EVENT: The Harry Ransom Center, located on The University of Texas at Austin campus, will host free programs throughout the spring on subjects ranging from literature to photography.
WHEN: Feb. 9 through April 27.
WHERE: Harry Ransom Center, 21st and Guadalupe streets; Blanton Auditorium, 200 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
BACKGROUND: The Ransom Center offers programs that engage the community with its collections. They include:
“From Mainz to Austin: Carl H. Pforzheimer’s Gutenberg Bible”
Thursday, Feb. 9, 7 p.m., Harry Ransom Center
Eric White, curator of rare books at Princeton University, discusses the Ransom Center’s Gutenberg Bible, focusing on recent scholarship and new discoveries related to its early provenance. The Center’s Gutenberg Bible is on permanent display. A reception follows.
“Mary Hutchinson Observed: From Bloomsbury to Beckett”
Wednesday, Feb. 22, 7 p.m., Harry Ransom Center
Brenda Bynum presents “Mary Hutchinson Observed: From Bloomsbury to Beckett,” an illustrated lecture that documents Hutchinson’s impact on 20th-century arts and letters. Bynum was a resident artist and faculty member at Emory University in the Department of Theater Studies from 1983 to 2000.
“The Library of the Future”
Donald G. Davis, Jr. Lecture
Thursday, March 2, 7 p.m., Harry Ransom Center
Helen Shenton, librarian and college archivist of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, presents “The Library of the Future; the Future of the Library.” Shenton explores the seismic social and technological shifts underway in education, research, teaching and learning that are transforming libraries. Cumulatively, these challenge the very notion of what a library is and offer exciting potential for what it might become. With broad experience in both public and private memory organizations on both sides of the Atlantic, Shenton offers her unique perspective on the research library community.
David Hare and Deborah E. Lipstadt
Tuesday, March 7, 6:30 p.m., Blanton Auditorium
Playwright and screenwriter David Hare and scholar Deborah E. Lipstadt discuss their work on the 2016 film “Denial.” The film is based on Lipstadt’s legal battle with David Irving, who accused her of libel after she declared him a Holocaust denier. In libel cases, the English legal system places the burden of proof on the defendant, so Lipstadt and her legal team had to prove that the Holocaust occurred. Hare’s archive resides at the Ransom Center. Co-sponsored by the Gale Lecture of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.
Curators’ Tour
Wednesday, March 22, 7 p.m., Harry Ransom Center
The curators of “Stories to Tell: Selections from the Harry Ransom Center” offer unique perspective into the exhibition and the Center’s collections.
“ ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and the American Stage”
Thursday, March 30, 4 p.m., Harry Ransom Center
The theatrical adaptation of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” reached three times as many people in America as the original novel, which was the second-best-selling book in the 19th century after the Bible. Eric Colleary, the Ransom Center’s Cline Curator of Theatre and Performing Arts, shares insights into the original manuscripts held in the Center’s collections and traces the fascinating production history of one of the single most important plays in American theater history.
Poet Matthew Zapruder
Tuesday, April 4, 7 p.m., Harry Ransom Center
Award-winning poet, editor and translator Matthew Zapruder reads selections of his poetry from his forthcoming book, “Why Poetry,” “an incisive argument for poetry’s accessibility to all readers.” Author of four poetry collections, Zapruder is also the poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine and editor-at-large for Wave Books. A reception and book signing follow. Co-sponsored by the New Writers Project at The University of Texas at Austin.
Poetry on the Plaza
Wednesday, April 12, noon, Harry Ransom Center
Enjoy readings from narrative poems in the Center’s collections, inspired by the exhibition “Stories to Tell: Selections from the Harry Ransom Center.”
A New History of the “First Photograph”
Thursday, April 27, 7 p.m., Harry Ransom Center
Jessica S. McDonald, the Ransom Center’s Nancy Inman and Marlene Nathan Meyerson Curator of Photography, rethinks the historical moment, as well as the personal circumstance, shaping Helmut and Alison Gernsheim’s announcement of their “re-discovery of the world’s first photograph” in 1952. She presents a critical examination of the Gernsheims’ subsequent rewriting of the history of photography and their championing of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce as the sole inventor of photography, and considers the legacy of those efforts on the Ransom Center’s interpretation of the Gernsheim collection today.
