We're talking today with David Baron, author of “The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America,” who will be at this year’s National Book Festival on Sept. 6. It’s about the public fascination between 1890-1910 with what looked to be the very real possibility of life of Mars. The main cultural artifact of this belief might be H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, “The War of the Worlds,” which imagined hostile Martians invading Earth in spectacular fashion. But as Baron writes, most of the views were utopian, picturing Martians as a far advanced, heroic people.
Should your boyfriend save your beloved cat or a drowning stranger? Your stepdad has Alzheimer's and now your mom wants to date. Is this okay? Kwame Anthony Appiah, the author of The Ethicist column for the New York Times Magazine and 2024 winner of the Library’s John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, took on these and other quandries in a fun Live! At the Library event.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, the internationally recognized philosopher, author and professor, will be awarded the 2024 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today. The $500,000 prize, awarded every two years, recognizes individuals whose outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has shaped public affairs and civil society. Since the 1990s, Appiah’s work has been widely regarded as having deepened the understanding of ideas around identity and belonging, concepts that remain deeply consequential. The Library is developing programming on the theme of “Thinking Together” that will showcase Appiah’s work for a public audience.
Cormac Ó hAodha, a resident fellow in the John W. Kluge Center, is taking a deep dive into the Library's Alan Lomax Collection. Lomax, a major figure in 20th-century folklore and ethnomusicology, made field recordings in the Múscraí region of County Cork, Ireland, in the early 1950s. Ó hAodha is using those recordings as part of his Ph. D studies at the University College Cork into the history of the Múscraí song tradition.
George Chauncey is the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University and the 2022 recipient of the Library’s John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. He wrote this piece about how he used libraries to research his landmark book, “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940."
Michael Stratmoen is a program specialist for the John W. Kluge Center. In this question-and-answer, he talks about growing up in D.C. and working with the Kluge Center's scholars and their projects.
George Chauncey took to the stage in the Library’s Great Hall last Wednesday night to formally accept the 2022 Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. It was a black tie event that had an emotional undercurrent that belied both the formal wear of the crowd and the formal nature of academic dinners. …
Historian George Chauncey, whose work has focused on LGBTQ issues for four decades, is the 2022 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. The Kluge Prize awards $500,000 to scholars for distinguished work in fields outside those covered by the Nobel Prize. Previous winners include political historian Danielle Allen, philosopher Jurgen Habermas, former president of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and John Hope Franklin, the renowned scholar of African American history.
Danielle Allen, winner of the Library's 2020 Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, will host a series of exciting conversations at the Library to explore the nation's civic life and ways that people from all political beliefs and social causes can build a stronger, more resilient country.
