Biographer Charles Calhoun looks at the life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the society he encouraged and kept at his Craigie House, which included many major writers and intellectuals of the day.

The audio of this lecture is available independently as an mp3 file.

Author Bruce Watson describes the lives and trials of Ferdinand Sacco (1891-1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888-1927), Italian-born anarchists charged with the armed robbery and murder of two Massachusetts payroll clerks in 1920. The case, which ended in Sacco and Vanzetti's execution in 1927, drew worldwide attention and criticism, for the alleged anti-immigrant, anti-Italian, and anti-anarchist sentiments that colored it and the uncertain guilt of the men. The presentation includes slides.

Civil Rights Project co-founder and director Gary Orfield and director and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Theodore Shaw examine how researchers and legal advocates can further the aim of advancing civil rights in knowledge and policy. With a look back to the Civil Rights Project's original research agenda and its impact over the past ten years, this discussion considers how research on social equity and civil rights can be successfully extended to include the changing reality of a highly stratified multiracial society with a white minority.

The discussion audio is available as a downloadable mp3 file.

U.S. Booksellers for Free Expression president Christopher Finan looks at the importance of and struggle to defend freedom of speech and other civil liberties over the 20th century.

The lecture audio can be downloaded as an mp3.

Author Lisa Alther talks about her work to trace her family genealogy and determine whether her ancestry includes any members of a perhaps-folkloric group of Tennessee residents called the "Melungeons." She talks about how people reconstruct their family trees, adding and omitting to create the history they wish to remember.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson examines the contemporary popular perspectives on the Civil War, both of Northerners and Southerners, civilians and soldiers. McPherson uses the popular music of the period as a framework for discussing the changing views, and focuses on the growing desire to end the war and the increasing sense of hopelessness that it would ever end.

An audio version can be downloaded.

Professor H. Robert Baker looks at the 1854 public protest against the return of fugitive slave H. Robert Baker, and examines the resulting trials and political decisions that followed—ending with the Wisconsin Supreme Court declaring the Fugitive Slave Law unconstitutional.

Audio and video options are available.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon John Kelly speaks on the historical background that has led to and grounds the current situations in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon and the U.S.'s involvement in the Middle East. He looks at what possible courses the U.S. could take now.

Audio and video options are available.

Boston Public Library president Bernard Margolis and Athenaeum librarian and program director Richard Wendorf discuss ownership of cultural property and the question of whether the Boston Athenaeum should have become the Boston Public Library. The presentation outlines the early history of the Athenaeum and the history of the debate over whether the institution should become a public library.

An mp3 version of the lecture is also available for download.

As a part of a bicentennial series celebrating Boston Athenaeum writers, Marshall Moriarty presents orator and statesman Daniel Webster (1782–1852); Representative Martha M. Walz presents activist Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880); and Daniel R. Coquillette presents sixth President of the U.S. John Quincy Adams (1767–1848).