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Category: Culture & Society

Image shows the Join In exhibit at the Library of Congress, featuring a model barn raising

Joining In at the Kluge Center

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

This is a post by Kevin Butterfield, Director of the John W. Kluge Center.  One of the more remarkable coincidences of my professional life happened on September 12, 2022, when I arrived for my first day of work at the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress as the new Director of the John W. …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

Deepak Nayyar Joins Kluge Center as Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South

Posted by: Sophia Zahner

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the appointment of Deepak Nayyar as Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South. Nayyar began his time at the Kluge Center this September. Deepak Nayyar is Emeritus Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and an Honorary …

Image of Answering Machine

How the Lowly Answering Machine Contributed to our Culture of Continuous Communication

Posted by: Janna Deitz

Josh Lauer is a 2019 Digital Studies Fellow at the John W. Kluge Center as well as Associate Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire. His research interests include the history of communication technologies as well as consumer credit reporting, the topic of his 2017 book “Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

The Study of Mystical Traditions is Opening a Path Toward New Forms of Religious Thought and Practice

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

This is a guest post by Carrie Rosefsky Wickham. Wickham is the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of Congress and Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Emory University. Can one be both a religious person and a humanist? If so, what kind of worldview might this entail? Together …

A 16th Century Codex Tells a Story of Resistance to Colonial Rule

Posted by: Sophia Zahner

Jay I. Kislak Chair Barbara E. Mundy is an art historian whose scholarship explores zones of contact between Native peoples and settler colonists as they forged new visual cultures in the Americas. She is Donald and Martha Robertson Chair in Latin American Art History at Tulane University, Senior Fellow of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

Equitable Infrastructure, Democracy, and Why Private Industry Can’t Address the Digital Divide

Posted by: Janna Deitz

Now, more than ever, vast amounts of digital information are instantly available to the public. And yet, accessing digital information and online services remains a challenge for those in areas without high-speed internet access. In this interview, Ann Eisenberg, Associate Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina and current Kluge Fellow, explained the …

Kluge Center's Dan Turello interviewing Gene Zubovich

How Liberal Protestants Shaped America, Part 2

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

This is part two of our interview with Gene Zubovich. For the first part, click here. What drew the attention of activist Protestants towards international affairs, and what impact did that have? In Before the Religious Right I discuss the work liberal Protestants were doing to fight racism, economic inequality, and to reshape American foreign …

Image of Gene Zubovich

How Liberal Protestant Activists Shaped America

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

Gene Zubovich is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, as well as a Kluge Fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He is the author of “Before the Religious Right.”  On April 19, 2022 at 4pm, Zubovich will discuss “Before the Religious …

Image of Kluge Director Brent Yacobucci interviewing Tamika Y. Nunley

Navigating Liberty’s Promise: Black Women in Washington, DC and the End of Slavery

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

Nineteenth-century Washington, DC was home to thousands of enslaved people, as well as a hotbed of abolitionist activism. Black women were subject to incredible levels of legal and social restriction, but found ways to make their own lives within that world. Historian Tamika Nunley’s latest book, At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting …