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Kluge Center Welcomes New Director Kevin Butterfield

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

Kevin Butterfield, noted historian of American history and most recently executive director of the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, has joined the Library of Congress as Director of the John W. Kluge Center. Butterfield succeeds Brent Yacobucci, who has returned to managing the energy and materials …

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Stephanie Wood Joins Kluge Center as Jay I. Kislak Chair for the Study of the History and Cultures of the Early Americas

Posted by: Sophia Zahner

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the appointment of Stephanie Wood as Jay I. Kislak Chair for the Study of the History and Cultures of the Early Americas. Wood will begin her time at the Kluge Center this October. Wood is the Director and Research Associate at …

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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 …

Image of Steve Swayne holding a record

Three Objects, Three Composers

Posted by: Sophia Zahner

Steve Swayne’s lecture, titled “Three Objects, Three Composers,” is now available on the Library’s YouTube Channel. In a public event hosted on June 9, Swayne, the 2022 Kluge Chair in Modern Culture, discussed the lives of three composers he has studied at the Library, both currently and during his visits over the last twenty years: …

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 …