Eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter tells perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history. Beginning at the roots of Western civilization\, she traces the invention of the idea of a white race-often for economic\, scientific\, and political ends. She shows how the origins of American identity in the eighteenth century were intrinsically tied to the elevation of white skin into the embodiment of beauty\, power\, and intelligence\; how the great American intellectuals- including Ralph Waldo Emerson-insisted that only Anglo Saxons were truly American\; and how the definitions of who is "\;white"\; and who is "\;American"\; have evolved over time. A story filled with towering historical figures\, The History of White People closes an enormous gap in a literature that has long focused on the nonwhite\, and it forcefully reminds us that the concept of "\;race"\; is an all-too-human invention whose meaning\, importance\, and reality have changed according to a long and rich history.
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE:20100318T021207Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100407T003000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100407T003000Z UID:http://www.semcoop.com/event/elif-batuman-possessed-adventures-russian-books-and-people-who-read-them URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.semcoop.com/event/elif-batuman-possessed-adventures-russian-books-and-people-who-read-them SUMMARY:Elif Batuman - The Possessed\: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them DESCRIPTION:No one who read Elif Batuman’s first article (in the journal n+1) will ever forget it. “Babel in California” told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages\, Batuman managed to misplace Babel’s last living relatives at the San Francisco airport\, uncover Babel’s secret influence on the making of King Kong\, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable\, comic\, humane\, ironic\, charming\, poignant\, and completely\, unpretentiously full of love for literature.
Batuman’s subsequent pieces—for The New Yorker\, Harper’s Magazine\, and the London Review of Books— have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation\, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford\, Switzerland\, and St. Petersburg\; retrace Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus\; learn why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying\; and see an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva.
Love and the novel\, the individual in history\, the existential plight of the graduate student\: all find their place in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors\, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience\, combining fresh readings of the great Russians\, from Pushkin to Platonov\, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence—including her own.
END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE:20100318T021207Z DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100414T000000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20100414T000000Z UID:http://www.semcoop.com/event/vivian-gussin-paley-boy-beach-building-community-through-play URL;VALUE=URI:http://www.semcoop.com/event/vivian-gussin-paley-boy-beach-building-community-through-play SUMMARY:Vivian Gussin Paley - The Boy on the Beach\: Building Community through Play DESCRIPTION:Four-year-old Eli plays alone at the shore\, inventing dramas out of sand and water. He is Builder\, Fireman\, Protector\, and Scout\, overcoming waves and conquering monsters. Enter Marianne and doll\, Mother and Baby\, eager to redefine Eli as a good father and homesteader. Their separate visions intertwine in a search for a common ground on which howling wolves and butterfly sisters can learn to understand and need one another.
What can the richly imagined\, impressively adaptable fantasy world of these children tell us about childhood\, development\, education\, and even life itself? For fifty years\, teacher and writer Vivian Gussin Paley has been exploring the imagery\, language\, and lore of young children\, asking the questions they ask of themselves.
In The Boy on the Beach she continues to do so\, going deeper into the mystery of play as she follows Eli and Marianne through the kindergarten year\, finding more answers and more questions. How does their teacher\, Mrs. Olson\, manage to honor and utilize the genius of play to create an all-inclusive community in which boys and girls like each other and listen to each other’s stories? Why is Paley’s fellow teacher Yu-ching in Taiwan certain that her children pretend to be kittens in order to become necessary to the group? And why do teachers in London see their childrens’ role-playing as the natural end to loneliness in the school community?
Rich with the words of children and teachers themselves\, The Boy on the Beach is vintage Paley\, a wise and provocative appreciation of the importance of play and enduring curiosity about the nature of childhood and the imagination.
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