Events at the Lepage Center

UPCOMING EVENTS | View past events >>

Virtual events

During the Covid-19 pandemic, The Lepage Center will host virtual "Lunch @ Lepage" as a forum for camaraderie, conversation, and examining world events through the prism of history.

On Wednesdays, we invite students, faculty, and staff as well as members of the broader community to join us for our summertime “Lunch @ Lepage” from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. via Zoom.

UPCOMING

August 12: Monuments & Memorials (Registration is required)

with special guest Whitney Martinko

This summer, protestors against white supremacy have sought to remove many monuments across the United States and beyond. Many of these protests re-energized or popularized calls to remove monuments to Confederate leaders. In Richmond, Virginia, for instance, protestors remade and toppled monuments across the city, Mayor Stoney removed Confederate statues along Monument Avenue, and historians explored how racist real estate developers erected these monuments as a lynchpin in their business plan. Yet this attention to monuments has moved beyond Confederate subjects to include colonizers, city mayors, eugenicists, and racist imagery. Join Dr. Whitney Martinko to learn about how historians are engaging in these conversations about monuments and their place in local communities.

Recent reporting:

• Theresa Machemer on U.S. Christopher Columbus statues in Smithsonian Magazine
• Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez on Juan de Oñate statues in New Mexico on KJJZ
• Nick Fiorellini on Hannah Duston monument in New Hampshire in The Guardian
• Nora McGreevy on Theodore Roosevelt equestrian statue at the AMNH in Smithsonian Magazine

Activity:

• Use Monument Lab's activity guide to take a closer look at monuments in your community
  

Recommended Reading on Monument History:

• Wendy Bellion's Iconoclasm in New York about the destruction of the King George III statue during the U.S. War for Independence
• Lisa Blee and Jean M. O'Brien's Monumental Mobility about the history of Massasoit statue first erected near Plymouth Rock
• Dell Upton's What Can and Can't Be Said about the creation of civil rights monuments in the U.S. South

PREVIOUS

August 5: Asian Immigration

with special guest Andrew Liu

This event already occurred. Below were the articles that guided the conversation:

• "Yellow Peril: 19th-Century Scapegoating" (Asian American Writers' Workshop)
• "Migrants are on the Rise Around the World" (The New York Times)
• "The Declining Power of the American Passport" (The Atlantic)

July 22: Museums, Looting, Repatriation

with special guest Tim McCall

This event already occurred. Below were the articles that guided the conversation:

• "Five Activists Were Arrested After Trying to Seize a 19th-Century Artifact From Paris’s Quai Branly Museum and Return It to Africa"
• "This Art Was Looted 123 Years Ago"
• "Protesters Request RISD Museum Return Bronze Sculpture to Nigeria"
• "One Museum’s Complicated Attempt to Repatriate a 'Benin Bronze'"
• And for a bit of comic, and very insightful, relief: James Acaster, from Repertoire, on the British Museum. 

July 8: Looking back at the 4^th of July: On the Challenges of Doing History in the Public Interest

with special guest Elizabeth Kolsky

This event already occurred. Below were the articles that guided the conversation:

• Elizabeth Kolsky, “It is time to reconsider the global legacy of July 4, 1776”


• One reaction by a sitting U.S. Senator condemned what he termed “revisionist history” to explain his reaction to the article: https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1279519217314869248.

June 24: What Can We Learn (If Anything) from a Plague in Athens 2,500 years ago?

with special guest Eliza Gettel

This event already occurred. Below were the articles that guided the conversation:

• The ancient Greek historian Thucydides’ short account of the plague.

•  “When the Plague Came to Athens” by historian Robert Zaretsky.

June 10: George Floyd and the Ensuing Protests

This event already occurred. Below were some of the articles and Tweets that guided the conversation:

• Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post
• “A Commitment to Change,” The Villanovan
• Twitter thread by Michael Lansing
• Keisha Blain in "Made by History"
• Nana Osei-Opare in "Made by History"

Virtual "Lunch @ Lepage" occurs from 12:30 - 1:30pm via Zoom.

Registration is required. Email lepage@villanova.edu for the URL.

In-person events

All events will be held virtually through fall 2020.

Please check the Villanova website for COVID-19 updates.