Neilly Series

Carla Yanni: Neilly Series Lecture

Carla Yanni will discuss her most recent book, The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States. Yanni tells the story of therapeutic design, from America’s earliest purpose-builtinstitutions to the asylum construction frenzy in the…

Tim Weiner: Neilly Series Lecture

Pulitzer Prize winner, Tim Weiner, examines the history of the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after 9/11. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA earned Weiner…

Edward Mendelson: Neilly Series Lecture

Edward Mendelson, UR Class of 1966, is Literary Executor of the Estate of W.H. Auden and Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the author of Early Auden, Later Auden and the editor of W.H. Auden’s Complete…

Nancy Kress: Neilly Series Lecture

Rochesterian Nancy Kress has written more than twenty-three books and won four Nebula Awards and a Hugo for her science fiction writing. A one-time corporate copy writer, Kress taught at the State University of New York at Brockport, frequently…

Marie Howe: Neilly Series Lecture

Marie Howe’s new volume of poetry, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, explores the difference between the self and the soul, the secular and the sacred, and where is the kingdom of heaven? How does one live in Ordinary Time—during those periods that are…

Carl Zimmer: Neilly Series Lecture

Our brains are the foundation for who were are—they store our memories, give rise to our emotions, and enable us to look to the future. But our brains remain a terra incognita, an inner continent that remains barely explored. Only recently have…

Brit Bennett: Neilly Series Lecture

Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett’s mesmerizing first novel, The Mothers, is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. By employing entrancing, lyrical prose, The Mothers asks…

Dave Chisholm: Neilly Series Lecture

Dave Chisholm is a trumpet player, songwriter, composer, bandleader, educator, and visual artist. He is the writer and illustrator of the 2009 graphic novel Let’s Go to Utah! and his work appeared in highly-regarded comics publications such as Dark…

Joann S. Lublin: Neilly Series Lecture

Joann S. Lublin is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and management news editor for The Wall Street Journal. She was one of the first female reporters at The Journal, and created its first career advice column. Her book, Earning It: Hard-Won…

Garrard Conley: Neilly Series Lecture

As a young man, Garrard Conley, the son of a Baptist pastor in a small Arkansas town, was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When he was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was forced to make a life-changing decision: attend a…

Jenny Nordberg: Neilly Series Lecture

Jenny Nordberg is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and television producer. She has worked around the globe reporting on nuclear proliferation, foreign aid, human trafficking, the global financial crisis, as well as many human rights issues.…

Ruth Holland Scott: Neilly Series Lecture

Born and educated in Albion, Michigan, Ruth Holland Scott is an educator, author, and businesswoman who was the first African-American woman elected to serve on the Rochester City Council, and was elected its president in 1986. Scott’s career has…

Lauren Holmes: Neilly Series Lecture

Lauren Holmes was born in upstate New York. She received her BA from Wellesley College and MFA from Hunter College. Her first book, Barbara the Slut and Other People, was named a Best Book of 2015 by NPR and Publisher’s Weekly. Through its ten short…

David J. Peterson: Neilly Series Lecture

David J. Peterson is a language inventor and the creator of the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for HBO’s television series Game of Thrones. He is the author of The Art of Language Invention and of Living Language Dothraki. Together with Game of…

Carol J. Adams '72: Neilly Series Lecture

Carol J. Adams is the author of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. First published in 1990, the book has been translated into many languages, and will soon have editions in Spanish, Italian, Croatian, and French.…

Cristina Henríquez: Neilly Series Lecture

Cristina Henríquez is the author of Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories, The World in Half, and most recently, The Book of Unknown Americans—a dazzling page-turner about a family’s hopes for its new life in America. The hardships and…

Allen Kurzweil: Neilly Series Lecture

“Without time, we cannot learn. Without time, we cannot heal.” -Allen Kurzweil Novelist, journalist, teacher, and inventor, Allen Kurzweil shares his unusual story of trauma and transcendence in his nonfiction chronicle,Whipping Boy. In the book,…

Ayad Akhtar: Neilly Series Lecture

Ayad Akhtar is the author of the critically acclaimed, poignant, coming-of-age novel, American Dervish. Since its debut, the book has been embraced around the world for the richness of its characters and illuminating the everyday lives of Muslim…

Len Joy '73: Neilly Series Lecture

Published in April 2014, American Past Time tells the story of the disintegration and redemption of a family after the father, a minor league baseball player, fails to make it to the major leagues. It touches on events in American history from the…

Fred Guterl '81: Neilly Series Lecture

“The sixth ‘mass extinction event’ in the history of planet Earth is currently under way, with over two hundred species dying off every day. Will Homo sapiens be next—a victim of its own success? Humans dominate the Earth, and as our population…

Sarah Rodriguez: Neilly Series Lecture

From the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, American physicians treated women and girls for masturbation by removing the clitoris (clitoridectomy) or clitoral hood (female circumcision). During this same time, and continuing…

Lily Koppel: Neilly Series Lecture

Lily Koppel is the New York Times bestselling author of The Astronaut Wives Club, in which she gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of a group of women that helped to define an era and usher in a new age of women. As America's Mercury…

Sanford Thatcher: Neilly Series Lecture

Sanford Thatcher will discuss open access, which is viewed by librarians and their allies in academic administration as an antidote to the domination of certain sectors of higher education publishing by a few large internationally active companies.…

Dan Rattiner: Neilly Series Lecture

Dan Rattiner is best known for creating Dan's Papers , the largest circulating newspaper in the Hamptons. Founded in Montauk in 1960 as the first free newspaper in America, today it is a quirky, irreverent and informative publication, sometimes…

Awista Ayub: Neilly Series Lecture

Awista Ayub will talk about her work forming a young women's soccer team in Afghanistan. In 2003, she founded the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange, a non-profit organization dedicated to preparing Afghanistan's youth with leadership skills required to…

Abraham Verghese: Neilly Series Lecture

Abraham Verghese is a renowned physician, best-selling author, and Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He lectures widely on the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, on the…

Arthur Sze: Neilly Series Lecture

Arthur Sze will discuss "Tyuonyi: Multicultural Perspectives on Poetry." Tyounyi, a Keresan word, is the name of a meeting place situated in Bandelier, New Mexico. Sze has 22 years of experience working with Native Americans at the Institute of…

Craig Wolff '79: Neilly Series Lecture

The author will discuss his forthcoming biography of Willie Mays, tracing the life of the great baseball player from segregated Birmingham to the Major Leagues. Wolff will also discuss his last book, My Heart Will Cross This Ocean. Written with the…

Barbara Olshansky '82: Neilly Series Lecture

She went before the Supreme Court and won. In 2004, she successfully argued that detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be able to challenge their detention in US federal court. This case, The New York Times wrote, was "the most important civil…

Theresa Thanjan '94: Neilly Series Lecture

Thajan is an award winning filmmaker and activist. Her documentary Whose Children Are These? provides a gripping view into the lives of three Muslim teenagers negatively impacted by domestic national security measures. One such program, "Special…

Tom Lewis: Neilly Series Lecture

Lewis will discuss his latest book The Hudson: A History. He is also author of Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio and Divided Highways: The Interstate Highway System and the Transformation of American Life. Mr. Lewis has also consulted on,…

Ronald Calinger: Neilly Series Lecture

Professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, Calinger will discuss the mathematician Leonhard Euler. The Swiss-born genius is one of the four greatest mathematicians in history. This synopsis of his life, research,…

Paul R. Bowser: Neilly Series Lecture

Bowser, professor of Aquatic and Animal Medicine at Cornell, will discuss "Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia in Fish in the Great Lakes Basin." Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia (VHS) is an emerging viral disease of fish in the Great Lakes ecosystem. In 2006,…

Alan Burdick: Neilly Series Lecture

Author of Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, Alan Burdick will discuss his latest book. Burdick writes for numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, Natural History and Discover, where he is senior editor. One of his…

Patch Adams: Neilly Series Lecture

The real person behind the hit movie starring Robin Williams, Patch Adams is both a healthcare physician and a professional clown. He is founder of the Gesundheit! Institute, a holistic health facility emphasizing laughter and humor as an essential…

John Harris: Neilly Series Lecture

Noted editor at the Washington Post, John Harris will talk about his new book about presidential politics, The Way to Win. Its thesis is that the two people with the greatest understanding about how to win modern presidential campaigns are Bill…

Laura Nash: Neilly Series Lecture

Senior lecturer at Harvard Business School in the Entrepreneurial Management unit, Laura Nash will explore critical problems with dominant models of success today and how they impact performance, leadership, and commitment in a talk titled “Just…

Lynn Freed: Neilly Series Lecture

Author of Reading, Writing and Leaving Home, Lynn Freed will discuss her writing, including some works not yet published. The New York Times described Reading, Writing and Leaving Home as a wry lively series of essays that were a welcome exception…

John Pickstone: Neilly Series Lecture

ohn Pickstone on “Describing, Analysing and Controlling Life: The Past and Present of Bio-medical (& other) Sciences.” Pickstone is the author of Ways of Knowing: a New History of Modern Science, Technology and Medicine. He leads the ongoing…

Joan Shelley Rubin: Neilly Series Lecture

The Critic, The Reader, and The Poet: Literary Authority in Postwar America: Belligerent readers and a beleaguered critic are the topic of the first presenter of the Neilly Series, Joan Shelly Rubin, professor of history at the University of…

Nicholas Basbanes: Neilly Series Lecture

Among the Gently Mad, Redux: Nicholas Basbanes is the author of A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Patience and Fortitude: A Roving Chronicle of Book People,…

Richard Ben Cramer: Neilly Series Lecture

The Hero's Life: Its Worth and Its Costs: Meliora Weekend 2001 will feature Richard Ben Cramer. Mr. Cramer, who often writes about baseball and politics, is a best selling biographer. His latest book is Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life; he is also the…

Lawrence Ashmead: Neilly Series Lecture

An Editor's Quest: Finding Books to Publish: Lawrence Ashmead '54, vice president and executive editor at HarperCollins, will be at the Libraries to discuss how he selects the books he publishes and what types of sources provide potential "finds."…

David Headlam: Neilly Series Lecture

Blues to Rock: Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page Discover Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters: Academia and pop culture will collide and Rush Rhees will be hip hopping when Eastman School music theorist David Headlam examines the British discovery of the roots…

Sylvia Nasar: Neilly Series Lecture

A Beautiful Mind: Genius, Madness, Reawakening: Sylvia Nasar, author and professor of journalism at Columbia University, will recount the story of mathematical genius and inventor of game theory John Nash. Nash woke from decades of devastating mental…

Miriam Grace Monfredo: Neilly Series Lecture

Women's Rights: What's Not in the History Books: March is Women's History Month and Miriam Grace Monfredo will speak about the women's rights movement and its portrayal in the history books. A former librarian and historian, she is the author of…

Mark Cuddy: Neilly Series Lecture

Developing New Plays and Musicals: A fitting "wrap" for the season is Mark Cuddy, artistic director of GEVA Theatre. Mr. Cuddy made his acting debut last season, but he is more widely known for his many directing achievements. Mr. Cuddy will describe…

Kenn Harper: Neilly Series Lecture

Harper's lecture, "The Life of Minik," describes an Inuit boy's life after being taken by explorer Robert Peary from Greenland to New York City in 1897. The lecture, accompanied by slides, describes Minik's life in NY, his discovery that his father's…

Simon Winchester: Neilly Series Lecture

Winchester is the acclaimed author of the international bestsellers The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, and The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern…

Scott Ritter: Neilly Series Lecture

Ritter served as a military intelligence officer, reaching the rank of major. He was formerly an arms control inspector in the former Soviet Union and was on the staff of General Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War, before joining the UN weapons…

John Storm Roberts: Neilly Series Lecture

Roberts' lecture, "Gestating Jazz: The Mexican Tour of 1885," explores the Latin "tinge" in ragtime and jazz. Roberts has documented and promoted music from countries worldwide. He studied languages at Oxford and subsequently reviewed local music for…

Emil Homerin: Neilly Series Lecture

Homerin's lecture, "Translating Islam," presents several views of Islam's creative diversity and culture, the origin and persistence of Western depictions of Islam, and militant Islam's image of the West. A central theme of the presentation is how…

Bruce Whiteman: Neilly Series Lecture

Whiteman has published extensively as a poet and reviewer, and has written a number of books about bibliography, printing and literary history. He is the author of Visible Stars: New and Selected Poems and he co-edited the recent catalogue The World…

Linda Greenhouse: Neilly Series Lecture

Greenhouse has been the Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times since 1978. Prior to covering the Court, she attended Yale Law School on a Ford Foundation fellowship. She has a Master of Studies in Law, and in 1998 she was awarded a…

John Noble Wilford: Neilly Series Lecture

John Noble Wilford is a senior science writer at The New York Times who, for over three decades, covered many major missions of the US space program. Not limited to reporting on space, he flew through the eye of a hurricane, submerged in research…

Oscar Hijuelos: Neilly Series Lecture

Oscar Hijuelos, acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning author of the international bestseller The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, will present "From Anecdote to Speculation: The Small and Larger Details of Life that Inspire One's Fiction." Hijuelos will…

Ann-Marie MacDonald: Neilly Series Lecture

Ann-Marie MacDonald will begin her North American tour at the River Campus Libraries! MacDonald, author of the best-selling Fall on Your Knees, will discuss her eagerly awaited new novel The Way The Crow Flies. Fall on Your Knees was an Oprah book…

Robert Bakos, MD: Neilly Series Lecture

Robert Bakos will discuss "Dead German Composers and How They Got That Way," including the medical histories of some of our best-known composers. He will investigate how their medical conditions affected their creativity and contributed to their…

Linda Sue Park: Neilly Series Lecture

Linda Sue Park, author of A Single Shard, won the 2002 Newbery Medal just two years after her first book was published. But her 'overnight' success actually took nearly three decades to achieve. She will discuss her reading, writing, and publication…

Mark Pachter: Neilly Series Lecture

Mark Pachter, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, will discuss "The Making of an American Icon: George Washington and Gilbert Stuart." There is only one American visual document that might be said to rank in importance with the Declaration of…

David Ropeik: Neilly Series Lecture

David Ropeik, Director of Risk Communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, will talk about "Risk Perception. Why Our Fears Don't Match the Facts." Ropeik will discuss how humans subconsciously "decide," based more on emotional than factual…

David Owen: Neilly Series Lecture

David Owen, author of Copies in Seconds: How a Lone Inventor and an Unknown Company Created the Biggest Communication Breakthrough Since Gutenberg-Chester Carlson and the Birth of the Xerox Machine. Listen to the spellbinding story of Carlson's…

Edward P. Jones: Neilly Series Lecture

Edward P. Jones' recently published novel The Known World won a National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. His short stories have appeared in Essence, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Callaloo. Jones taught creative writing at the…

Roy Blount Jr.: Neilly Series Lecture

Roy Blount Jr., prides himself on the fact that he has done more things, for money, than any other humorist, novelist, journalist, dramatist, lyricist, lecturer, reviewer, performer, versifier, cruciverbalist, sportswriter, screenwriter, anthologist,…

Stewart Weaver: Neilly Series Lecture

Stewart Weaver, Professor of British History at the University of Rochester, will present "Because It Was There: Mallory, Everest, And The 1920s." Weaver, who has a book forthcoming on the history of Himalayan exploration and mountaineering, will…

Katherine Ashenburg: Neilly Series Lecture

Katherine Ashenburg is the author of The Mourner's Dance: What We Do When People Die. Dr. Ashenburg taught at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and at Katholieke Universiteit in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She was a producer for CBC…

Kim J. Vicente: Neilly Series Lecture

Kim J. Vicente, author of The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way People Live with Technology, will discuss how we can bridge the widening gap between people and technology. Currently, Vicente is Professor of Mechanical & Industrial…

Paula Treichler: Neilly Series Lecture

Paula Treichler, Professor in the College of Medicine, the Gender & Women's Studies Program, and the Institute for Communications Research at the University of Illinois- Champaign will present "Medicine, Culture and Narrative Power: AIDS on…

Charles "Chip" Groat: Neilly Series Lecture

Charles "Chip" Groat, Director of the US Geological Service, will discuss "US Geological Survey: 125 Years of Science for America." He will talk about how the USGS began as surveys of the West in the 1870s and has evolved into a natural science…

Ciarid O'Brien: Neilly Series Lecture

The Influence of the Yiddish Theater on American Pop Culture: In its heyday in the 20's, the Yiddish theater had over 11 Broadway style houses in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, the oldest artists Union in America and a roster of unforgettable…

Ha Jin: Neilly Series Lecture

Acclaimed novelist and poet Ha Jin will discuss his work, including his latest novel, War Trash, winner of the 2005 Pen/Faulkner Award. His earlier work, Waiting, won a National Book Award and the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. War Trash is…

William H. Calvin: Neilly Series Lecture

William H. Calvin will discuss his book, A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond. A theoretical neurobiologist with an appointment to Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Calvin…

Rachel Cohen: Neilly Series Lecture

"Rachel Cohen has created a masterpiece of variety and balance in her first book" are the words used to describe A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854-1967. Cohen, who teaches at Sarah Lawrence, selected 30…

David Rosner: Neilly Series Lecture

Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, which chronicles the history of environmental and industrial illness, is authored by David Rosner, Professor of History and Public Health at Columbia University and Director of the…

Kevin Kling: Neilly Series Lecture

Humorist and playwright Kevin Kling has expressed himself in many different arenas: theatre, television, radio, recording, and literature. His plays, such as The Ice Fishing Play and Gravity vs. Levity, have been seen in national and international…

Neilly Series Lectures

In a wonderful millennium gift, Life Trustee Andrew H. Neilly and his wife, Janet, established a named, endowed library position at the University of Rochester with a $1 million gift. The Andrew H. and Janet Dayton Neilly Dean of River Campus…

Walter Stahr: Neilly Series Lecture

"Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man": The first Neilly Series Lecture in 2014 will be presented by Walter Stahr, a highly acclaimed biographer whose latest book, Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man, is the first full biography of Seward's life to…

Andrew Scull: Neilly Series Lecture

Andrew Scull has held faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and the University of California--San Diego, where he has been Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Science Studies since 1994. In 1993, he was…

Susie Linfield: Neilly Series Lecture

Susie Linfield, Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University, will speak at the Neilly Series Lecture on "Photojournalism and Human Rights." Linfield directs the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at NYU, and writes about culture…

Benjamin Sáenz: Neilly Series Lecture (Lecture in San Francisco)

The November 1st Neilly Series Lecture will be held in San Francisco, with Benjamin Sáenz as the guest speaker. Sáenz was raised in New Mexico, received a BA in humanities and philosophy from St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, studied theology at the…

Lawrence Hill: Neilly Series Lecture Lecture (UReads)

Join the University of Rochester community as we read and discuss the same book: Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill. The Book: Someone Knows My Name The novels tells the story of a young woman who forges her way to freedom after being abducted…

Jeffrey Allen Tucker: Neilly Series Lecture

One of the most prolific African American authors of his time, John A. Williams (1925–2015) made his mark as a journalist, educator, and writer. Conversations with John A. Williams collects twenty-three interviews with the three-time winner of the…

Dubravka Ugresic: Neilly Series Lecture

Dubravka Ugresic is an Amsterdam-based author who has established herself as one of Europe’s most distinctive novelists and essayists. Born in the former Yugoslavia, her work often discusses the collapse of her country, the political turmoil that…

Johanna Skibsrud: Neilly Series Lecture

Johanna Skibsrud’s first novel, The Sentimentalists, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious literary prize, in 2010. The book was subsequently shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Award and has currently been translated into…

Roger Easton and Keith Knox: Neilly Series Lecture

Roger Easton, Professor at RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, and Keith Knox, UR alumnus and retiree from Xerox Corporation, will present "Ten Years of Imaging between (and through) Lines of the Archimedes Palimpsest" on Thursday,…

Jonathan Clark: Neilly Series Lecture

Kenneth Patchen's art is the subject of Jonathan Clark's lecture, "Extending the Medium of Words: The Graphic Art of Kenneth Patchen," the first of this season's Neilly Series Lectures. Patchen, one of the 20th century's leading experimental writers,…

Joseph Sassoon: Neilly Series Lecture

Joseph Sassoon, the guest speaker for the last of this season's Neilly Series Lectures, is the author of Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime, and The Iraqi Refugees: The New Crisis in the Middle East. Sassoon is currently…

Anthony Giardina: Neilly Series Lecture

The Wednesday, March 20th Neilly Series Lecture guest speaker is Anthony Giardina, the author of the novels Men with Debts (1984), A Boy's Pretensions (1988), Recent History (2001), and White Guys (2006). Giardina's fifth novel, Norumbega Park, was…

Brian Dettmer: Neilly Series Lecture

Brian Dettmer will speak on Sunday of Meliora Weekend at the Memorial Art Gallery on University Avenue on the topic of "ReMixed Media." Dettmer transforms books into amazing works of art that have been exhibited and collected throughout the world.…

Anne Stiles: Neilly Series Lecture

Anne Stiles, an expert on the intersection between science and literature during the Victorian era, presents the Neilly Lecture, “Rewriting the Rest Cure in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden.” Stiles is an assistant professor of English and…

Kristel Thornell: Neilly Series Lecture

Kristel Thornell was born in Sydney, Australia, and has lived in Italy, Mexico, Canada, Finland and, currently, is based in Rochester, NY. Her debut novel, Night Street, was first released in Australia, where it won the Australian / Vogel Literary…

Chang-rae Lee: Neilly Series Lecture

The first Neilly Series Lecture of the academic year will be held Wednesday, October 24th with one of America's leading authors, Chang-rae Lee, speaking.Chang-rae Lee is known for his novels that explore themes of identity and assimilation. His first…

Harlan Lane: Neilly Series Lecture

The guest speaker for the first of this season's Neilly Series Lectures is Harlan Lane, Distinguished University professor of psychology at Northeastern University in Boston, and the founder of the Center for Research in Hearing, Speech, and…

Leslie Adrienne Miller: Neilly Series Lecture

Leslie Adrienne Miller's poetry has won numerous prizes and awards, and has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. She is currently Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and her sixth collection of…

Peter Blair Henry: Neilly Series Lecture

Peter Blair Henry, economist and former Dean of New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Music, is the April Neilly Series Lecture speaker. Dr. Henry was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, receiving a BA in math and a Full Blue in…

Robert James Miller: Neilly Series Lecture

Author and Lawyer Robert J. Miller is the March Neilly Series Lecture speaker. Miller is a member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and a practitioner and teacher of Indian Law. He is Associate Professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in…

Gerald Oppenheimer: Neilly Series Lecture

For over three decades, Americans have lived with an epidemic that has now become almost invisible. But earlier in the arc from past to present, HIV/AIDS was a disorder that strained credulity, engendered panic, and called our medical and scientific…

Danielle Ofri: Neilly Series Lecture

Journey with one doctor from the nation's oldest and most legendary public hospital as she navigates the eye-opening cultural permutations of today's America. Author of Medicine in Translation: Journeys with My Patients.

Curtis White: Neilly Series Lecture

"Inevitably, a Romantic." A discussion of Romanticism and its relation to American culture since the 1960s. Social critic, essayist, and novelist, White has authored five novels, several works of nonfiction and edited works, and numerous articles and…

John Palattella: Neilly Series Lecture

John Palattella will discuss magazines and literary culture in the present economic and publishing climate. He is literary editor of The Nation, the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. He received a BA from Washington…

Aubrey Anable: Neilly Series Lecture

Aubrey Anable applies affect theory to game studies, arguing that video games let us “rehearse” feelings, states, and emotions that give new tones and textures to our everyday lives and interactions with digital devices. Rather than seeing video…

David Kwong: Neilly Series Lecture

David Kwong is a magician, crossword puzzle constructor, producer, and author. He routinely creates crossword puzzles for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and was a TED featured speaker. Kwong serves as one of the…

Jeffrey H. Jackson '99: Neilly Series Lecture

Paris Under Water: how the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910: After weeks of torrential rainfall, the Seine overflowed, sending hundreds of thousands of people fleeing. Parisians rallied to rebuild and the ablity to work together proved…

Junot Diaz: Neilly Series Lecture

Diaz is the 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which also won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Diaz is here through the support of the Kearns Center, the Office of the President, the Spanish and Latino…

Marcel Danesi: Neilly Series Lecture

Danesi will explore why puzzles have emerged in human cultures ina talk entitiled "The Function of Puzzles in Human Life." Starting with the Riddle of the Sphinx, every culture across time has developed similar puzle tradistions (word games, logic…

Hilary Tann: Neilly Series Lecture

Composer Hilary Tann, composer-in-residence for the Women in Music Festival at the Eastman School of Music, will reflect on the role of poetry in her musical life. Her presentation, "Three Welsh Poets," also includes readings from the works of George…

Gabrielle Calvocoressi: Neilly Series Lecture

Calvocoressi is the author of several books of poetry, including The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart and Apocalyptic Swing, which is a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.Introduction by Jennifer Grotz.

Dani Shapiro: Neilly Series Lecture

What makes a person a person? What combination of heredity and environment, nature and nurture, shapes our lives and forms our identity? After a lifetime spent writing fiction and memoir about the corrosive power of secrets within families, Dani…

Daniel M. Kimmel '77: Neilly Series Lecture

In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, creating the iconic concept, and incidentally creating modern science fiction. In 1935, Elsa Lanchester married the monster. And now, Daniel M. Kimmel ’77 updates the myth, and tells the tale from the point…

Lauren Haley: Neilly Series Lecture

Lauren Alexandra Haley is a violinist, pedagogy expert, and the author of Kids Aren’t Lazy: Developing Motivation & Talent Through Music. In redefining motivation as the learned rush of joy from conquering challenges, and talent as the sum of…

Emily Bernard: Neilly Series Lecture

As a graduate student, Emily Bernard was the victim of a random stabbing in a New Haven café. In this powerful lecture, she shares the story of her journey to ultimately make sense of this bizarre act of violence, including what it taught her about…

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Paul Lauter: Neilly Series Lecture

Paul Lauter was incredibly active throughout the movements for social change during the 1960s. The ways in which he participated are extensive. In his new book, Our Sixties—An Activist’s History, Lauter examines the values, the exploits, the…

Ed Hajim: : Neilly Series Lecture

Edmund A. Hajim ’58, financier, philanthropist, and chairman emeritus of the University of Rochester Board of Trustees, will share stories and lessons from his inspirational and powerful new book, On the Road Less Traveled: An Unlikely Journey from…

Catherine D’Ignazio & Lauren F. Klein: Neilly Series Lecture

In this lecture, Catherine D’Ignazio, Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning and Director of the Data + Feminism Lab at MIT and Lauren F. Klein, Associate Professor in the departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods and…

Ian Manuel: Neilly Series Lecture

In this talk, Manuel will discuss his memoir, My Time Will Come, which details his rocky journey on the road to redemption, after being sentenced to life in prison without parole at the age of 14, and surviving 18 years in solitary confinement.…

Avram Finkelstein, Locating AIDS on the 21st Century Image Landscape: Neilly Lecture Series

The story of HIV/AIDS is likely the most cogent corporeal metaphor for the turn of the 21st century, a story of gender, race, class, identity, access and institutional power. It’s the story of the truths of the soul and the lies of the mind. But…

Peter Conners, Beyond the Edge of Suffering: Neilly Lecture Series

After a decade of exclusively writing nonfiction books about music and counterculture, the pandemic pushed Conners back into writing prose poetry. In his talk, Conners will read from and discuss his book, sharing personal stories about the origins of…

Erin Gruwell, Dear Freedom Writer: Neilly Lecture Series

The River Campus Libraries invites you to attend a Neilly Author Series talk from Erin Gruwell, a teacher and founder of the Freedom Writers Foundation. Her unique teaching method led to the publication of The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and…

Dayna Bowen Matthew, Just Health: Neilly Lecture Series

Dayna Bowen Matthew, JD, PhD, is the Dean and Harold H. Greene Professor of Law at the George Washington (GW) University Law School. In her talk, Matthew will share insights, research, and conclusions from her most recent bookJust Health: Treating…

Gitanjali Rao, A Young Innovator’s Guide to STEM: Neilly Series

An author, inventor, scientist, engineer, and STEM advocate, 17 year old Gitanjali Rao will be discussing her bookA Young Innovator’s Guide to STEM, which gives students and educators an approach to the kinds of problems that old tools and techniques…

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