

Nathaniel Bowditch - Celestial Navigator Extraordinaire
Course instructed by Dr. George W. Brandenburg
4 Thursdays, October 21 through November 11
7:00 to 9:00 p.m.  
Tuition is $145/$125 for members     [Register Here]

This course will address the life and times of Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838). Unlike other Salem heroes, Bowditch didn't attend school after age 12, let alone go to Harvard. Yet he managed to teach himself Latin, French, mathematics and physics; and he learned math and physics well enough to make world-renowned contributions in both fields. He sailed on Derby ships rising from second mate to captain, and along the way authored the well-known maritime manual, The New American Practical Navigator. We will learn how the officers of Salem's ships were able to sail to the Far East with only this book and the sun, moon, and stars to guide them.  Bowditch retired from the sea at the age of 31 and put his mathematical skills to work as an insurance executive.  In his spare time he continued to work in physics producing an annotated translation of Pierre LaPlace's monumental Mecanique Celeste, a copy of which is held by the Salem Athenæum. 

Events Archives

2010_Events_Archive.pdf
2009_Events_Archive.pdf
2008_Events_Archive.pdf
2007_Events_Archive.pdf
2006_Events_Archive.pdf
2005_Events_Archive.pdf 

The Salem Athenæum
337 Essex Street, Salem MA 01970
tel 978.744.2540 | fax 978.744.7536
info@salemathenaeum.net

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