Previously Recorded Events and Conversations

05/04/2023 Over 3,000 years ago, Ancient Athens gave rise to the world’s first democracy. What lessons can be gleaned from the 5 th Century BCE, to overcome the challenges facing our own form of government in the 21st?

Dr. Daniel Barrett leads a virtual discussion with Dr. Jeff Miller, chairman of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the State University of New York, New Paltz and author of Democracy in Crisis: Lessons
from Ancient Athens.

Barrett and Miller will explore parallels between today’s political upheavals and the experiences of the Ancient Greeks. Drawing on the lessons of the past, the two will discuss potential solutions to problems that could pose a threat to our modern
democracy.

03/02/2023 Seen & Unseen is a riveting exploration of how visual media has shifted the narrative on race and reignited the push towards justice. Barrett will focus on four recent pivotal moments described in the book—starting with the killing of George Floyd—to reveal the connections between our current news headlines, our social media feeds and the country’s long struggle against racism.

01/11/2023 Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy. In Conversation With Author David Zucchino. Moderator Daniel Barrett and David Zucchino, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, discuss ways dominant groups often prevail over historical narratives, and the importance of delving into primary sources to uncover truths about events that have been misconstrued, or entirely forgotten.

09/22/2022 While Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an American literary classic, it also contains language and themes that can be offensive to some modern readers. To mark this year’s Banned Book Week, Conversations: Truth, Myth & Democracy presents a panel of experts, including a former Harvard professor and renowned Twain scholar, to discuss the merits and challenges of teaching a literary classic like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

An Evening of Discussion with Dr. Peter Coleman and Dr. Averell Manes

03/09/2022 The Mark Twain Library and the Redding League of Women Voters are proud to present the fifth installment of our series “Conversations: Truth, Myth & Democracy.”  In this program, two experts on conflict resolution will be in a virtual discussion to offer insights into how deeply divided societies can, and in fact do, change. Dr. Peter Coleman is a Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University who studies polarizing, intractable conflict and sustainable peace and has recently published a book, The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization which addresses this exact topic. Dr. R. Averell Manes is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU).

01/26/2022 The Mark Twain Library and the Redding League of Women Voters are proud to present the fourth installment of our series “Conversations: Truth, Myth & Democracy.” In this program, Dr. Anthea Butler, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania will be in conversation with Psychology Professor Dr. Daniel Barrett of Western Connecticut State University. In her recently published book, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America, Dr. Butler outlined how inherent racism has been constant in white evangelical religion throughout America’s history. We held a program in December to discuss the book and now are proud to be able to offer this virtual conversation with Dr. Butler herself to further examine what the noted historian and theologian has discovered from her research.

09/30/2021 The Mark Twain Library and the Redding League of Women Voters are proud to present the third installment of our series “Conversations: Truth, Myth & Democracy” with Dr. Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Dr. William Galston of the Brookings Institution, moderated by Western Connecticut State University’s Dr. Daniel Barrett. This virtual discussion is between two noted social and political thinkers who will examine the causes and consequences of a divided America and explore how a revival of some of the principles of our political tradition can contribute to solving our national challenges.

04/01/2021 This virtual discussion is between two Civil War historians who grew up in the South and whose research took them both to some very personal revelations about their own beliefs. Those revelations are the subject of their books and of our conversation. The Conversations series is a grassroots effort that continues to examine the underlying meaning of our democracy and how democracy matters even when we have very different ideas about what it should look like.

03/04/2021 As part of our on-going series “Conversations,” created in partnership with the Redding League of Women Voters and the Mark Twain Library, we invite you to join us for a virtual discussion with acclaimed historian Dr. Jelani Cobb and renowned philosopher Dr. Jason Stanley.  The program will be moderated by award-winning journalist Tina Rosenberg and examines the underlying meaning of our democracy and how democracy can matter even when we have very different ideas about what it should look like.

10/21/2020 To research Genus Americanus, a seventy-year-old Northwestern journalism professor, Loren Ghiglione, and two twenty-something Northwestern journalism students, Alyssa Karas and Dan Tham, climbed into a minivan and embarked on a three-month, twenty-eight-state, 14,063-mile road trip in search of America’s identity. After interviewing 150 Americans about contemporary identity issues, they wrote this book, which is part oral history, part shoe-leather reporting, part search for America’s future, part memoir, and part travel journal.

10/05/2019 The Making Of A Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History and the Slave Trade. In this powerful memoir by Charles Dew, noted historian of the South and professor of American History at Williams College, Dew turns the focus on his own life, which began not in the halls of enlightenment, but in a society unequivocally committed to segregation.