Community Calendar

Panelists and featured guests discuss history topics with Angela Oonk in this webinar series.

By researching and writing the life and experiences of the ambitious, charismatic Angelica Schuyler Church, Beer tells the U.S. origin story from the perspective of a woman situated at the heart of the American Revolution and the founding era.

Few women of the American Revolution have come through 250 years of US history with such clarity and color as Angelica Schuyler Church. She was Alexander Hamilton’s “saucy” sister-in-law, and the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s “charming coterie” of artists and salonnières in Paris. Her transatlantic network of important friends spanned the political spectrum of her time and place, and her astute eye and brilliant letters kept them well informed.

In telling Angelica’s story, Beer illuminates how American women have always plied influence and networks for political ends, including the making of a new nation.

Sponsored by The Alumni Association of the University of Michigan Lifelong Learning program.

Becoming Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take

In this purpose-driven talk, Polman will discuss responsible leadership and how net positive businesses can contribute more to the environment and society than they take away.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. A live stream link will also be available closer to the event date.

Presented by:
U-M School for Environment and Sustainability
U-M Center for Sustainable Systems
U-M Frederick A. & Barbara M. Erb Institute

Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), will talk about her recently published professional memoir. In "Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance" (MIT Press), Cindy weaves her own personal story with her role as a leading legal voice representing the rights and interests of technology users, innovators, whistleblowers, and researchers during the Crypto Wars of the 1990s, battles over NSA’s dragnet internet spying revealed in the 2000s, and the fight against FBI gag orders. Along the way she’ll talk both about the history of the internet and EFF, but also how those fights are increasingly relevant today.

(Event will also be livestreamed.)

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of America, how is your family’s story a part of that history? Join us at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library to find out how one author answered that question!

Jean Alicia Elster gathered stories from her Michigan family, also named the Fords, to write her books. Her presentation will focus on learning and sharing family history through oral histories. She will share portions of the oral histories she obtained from family members and then read select passages from her Ford family historical fiction trilogy--WHO'S JIM HINES?, THE COLORED CAR and HOW IT HAPPENS--to show how she used those oral histories to create the narratives in the books.

She will also offer tips on obtaining oral histories from family members during family gatherings such as reunions, holidays and other celebrations. There will be time for Q & A at the end of the presentation, and if you bring your copies of her books, she will be available to sign them.

Join author Demarra West on April 04, 2026, from 3:00 to 4:30 pm at Pages Bookshop in Detroit, Michigan, for a book reading and signing of her newly released book Love Will Liberate, hosted by Pages Bookshop. In addition to the reading and signing, the event includes an author Q and A and time to connect and celebrate the book release.

Love Will Liberate explores the science behind why we're hard wired for connection and how relationships, more than anything affect our wellbeing. The book introduces the Love Liberation Framework, a nine part model based on West’s extensive research, along with plethora of practical resources to help you gain greater self awareness, strengthen boundaries, work through conflict, and love with clarity and intention.

RSVP for free to save your spot since space is limited. If you want a copy before the event, you can order at www.demarrawest.com/love-will-liberate or through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IngramSpark, and other online book retailers.

See you there!

Fostering intelligent conversation at the intersection of faith and the written word, the Festival of Faith & Writing is a unique celebration. For three days every other April, we gather on the campus of Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to explore the power of belief and the written word.

Rooted in Reformed theology’s deep appreciation for the goodness of creation, we create space for meaningful conversations and shared discoveries.

People with diverse religious beliefs and practices are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Through lectures, readings, and engaging conversations, we bring together a vibrant community of readers and writers for a genuinely inspiring experience.

Panelists and featured guests discuss history topics with Clements staff in this webinar series. In this conversation, author Don James McLaughlin explores how phobia — first tied to diseases like hydrophobia (rabies) — became a flexible suffix attached to various fears and social concerns, shaping political, medical, and aesthetic thought from the colonial period through the early 20th century.

McLaughlin traces the emergence and evolution of phobia as a concept in American culture long before it became established in modern psychology. McLaughlin challenges the idea that phobia only gained prominence with late-19th-century psychiatry, showing instead that the term’s roots extend back to early American literary and medical discourses.

Fostering intelligent conversation at the intersection of faith and the written word, the Festival of Faith & Writing is a unique celebration. For three days every other April, we gather on the campus of Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to explore the power of belief and the written word.

Rooted in Reformed theology’s deep appreciation for the goodness of creation, we create space for meaningful conversations and shared discoveries.

People with diverse religious beliefs and practices are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Through lectures, readings, and engaging conversations, we bring together a vibrant community of readers and writers for a genuinely inspiring experience.

Fostering intelligent conversation at the intersection of faith and the written word, the Festival of Faith & Writing is a unique celebration. For three days every other April, we gather on the campus of Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to explore the power of belief and the written word.

Rooted in Reformed theology’s deep appreciation for the goodness of creation, we create space for meaningful conversations and shared discoveries.

People with diverse religious beliefs and practices are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Through lectures, readings, and engaging conversations, we bring together a vibrant community of readers and writers for a genuinely inspiring experience.

Angela Oonk hosts a webinar series featuring topics in American history. This month, Clements Curator of Manuscripts joins in a discussion with Derek Kane O'Leary about creation of the first archives in the new United States.

Archives, the foundational resource for historical research, do not emerge from a vacuum. What materials are included in the archive, and why? Whose voices are preserved for posterity, and whose are silenced? In his book, Archival Communities: Constructing the Past in the Early United States, O’Leary takes up this crucial task for the era of the early United States, arguing that key components of America’s archives emerged from within an Atlantic world of circulating scholars, evidence, practices, and ideas. Sponsored by Doug Johnson.