Apr 15 Wednesday
Storytime with Programs Director, Janice Wilks! Every Wednesday from 10:30am – 11:30am Storytime will be followed by activities designed for children with developmental differences. We will never tell your child to hush or stop wiggling. Physically-distanced with stringent health and safety protocols being followed. Takes place at our office: 2505 Ardmore St SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506. Every family leaves with a free book and a snack! If you plan on attending, please RSVP with the form below so we can make sure there’s enough goodies to go around.
Apr 17 Friday
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.
Apr 22 Wednesday
Apr 29 Wednesday
May 13 Wednesday
May 15 Friday
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.
May 20 Wednesday
May 27 Wednesday
Jun 03 Wednesday
Jun 10 Wednesday