Event: The Harry Ransom Center hosts public programs.
When: Various dates throughout September.
Where: Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin, 21st and Guadalupe streets; Jessen Auditorium in Homer Rainey Hall at The University of Texas at Austin, 21st and Whitis streets.
Background: Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted. The Ransom Center’s Charles Nelson Prothro Theater has limited seating. Line forms upon arrival of the first person, and doors open 30 minutes in advance.
Poetry on the Plaza: “Emperors of Ice Cream”
Wednesday, Sept. 14, noon, at the Ransom Center
The Ransom Center kicks off the 20112012 season of Poetry on the Plaza with “Emperors of Ice Cream.” Department of English Chair Elizabeth Cullingford, Assistant Professor of English Meta DuEwa Jones, Associate Professor of English Lisa Moore, post-doctoral fellows Susannah Hollister and Samantha Pinto and graduate student Tyler Mabry have searched the Ransom Center’s collections for summertime poems that can help the audience imagine, at least, a break from the heat. Complimentary Amy’s Ice Cream will be provided.
“African American Poetry: Past, Present, and Future”
Thursday, Sept. 15, 7 p.m., at the Ransom Center
Arnold Rampersad, National Humanities Medal recipient and MacArthur Fellow, presents “African American Poetry: Past, Present, and Future,” the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies (TILTS) Poetics Lecture in honor of Thomas Cable.
Harry Ransom Lecture: Nicole Krauss
Tuesday, Sept. 20, 7 p.m. in Jessen Auditorium
Nicole Krauss, author of “Man Walks into a Room” and “The History of Love,” reads from “Great House” and speaks with Michener Center Director James Magnuson about her work. A book signing follows. Members of the Ransom Center receive complimentary parking and priority entry at this program. This program will be webcast live.
Harry Ransom Lecture: Elliott Erwitt
Thursday, Sept. 22, 7 p.m. in Jessen Auditorium
Legendary Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt discusses his life and work. In a career spanning more than six decades, the former president of Magnum Photos has published more than 20 photography books and exhibited his work in both public and private galleries from New York to Paris and Tokyo. The Magnum Photos collection resides at the Ransom Center. Members of the Ransom Center receive complimentary parking and priority entry at this program. This program will be webcast live.
Austin Museum Day
Sunday, Sept. 25, noon5 p.m.
Visit the Ransom Center’s exhibitions during Austin Museum Day. Docent-led tours begin at noon, 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.
Curator’s tour: “Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored”
Tuesday, Sept. 27, 7 p.m., at the Ransom Center
Assistant Director and Curator for Academic Programs Danielle Brune Sigler leads a tour of the exhibition “Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored.” How did hundreds of thousands of books, pictures, plays, and magazines come to be banned, burned, seized, and censored in the span of less than 30 years? This exhibition reveals the rarely seen “machinery” of censorship in the United States between the two world wars. Using tactics from extra-legal intimidation to federal prosecution, censors from the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, New England’s Watch and Ward Society, the Post Office Department and the Treasury Department waged war on “objectionable” literature. Larger-than-life personalities battled publicly over obscenity, “clean books” and freedom of expression while writers, agents and publishers attempted to navigate the increasingly complex world of American censorship.
Poetry on the Plaza: “Actors from the London Stage”
Wednesday, Sept. 28, noon, at the Ransom Center
The Harry Ransom Center presents a special Poetry on the Plaza event featuring Actors from the London Stage (AFTLS). Dale Rapley, who played both Gloucester and Kent in the 2009 AFTLS production of “King Lear” and who will play Prospero in this fall’s production of “The Tempest,” offers a staged reading with commentary from “The Sea and The Mirror,” W. H. Auden’s gloss on “The Tempest.” Refreshments will be served.
“The Importance of Being Morris L. ErnstThe Man Who Took on the Censors and Freed ‘Ulysses'”
Thursday, Sept. 29, 7 p.m., at the Ransom Center
Brett Gary, Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, delivers the Stanley Burnshaw Lecture “The Importance of Being Morris L. ErnstThe Man Who Took on the Censors and Freed ‘Ulysses.'” Morris Leopold Ernst, whose archive is housed at the Ransom Center, was among the nation’s most prominent civil liberties lawyers from the late 1920s until World War II. He was known especially for his challenges to far-reaching state and federal obscenity laws, known as the “Comstock Laws.” By the eve of World War II, no one in the United States had done more to thwart censors’ attacks on a variety of cultural forms, from modernist literature to nudism, from burlesque theater to birth control. Yet the political alliances Ernst forged because of his ardent anti-communism diminished his reputation in the last decades of his life, and his name elicits little recognition today. This program will be webcast live.
Central Market Cooking Class
Friday, Sept. 30, 6:30 p.m. at Central Market on North Lamar
Commemorate Banned Books Week with the Ransom Center and the Central Market (CM) Cooking School. Enjoy cooking demonstrations by CM Cooking School Chef Louis Ortiz and food inspired by the exhibition “Banned, Burned, Seized, and Censored.” The cost of the class is $45, and Ransom Center members receive a discount.
