Skip to Main Content


Jessie Ball duPont Library

Friends of the Library at Sewanee: The University of the South

A guide to the events and membership of the Friends of the Library at Sewanee

FOL Events 2024-25

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOL Events 2000 - Present

June 19, 2024

Nickole Brown and Lindsey Harding

Readings from School of Letters Faculty

Co-Sponsored with the School of Letters

 

March 25, 2024

Dr. Juilee Decker, Professor of History at Rochester Institute of Technology

Unveiling the Past: Advancing Knowledge of the Humanities and Special Collections through Multispectral Imaging

 

March 4, 2024

Hannah Matis, School of Theology

Emmitt Riley, College

Justin Taylor, School of Letters

Celebrating Faculty Publications

 

February 5, 2024

Dr. Robin R. Bates, Professor Emeritus of English

Cards and the Battle of the Sexes i 18th Century London

 

November 13, 2023

Sixth Annual Tom Watson Memorial Lecture

Geoffrey Ward. University Organist and Choirmaster

The University Choir: Building Community through Choral Music

 

October 20, 2023

Faculty Publications and Faculty-Student Research

Vice-Chancellor Installation Week

 

October 2, 2023

Stephanie McCarter and Rachel Reynolds

Translations: Ancient and Modern

 

June 21, 2023

Ryan Chapman and Meera Subramanian

Readings from School of Letters Faculty

Co-Sponsored with the School of Letters

 

April 12, 2023

Lauryl Tucker, Matthew Mitchell, The Rev. Rob MacSwain

Celebrating Faculty Publications

 

April 3, 2023

Edible Books Festival

 

February 9, 2023

Dr. Robin R. Bates, Professor Emeritus of English

The Significance of Card Playing in Jane Austen

 

November 2, 2022

Fifth Annual Tom Watson Memorial Event

David Payne and Gregory Williams Welsch

An Evening with Lewis & Tolkien

 

September 21, 2022

Dr. David Haskell, Professor of Biology

Sounds Wild and Broken

 

June 29, 2022

Jamie Quatro, Nickole Brown, Allen Reddick

Readings from School of Letters Faculty

Co-sponsored by the School of Letters

 

(Friends of the Library did not have any programs from March 2020 - June 2022)

 

February 5, 2020

Collin Cornell, Melody Lehn, Shana Minkin, Jennifer Michael, Sean O'Rourke, Greg Pond

Celebrating Faculty Publications

 

November 13, 2019

Fourth Annual Tom Watson Memorial Lecture

Dr. John Grammer, Professor of English

Why Study the South? Southern Studies in the 21st Century

 

September 16, 2019

Dr. Bil Bass, Founder of the UTK Body Farm

Case Studies from the Body Farm

 

June 12, 2019

Meera Subramanian, Author

Reading and Conversation - A River Runs Again: India's Natural World in Crisis

Co-sponsored by the School of Letters

 

May 1, 2019

Rob Bachman, Julia Gatta, Pradip Malde, Stephanie McCarter, Amy Patterson

Celebrating Faculty Publications

 

April 1, 2019

Edible Books Festival

 

January 30, 2019

Sewanee Review Staff

The Sewanee Review and the Future of Literary Magazines

 

November 1, 2018

Third Annual Tom Watson Memorial Lecture

Dr. Beth Rushing, President of the Appalachian College Association

Transformative Collaboration: the Appalachian College Association and the Bowen Central Library of Appalachia

 

October 2, 2018

David B. Coe, Author

Imagination as Mirror: What Speculative Fiction Can Teach Us About Our World

 

June 13, 2018

Maha Jafri, Professor of English

Reading for Pleasure, Reading for Spite: Gossip and Victorian Literature

Co-Sponsored with the School of Letters

 

April 18, 2018

W. Brown Patterson, William Engel,

Susan Ridyard, J. Ross MacDonald

The Art of Memory and the New History in Early Modern England

 

February 13, 2018

Andrew Hudgins

Andrew Hudgins Reads and Discusses His Poems

 

November 7, 2017

Second Annual Tom Watson Memorial Lecture

Rev. Dr. Robert MacSwain

Rational and Imaginative Persuasion: The Ambiguous Achievement of C.S. Lewis

 

October 3, 2017

Steve Suitts

Justice Hugo Black as a Young Southern Advocate for Social Justice

 

September 21, 2017

Vicki Sells, Associate Provost for LITS

The New Learning Commons

 

July 5, 2017

Alana Levinson-LaBrosse

Translations of Kurdish Poetry

Co-sponsored with the School of Letters

 

February 21, 2017

Erin McGraw, Fiction Author

Storytelling: It's not what you think it is

 

November 30, 2016

Bob Benson, Professor Emeritus of English

Wedding the Wild Particular

 

September 21, 2016

First Annual Tom Watson Memorial Lecture

Chris Nugent, Director of Warren Wilson College Library

Remembering, Reflecting, Reckoning: German Women and the Long Shadow of National Socialism

 

June 8, 2016

Ed Tarkington

Author of Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Co-sponsored with School of Letters

 

March 31, 2016

Matt Reynolds, Associate Director of Archives and Special Collections

Making Space: Cartographic Selections from University Archives and Special Collections

 

February 15, 2016

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Author

Boys to Men and Back Again

 

November 13, 2015

Dr. Jerry Smith, Professor of Religion

Excavation of Rebels' Rest

 

February 27, 2015

The Perkins Symposium: William Perkins and Elizabethan England

Dr. Brown Patterson, Dr. Benjamin King, Dr. Ross McDonald, Dr. Jim Turrell

 

February 3, 2015

Dr. Pat Kelley, Professor Emeritus, Religion

A Modest Proposal on Bonhoeffer and Biography

 

December 4, 2014

DebbieLee Landi, Director of University Archives and Special Collections

Special Collections: For the Love of Books

 

October 17, 2014

Dr. Samuel R. Williamson, 14th Vice-Chancellor of the University of the South and Professor of History Emeritus

The Start of the First World War: What Happened and Why It Still Matters

Co-Sponsored with Finding Your Place

 

September 4, 2014

Jeanne Marie Warzeski, Curator of the North Carolina Museum of History

Windows into Heaven: Russian Iconography

 

June 18, 2014

David Mickics, Critic

Slow Reading in a Hurried Age

 

April 24, 2014

Dr. William S. Stoney, C'52, Cardiac Surgeon

Medical Schools Through the Years

 

January 30, 2014

Dr. Martin Knoll, Professor in Forestry and Geology

Sewanee's Baltic Amber Insect Collection

 

November 4, 2013

Minton Sparks, Poet, performance artist, novelist, teacher, and essayist

Southern Storytelling

 

October 3, 2013

Rachel Hildebrandt, Guest Curator

Home Front, War Front: Sewanee and Ft. Oglethorpe in World War I

 

September 8, 2013

Sarah C. Sherwood and Jan F. Simek

The Sky Above, the Mud Below: Prehistoric Rock Art in the Southeast

Co-sponsored with the Department of Anthropology

 

June 19, 2013

Richard Tillinghast

Readings from Poetry and Istanbul Travel Book

Co-sponsored with the School of Letters

 

April 22, 2013

Patrick Dean, Author 

Hudson Stuck: 100 Year Anniversary of the Ascent of Denali

 

February 28, 2013

Marvin Pate, Rich Berlin, Michael Thompson

Sustainability Initiatives in Sewanee

 

January 31, 2013

Rayid Ghani, Chief Scientist for the Obama Campaign

The Role of Data, Technology, and Analytics in the Presidential Elections

Co-sponsored with the Math and Computer Science and Economics Departments, Sherwood Ebey Lecture.

 

November 28, 2012

Kevin Wilson, Assistant Professor in the Department of English

The Family Fang and Readings from a Work in Progress

 

October 24, 2012

John Tilford,  Betsy Grant, and Rick Sommer

The Rick and Wilma Sommer Special Collection

 

March 29, 2012

Dr. John McCardell, Jr., Vice-Chancellor and President

The Library of the Future

 

February 29, 2012

Richard Tillinghast, Poet

Readings from Poetry

 

January 26, 2012

Jane Borden, Author

I Totally Meant to do That

 

November 17, 2011

W. Brown Patterson, Professor Emeritus of History

The History of the King James Bible: 400 Years

 

October 3, 2011

Sharyn McCrumb, Award Winning Southern Author

The Ballad Books and Southern Culture

 

March 8, 2010

Thomas Lakeman, Tennessee Williams Playwright in Residence

The Movies of Alfred Hitchcock

 

April 24, 2009

Thomas Keith, Consulting Editor at New Directions

Publishing Tennessee Williams, New Directions, and James Laughlin


February 13, 2009

Harry Lee (Hal) Poe, President of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum and Foundation of Richmond, Virginia

Eureka: Poe’s Journey of Discovery

 

 November 19, 2008

Sarah Sherwood, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of the South

Archeological Research at the Bronze Age Site of Pecia in Romania

 

October 29, 2008

Thomas S. Freeman, Researcher for the British Academy John Foxe Project

New Views of ‘Bloody Mary’ and the Tudor Counter-Reformation

 

October 22, 2008

Derek Waller, Retired Professor of Political Science, Vanderbilt University

A North Korean Birthday Party

 

April 16, 2008

James C. Davidheiser, Professor of German, University of the South

And They Lived Happily Ever After: The Brothers Grimm and Their Phenomenally Successful Fairy Tales

 

April 11, 2007

Donald Huber, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical Languages, University of the South

Reading from Kick Butt, Huber’s humorous novel about a Southeastern Conference college football season

 

October 18, 2006

Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Historian and Sewanee Alumnus, C’53, H’85

Who Owns the Dead? T.E. Lawrence of Arabia and his Disputed Reputation

 

September 27, 2006

Robert Benson, Professor of English, University of the South

Reading from Blood and Memory, a memoir

 

April 19, 2006

Anthony Abbott, author, critic, literary historian and Professor of English at Davidson College

Readings from his own poetry & prose

 

February 8, 2006

Robb White, humorist, naturalist and author of How To Build A Tin Canoe

Old-Time Naturalists

 

December 8, 2005

Ninette Fahmy, Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University and specialist in Egyptian politics

Women and Human Rights in Egypt

 

October 3, 2005

Calhoun Winton, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Maryland

The History of Scottish Books in the Colonial South

 

March 23, 2005

John Gatta, Brown Foundation Fellow at the University and former Professor of English at the University of Connecticut

Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Southern Episcopalian?

 

February 16, 2005

Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Florida

Honor and the Tragedy of Assassinations:  Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln

 

December 1, 2004

Annie Armour, University Archivist, and Tam Carlson, Professor of English at the University

The Present and Future State of the New Archives

(a joint meeting with the Sewanee Historic Preservation Society, held at the newly renovated Kappa Sigma House)

 

October 27, 2004

Todd Kelley, University Librarian

Plans and Goals for the duPont Library

 

April 17, 2004

William “Woody” Register, Professor of History and American Studies at the University

The Biggest Playground on Earth:  Luna Park at Coney Island

 

March 31, 2004

Paul Bergeron, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Tennessee and Brown Foundation Fellow at the University

Andrew Johnson of Tennessee and His Presidency

 

March 10, 2004

George Core, Editor of The Sewanee Review

George Garrett As A Man Of Letters

 

October 6, 2003

Jon Meacham, Managing Editor of Newsweek and author of Franklin and Winston

The Discovery of the Private Letters of FDR’s Great Love, Lucy Rutherford

 

April 22, 2003

Gerald Smith, Professor of Religion at the University

What We Can Learn From Cemeteries

 

March 26, 2003

Samuel Williamson, retired Vice-Chancellor and President of the University

Higher Education and the Vietnam War

 

November 20, 2002

Michael Bradley, Professor of History, Motlow State Community College

It Happened Here in the Civil War

 

October 31, 2002

Malcolm Goldstein, Emeritus Professor of English, City University of New York

Thornton Wilder’s Novels, Heaven’s My Destiny and The Eighth Day

 

April 17, 2002

Edwin M. Yoder, Jr., syndicated columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist

Admitted Fiction:  From Journalist to Writer of Fiction

 

 February 19, 2002

Milbury Polk, author of Women of Discovery

Writing His Book

 

December 11, 2001

Jam Yang Norbu, Tibetan novelist

Tibetan Politics and the Great Game

 

November 28, 2001

Joel Cunningham, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University

Reflections on My First Year at Sewanee

 

October 19, 2001

James Waring McCrady, Emeritus Professor of French at the University

Russian Icons

 

April 19, 2001

Charles B. Lowry, Dean of Libraries, University of Maryland

Libraries in An Age of Change:  Timeless Purpose and Scholarship

 

November 15, 2000

Richard Henderson, Associate Provost for Information Services at the University

Recent Developments in Information Technology