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Category: Media & Communications

Exploring Knowledge and Policy: My Journey as an Intern with the Kluge Center 

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

This is a guest post by Amanda Escotto. Escotto is a 2023 Kluge Center summer intern where she works with Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance Michael Jones-Correa in his research on social interaction and civic engagement of undocumented immigrants. She is a Master of Public Administration Candidate at the State University of New …

The Materiality of Thought (or How to Read Minds for Fun and Profit)

Posted by: Andrew Breiner

This is a guest post by Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellow Stuart Nolan, of Lancaster University in the UK. His research at the Kluge Center looks at the influence of New Thought on theatrical mentalism. Reading through the scrapbook of newspaper reports of the public appearances of the thought-reader John Randall Brown, in the …

A Movie Mystery at the Kluge Center

Posted by: Sophia Zahner

It started with a sneeze, or so we thought. Since the 1950s, film historians counted “The Sneeze” from 1894 as the earliest surviving film copyrighted in the United States. At this time, the film began being shown as a motion picture after being copied back to film from a photograph. Claudy Op den Kamp, a …

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 Kevin Butterfield

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 …

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 …

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: …