Durham Library Foundation Humanities Society
The Durham Library Foundation launched the Humanities Society in January 2010 after an overwhelmingly positive response from those attending the Durham County Library’s humanities programs. These programs were initiated in 2007 after the Durham County Library received a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, in addition to $1.5 million raised from local donors. After realizing people were attending multiple events, the Foundation decided to create the Humanities Society as a way to acknowledge and reward frequent program attendees.
Since its conception in 2010, the Humanities Society has grown to almost 650 members. By the end of 2011 alone Durham County Library will have presented 62 programs, doubling program numbers from the previous year. These programs have covered everything from discussions on the local food scene to presentations from nationally-recognized authors and artists. In addition to these award-winning programs, members of the Humanities Society are privy to special events throughout the year. Frequent Humanities Society program attendees were invited to a reception at Dos Perros, a private exhibit tour at Nasher Museum, and a tour and reception at the century-old Hill House.
Membership in the Humanities Society is free. Durham County Library patrons are invited to join at any humanities program. Humanities Society members who attend six programs in a calendar year have the opportunity to attend special invitation-only events.
For more information about the Humanities Society or humanities programs, please contact Joanne Abel at 919-560-0268 or at jabel@durhamcountync.gov.
Upcoming humanities programs include:
IN THE WINGS: PLAYMAKERS ON THE PARCHMAN HOUR
Monday, Oct. 24, 7 p.m.
Southwest Regional Library, 3605 Shannon Rd.
Join playwright Mike Wiley and actors from PlayMakers in conversation before the professional premiere of The Parchman Hour. In the fiery first months of America’s civil rights movement, waves of young people, mostly college students, rode buses into the heart of the Deep South. Many were brutally attacked, arrested, and imprisoned in Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm Penitentiary, where they invented an ingenious pastime to help them endure: a live variety show inspired by programs then popular on radio and television. Jokes, stories, singing and Bible readings sprang from every cell. This nightly event became known as The Parchman Hour. With characters such as Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, The Parchman Hour honors an important piece of our history.
WATCH AND READ: KEN BURNS’ PROHIBITION
Sunday, Oct. 30, 3 p.m.
Southwest Regional Library, 3605 Shannon Rd.
Join UNC-TV staff for a screening of excerpts from Ken Burns’ newest film. Prohibition is a documentary film series that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed. It was the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution that paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality. The story of Prohibition’s rise and fall is a compelling saga that goes far beyond the oft-told tales of gangsters, rum runners, flappers, and speakeasies, to reveal a complicated and divided nation in the throes of momentous transformation.
SNEAK PREVIEW: WHERE SOLDIERS COME FROM
Thursday, November 3, 7 p.m.
Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro St.
Directed by Heather Courtney, this documentary
follows the four-year journey of childhood friends who joined the National Guard after high school. The film chronicles the young men’s transformation from restless teenagers, to hardened soldiers, to combat veterans trying to start their lives at age 23. This event is in collaboration with the award-winning documentary series
POV (www.pbs.org/pov).
MEET THE AUTHOR & ARTIST: DR. ORRIN PILKEY AND MARY EDNA FRASER
Sunday, Nov. 6, 3 p.m.
Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro Street
Join Dr. Pilkey, the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Geology at Duke University, as he discusses his new book Global Climate Change: A Primer. Learn why he believes some people work to conceal facts about climate change and what “climategate” means to us. He will be joined by Mary Edna Fraser, whose silk batiks, often based on satellite images, beautifully illustrate the book. A book signing will follow the reading.
WATCH AND READ: NORTH CAROLINA’S WORLD WAR II EXPERIENCE
Saturday, Nov. 12, 3 p.m.
Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro Street
Join UNC-TV staff in honoring North Carolina’s Greatest Generation with excerpts from North Carolina World War II Experience. The story is told by the men and women who lived it – local participants revealing a historical record of how one state and its people served America during the second World War. Through remarkable archival film footage and photographs and revealing personal interviews with 25 men and women, this original documentary brings history to life, from battlefield to the home front.
ART WITH THE EXPERTS: BECOMING: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE WEDGE COLLECTION
Sunday, Nov. 13, 3 p.m.
Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro Street
Join Trevor Schoonmaker, the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art, for a slideshow and discussion of Becoming. This exhibit brings together 60 works by 40 artists from Canada, the U.S. and Africa that explore how new configurations of identity have been shaped by photographic portraits within the last century. Becoming offers a fresh
examination of the strength, beauty and complexity captured within representations of black life.
NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT WOMEN IN THE MILITARY
Saturday, Nov. 19, 3 p.m.
Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro Street
Eastern North Carolina is well known for its military bases, but the Piedmont region also has its share of 20th century military history. Join Beth Ann Koelsch, the curator of the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project at UNC-Greensboro, for a talk about women’s military history in the Piedmont since World War I.
MEET THE AUTHOR: DIANE DANIEL
Saturday, December 3, 3 p.m.
Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro St.
Explore North Carolina through its family farms, produce stands, farmers’ markets and more with Farm Fresh North Carolina author Diane Daniel. The author invites you to join her on this photographic journey from mountains to coastlines. Along the way, you’ll meet farmers and learn about local food sourcing, sustainable agriculture and our state’s agrarian past, present and future. A book signing will follow the reading.
IN THE WINGS: PLAYMAKERS ON WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
Monday, December 5, 7 p.m.
Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro St.
If love is a battlefield, this play features two of the struggle’s most skilled contenders. Actors Ray Dooley, Julie Fishell and Wendy Goldberg will discuss this knock-down, drag-out love story from the savagely wicked pen of American master Edward Albee.
THE LIBERATED GARDENER: TIPS FOR EASY, SUSTAINABLE AND EDIBLE GARDENS – PART 1, GROWING DWARF CITRUS INDOORS FOR CHRISTMAS
Thursday, December 8, 7 p.m.
East Regional, 211 Lick Creek Ln.
Join Frank Hyman, writer, artist and horticultural professional, for a workshop on growing dwarf citrus – oranges, lemons and limes – indoors for the holidays. Who needs boring houseplants when you can have dwarf evergreen trees with fragrant flowers and edible fruit? Learn the tricks to producing homegrown citrus. This is the first of a four-part gardening series.
ART WITH THE EXPERTS: THE DECONSTRUCTIVE IMPULSE: WOMEN ARTISTS RECONFIGURE THE SIGNS OF POWER, 1973-1991
Sunday, December 11, 3 p.m.
Main Library, 300 N. Roxboro St.
Join Sarah Schroth, the Nancy Hanks Senior Curator, and Juline Chevalier, Education Curator, at the Nasher Museum of Art, for a slide show and discussion of the current museum exhibition. This show is a survey of leading female artists on the feminist contribution to the development of deconstructivism in the 1970s and 80s.
BLUE V. DURHAM
Sunday, December 18, 3 p.m.
Hayti Heritage Center, 804 Old Fayetteville St.
During the "separate but equal" era preceding the 1954 Brown decision, African Americans in Durham won a landmark lawsuit for the equalization of school funding. Eddie Davis will lead a discussion on the 1951 Blue v. Durham federal court case. A panel of the original plaintiffs will provide background for the 60th anniversary commemoration of this historic case.
