Civic Discourse Series

Wednesday, April 29, 6:00 p.m. Boston Athenæum, 10½ Beacon Street

The media these days speak in so many forked and foreign tongues — film, book, video game, broadcast, blog — that without a dictionary or a concordance it’s hard to know who is saying what to whom. Over the last fifty years it has come to pass that on an examination paper at the end of a year’s course in the history of western civilization a sophomore at a high-end New England university can give as his answer: “The Greeks invented three kinds of columns — Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth.”

How does a writer tell a straight story to readers who think in circles? Maybe by sending smoke signals.

LEWIS LAPHAM is the editor of Lapham’s Quarterly, the national correspondent for Harper’s Magazine, and the author of thirteen books, among them Money and Class in America, The Wish for Kings, Theater of War and, most recently, Pretensions to Empire. For Bloomberg Radio he hosts a weekly program, “The World in Time.”

A reception will follow this lecture. Reservations will be accepted starting April 16 at 617-720-7600.

A panel discussion 6:00pm Monday, April 6th, 2009 at C. Walsh Theatre

Broadcast Journalists have been praised for breaking important news stories and criticized for breaking political candidates. Is the role of television news in our democracy to present politically neutral information or to provide informed opinion? 

Charles Kravitz, President of NECN, has had a distinguished career as a television news director at several stations in Boston. 

Dana Rosengard is assistant professor of Broadcast Journalism in the department of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University.  Prior to his academic career, Dana was a producer for WCVB news. 

Robert Rosenthal is chair of the Department of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University. He is an international consultant specializing in strategic communication, with a core emphasis on institutions subject to government regulation. A specialist in the field of political communication, Rosenthal is a frequent guest on radio talk shows and television newscasts. 

Reservations will be accepted starting March 20 at 617-720-7600.

Thursday, April 2nd, 6:00 p.m. Suffolk University, C. Walsh Theatre, 55 Temple Street

Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property analyzes Nat Turner’s slave rebellion of 1831 and its aftermath in American memory. The film explores the many interpretations of the event, including William Styron’s controversial 1967 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Confessions of Nat Turner and the deep racial divisions that it exposed. What is the distinction between a freedom fighter and a terrorist? The debate over the meaning of Nat Turner has been at the heart of race relations in the United States for the past 178 years.

CHARLES BURNETT is a MacArthur Award-winning American filmmaker. Major films include Killer of Sheep, The Glass Shield, To Sleep with Anger, NightJohn, The Wedding, The Annihilation of Fish, and Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation. He is co-writer and director of Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property.

FRANK CHRISTOPHER is an award-winning producer, director, writer, and editor whose major film credits include Fei Hu: The Story of the Flying Tigers, In the Name of the People, and the PBS series Remaking American Medicine. He is currently at work on a film about the explorer Samuel de Champlain. He co-wrote and co-produced Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property.

KENNETH S. GREENBERG, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Suffolk University and distinguished professor of history, has authored Honor and Slavery, as well as Masters and Statesmen. He is the editor of Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory and of Thomas R. Gray’s original The Confessions of Nat Turner. He co-wrote and co-produced Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property.

Reservations will be accepted starting February 4 at 617-720-7600.

This film is presented in conjunction with The Ford Hall Forum, a partner of Suffolk University and the nation’s oldest free public lecture series.

A lecture by Josh Silver, Free Press: 6:00pm, Tuesday, March 31, 2009
@ The Boston Athenæum, 10 1/2 Beacon Street

Josh Silver argues that the media policies made in Washington, D.C. are the cause of corporate programming on radio and TV, fake news that fails to inform, slow, overpriced Internet service, and struggling public media.  His organization, Free Press, calls for media that give the American people quality news and programming, reflect our country’s diversity, meet the information needs of local communities, and support our democracy.  Silver will discuss important current policy debates and how individuals can get involved in the public policies that shape our media system.  .

Josh Silver is the executive director and co-founder of the nonpartisan media policy reform organization Free Press.  He previously served as campaign manager for public funding of elections in Arizona and as the director of development for the cultural arm of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.  Silver publishes frequently on media, campaign finance, and other public policy issues.

A reception will follow this lecture.  Reservations will be accepted starting March 11 at 617-720-7600.

6:00pm Wednesday, March 25, 2009 @ The Boston Athenæum, 10 1/2 Beacon Street

For more than two centuries, America’s newspapers have been the public’s primary source of information about our government.  As circulation and staffs shrink, there are significant implications for democracy, which is dependent upon an informed public.

Bruce D. Butterfield is an assistant professor and professional journalist in residence in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University.  Butterfield spent 16 years as a staff writer for the Boston Globe, where he covered national labor issues and was an investigative reporter on the newspaper’s Spotlight Team.  A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, he has won numerous major awards for his reporting.

Cullen Murphy is the editor-at-large of Vanity Fair magazine and was, for two decades, the managing editor of the Atlantic Monthly.  Murphy’s articles and essays have appeared in many publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, the New Republic, Slate, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, American Heritage, and Smithsonian. His most recent book is Are We Rome?, which he wrote, in part, at the Boston Athenæum.

Robert E. Rosenthal is chair of the Department of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University.  He is an international consultant specializing in strategic communication, with a core emphasis on institutions subject to government regulation.  A specialist in the field of political communication, Rosenthal is a frequent guest on radio talk shows and television newscasts.

Joan Vennochi writes regularly about national and local politics for the Boston Globe, and also covers issues relating to business, law, and culture.  She began her career at the paper as a researcher on the Spotlight Team, the newspaper’s investigative unit, and shared in a Pulitzer Prize awarded to the team for local investigative reporting.

Reservations will be accepted starting March 12 at 617-720-7600.

Saturday, March 14th, 12:00 noon Boston Athenæum, 10½ Beacon Street

This six-time Oscar-nominated 2005 docudrama chronicles how, in the mid-1950s, Edward R. Murrow and his “See It Now” producer, Fred Friendly, helped to bring an end to the tyranny of the blacklist and the House Un-American Activities Committee’s anti-Communist hearings. 

The film will be introduced by DAN KENNEDY, an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University. He writes for the Guardian (U.K.), CommonWealth Magazine and the Boston Phoenix, and is a regular panelist on WGBH-TV’s “Beat the Press,” hosted by Emily Rooney. His blog, Media Nation, is online at medianation.blogspot.com.

Reservations will be accepted starting January 29 at 617-720-7600.

Saturday, February 28th, 12:00 noon Boston Athenæum, 10½ Beacon Street

Director Michael Ritchie and executive producer/star Robert Redford explore the machinations and manipulations of media-age political campaigns in this cynical political drama. With an Oscar-winning screenplay and appearances by real-life reporters and politicians, The Candidate takes a biting look at the nature of politics.

The film will be introduced by Boston Athenæum member and Emerson College screenwriting professor DIANE LAKE. Lake had a previous career as a political consultant in Iowa and has been a working screenwriter since 1993, writing screenplays for Columbia, Disney, Miramax, and Paramount. 

Reservations will be accepted starting January 29 at 617-720-7600.

Panel Discussion Thursday, February 26th, 6:00 p.m.Boston Athenæum, 10½ Beacon Street

Does the Internet help make citizens more engaged in the democratic process? How do online social presence, community formation, and party identification on social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Digg affect the political process? Have online media sites like The Huffington Post, Politico, or The Drudge Report changed political coverage? What impact has online messaging, advertising or public relations had on the 2008 elections? 

GLORIA BOONE is a professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University. She teaches classes in advertising, new media, Web design, and rhetoric. She consults with businesses and health care organizations on advertising, usability, communication, and integrated marketing communication. 

LINDA GALLANT is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at Emerson College. Her teaching and research interests include the application of research methods to social computing and the maximization of information and communication technology (ICT) to advance human communication in multiple contexts – healthcare, politics, and the workplace. 

NINA B. HUNTEMANN is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University. Her research interests include communication policy and history, political economy of communication, new media technologies, game studies, critical cultural studies, feminist media studies, and media literacy. 

A reception will follow this panel discussion. Reservations will be accepted starting February 12 at 617-720-7600

Listen to David Reeder’s Introduction to Citizen Kane:

David Reeder’s introduction to Citizen Kane

Listen to Post-film Question and Answer Section:

Citizen Kane: Post-film Questions and Answers

Wednesday, February 18, 6:00 p.m. Suffolk University, Donahue 311 at 41 Temple Street, Third Floor

Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is based on the Algerian struggle for independence from French colonial rule. In particular it follows one fighter, Ali La Pointe, of the National Liberation Front (FLN) who turns from being a criminal to leader of the FLN. The film won several awards, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1966. 

The film will be introduced by MONIKA REASCH, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University. She teaches both video production and film studies, including a course in World Cinema. She is a native of Germany and holds degrees from four different countries. 

Reservations will be accepted starting February 4 at 617-720-7600.