“Pandemic Histories” Webinars
The Misericordia History Program and University Honors Program will be cohosting two webinars that will address how we make sense of the history happening right before our eyes. These webinars will be free and open to the public. Webinars will be held via Zoom. To register and receive the link, please RSVP to Dr. Jennifer Black, jblack2@misericordia.edu
History in the Making:
Collecting and Interpreting the Artifacts of American Life
Monday, October 19th, 2020
7:00 pm (held via Zoom)
Join us for a conversation that will bring together four museum professionals, both up-and-coming and established, to discuss how museums help us think about our contemporary moment, and how they identify and display items that illustrate historical events.
Speakers include:
Elysa Engelman, Ph.D.
Elysa Engelman is Director of Exhibitions at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, CT, where she directs the planning, design, production, and evaluation of all formal gallery exhibits, village, shipboard displays, and onsite signage.
Miquael Williams
Miquael Williams is a graduate student studying Art History at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, where her research interests commonly cross geographic and temporal boundaries to explore the art of the African Diaspora. Her work is focused on encouraging people to feel comfortable analyzing and engaging directly with art objects.
Paul D’Ambrosio, Ph.D.
Paul D’Ambrosio is President and CEO of the Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers’ Museum, Inc. in Cooperstown, NY. He has curated numerous exhibitions in the United States and Europe, delivered lectures, and published articles on the subjects of American art and American folk art.
Thomas Denenberg
Thomas Denenberg is the Director of Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, VT. He has previously been the chief curator and deputy director of the Portland Museum of Art, the Betsy Main Babcock Curator of American Art at Reynolda House, and the Richard Koopman Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Download a poster for this event
You, Me, and History:
How Memoir and Storytelling Explain Our Past and Present
Monday, October 26th, 2020
7:00 pm (held via Zoom)
This hour-long webinar will consider how our own lives are records of history, and how the stories we draw from them help us understand the experiences we’re living through. The speakers are:
The writer Jessica Pearce Rotondi (USA), New York, New York, June 26, 2019. Photograph by © Beowulf Sheehan
Jessica Pearce Rotondi
Jessica Pearce Rotondi is the author of What We Inherit: A Secret War and a Family’s Search for Answers. This book was praised by Historian Ron Chernow as, “a beautiful amalgam of memoir, travelogue, and investigative report that moves with the propulsive forward energy of a thriller.” Author Salmon Rushdie writes that, “Jessica Pearce Rotondi brilliantly probes the mysteries of a secret war while simultaneously exploring the secrets of her own family to give us a book about coming to terms with many kinds of loss.”
Deni Ellis Béchard
Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, and the winner of numerous awards for literature and journalism. His memoir Cures for Hunger investigates his complicated relationship with his father, a bank robber. His most recent novel is A Song from Faraway. Author Marlon James writes that “Béchard is the rare writer who knows the secret to telling the true story.” Author Jennifer Percy explains that A Song from Faraway, “will make you rethink the incredible power of the stories we tell about ourselves and our inglorious past.”
