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

Václav Havel: Letters to Olga

Posted by: Dan Turello

On November 19, The John W. Kluge Center, The Embassy of the Czech Republic, and Florida International University will remember Václav Havel’s influence and legacy in a private conference at the Library of Congress. The event will be immediately followed by the dedication of a bust of President Havel in the U.S. Capitol. Havel twice …

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

Law Enforcement, Psychiatrists, and the Racialization of Drug Addiction in Postwar America

Posted by: Dan Turello

Washington University in St. Louis historian Sonia Song-Ha Lee, who regularly teaches classes about the civil rights movement, recalls being struck by the discrepancy between triumphant accounts of the history of desegregation and the more sobering realities of present day mass incarceration in the United States. The Sentencing Project estimates that 2.2 million individuals are presently …

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

Women, Fashion, and the Transatlantic Avant-Garde

Posted by: Dan Turello

“Oh, ok, I see, you think this has nothing to do with you” taunted fashion editor Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, as she explained to her skeptical assistant that the “cerulean” sweater she had picked out, to prove she was immune to trends, was actually the calculated product of …

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

On Microbes and Planets: Our Second Astrobiology Symposium Recapped

Posted by: Dan Turello

Last week’s astrobiology symposium, a part of our NASA/Library of Congress astrobiology program, was a feast of ideas and perspectives. I won’t attempt to summarize the entire event here. The conference proceedings will eventually be published as a volume, and the full webcast will be available on the Library of Congress and the NASA Astrobiology Institute websites …