Brown University Library News

Commemorating Aimé Césaire: Poet, Rebel, Statesman An exhibit curated by Dominique Coulombe and Pauline de Tholozany in collaboration with William Miles, Adjunct Research Professor of International Studies at the Watson Institute John Hay Library foyer and reading room cases, March 30 – April 30, 2009 Poetry Reading, April 3, 5 pm, John Hay Library Lownes Room, followed by the exhibit opening reception Aimé Césaire was the foremost Black French intellectual-statesman-writer of the 20th and 21st centuries. Co-founder of the négritude school of literature in the 1930s, parliamentarian to the National Assembly in Paris for nearly 5 decades, and author of 16 books, plays, and poetry collections, Césaire’s recent demise is understandably mourned by Francophones throughout the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. As lead-up to the Memorial Symposium hosted by the Watson Institute on April 17, a Commemorating Aimé Césaire exhibit will showcase the Brown Library’s collection of Césaire’s oeuvres and works on the French Caribbean, along with other objets d’art and memorabilia (on loan from faculty) that are reminiscent of Césaire and his native island. A display in the John Hay Library foyer will be dedicated to President Ruth Simmons who explored The Poetic Language of Aimé Césaire in her Ph. D. dissertation completed at Harvard University in 1973. Sponsors of the Aimé Césaire Memorial Exhibit and Symposium include the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Office of the Cultural Services of the Consulate of France (Boston), the journal French Politics, Cultural and Society, the Alliance Française de Providence, and the Departments of Africana Studies, French Studies, Comparative Literature, and the Brown University Library.

Audubon’s “Seaside Finch” on display at the John Hay Library

A volume of John James Audubon’s master work, The Birds of America, is on display on the main floor of the John Hay Library. Each plate will be on display for only one month. This month’s bird is the “Seaside Finch”.

This elephant folio edition of The Birds of America, bound in six volumes, was presented by Albert E. Lownes to the Library on the occasion of his 50th class reunion in 1970.

For more information please contact hay@brown.edu