Louisa May Alcott was no little woman… and her life was no children’s book!
Credit: Courtesy of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House/ L. M. A. Memorial Association
The University at Buffalo Libraries will present a series of reading, viewing and discussion programs designed to re-introduce audiences to author Louisa May Alcott and give them new understanding of her place in American culture. The programs have been developed in conjunction with Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, a documentary film co-produced by Nancy Porter Productions, Inc. and Thirteen/WNET New York’s American Masters, and a biography of the same name written by Harriet Reisen.
Credit: Cover used by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLCBy 1862, as she approached her thirtieth birthday Louisa was restless, and hungry for adventure before it was too late. “Decided to go to Washington as a nurse if I could find a place,” she wrote in her journal for November. “I love nursing and must let out my pent-up energy in some new way.” Thirty was the minimum age for being an army nurse.
(excerpt taken from chapter eleven of Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women.)
Credit: Liane BrandonFilm Screening & Discussion of Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
Saturday, Sept.17, 2011 @ 2 p.m.
Ring of Knowledge
Buffalo & Erie County Public Library
Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY
Discussion led by scholar Stacy Hubbard, UB English Department. To prepare for the event, use the Reading Group Guide (PDF) associated with the biography.
Credit: Courtesy of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House/ L. M. A. Memorial Association
Louisa May Alcott & 19th Century American Writers: Slavery and the Civil War
Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011 @ 12 noon
Roundtable & Discussion
University at Buffalo
306 Clemens Hall, North Campus
A literary roundtable discussion about Alcott and her contemporaries, and their views on issues such as slavery, abolition and the Civil War. Participants will be UB Professor Stacy Hubbard; Cristanne Miller, professor, chair and Edward H. Butler Chair in the UB Department of English; and UB graduate students Prentiss Clark and Mike Hurst.
Women’s Rights & Anti-Slavery Activism in Western New York and Concord
Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011 @ 6pm
Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society
25 Nottingham Court
Buffalo, NY 14216
Kevin Cottrell from Motherland Connextions, Professor Stacy Hubbard from the UB English Department, and Professor Nancy Rosenbloom from the Canisius College History Department will discuss nineteenth century reform movements in Concord, MA and Buffalo, NY. Both Concord and Western New York played major roles in the Underground Railroad and the women’s rights movement, and many famous Concord reformers (Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) knew and worked with Western New York reformers such as Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Audience members may want to arrive early in order to view the BECHS exhibit on the Underground Railroad in Western New York.
Five things you don’t know about Louisa May Alcott
For more details, contact Program Coordinators,
Laura Taddeo, UB Libraries, 645-7970 or Stacy Hubbard, UB English Dept., 645-0699
Louisa May Alcott programs in libraries are sponsored by the American Library Association Public Programs Office with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Additional sponsors are the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library and the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. All programs will be led by Stacy Hubbard, UB associate professor of English and an expert on 19th and 20th century American literature and culture.
