Programs

Filtering by: “Paid”
[SOLD OUT] Behind the Bookcase Tour | The Duties of the Tea-Table: Exploring the History and Culture of Tea | In-Person
Feb
25

[SOLD OUT] Behind the Bookcase Tour | The Duties of the Tea-Table: Exploring the History and Culture of Tea | In-Person

This tour will explore the global, cross-cultural connections forged via the thriving tea market in Europe in the 1600s and 1700s, as well as the role tea drinking played in the cultural history of the British Empire. 

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Workshop | Authentic Heart: Yin Yoga Illuminated by the Work and Life of Mercedes de Acosta | In-Person
Mar
1

Workshop | Authentic Heart: Yin Yoga Illuminated by the Work and Life of Mercedes de Acosta | In-Person

This two-hour workshop, co-led by yogi Liza Seltzer and Rosenbach John C. Haas Director Kelsey Scouten Bates, will introduce you to de Acosta’s work and legacy and invite you to take a deep dive into what it means to be truly authentic.

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Workshop | Book Arts: Printing America’s Founding Documents – A People’s Friend Program | In-Person
Mar
9

Workshop | Book Arts: Printing America’s Founding Documents – A People’s Friend Program | In-Person

In this hands-on printing workshop, you will use a tabletop press to create your own, personal copies of U.S. founding documents–such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—complemented by a selection of important engravings from the Rosenbach’s holdings. 

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Book Club | The Body in the Library Book Club: Nekesa Afia, Dead Dead Girls | In-Person
Mar
11

Book Club | The Body in the Library Book Club: Nekesa Afia, Dead Dead Girls | In-Person

This is the third and final session of this series of The Body in the Library Book Club. In this series we celebrate the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance by rediscovering talented mystery writers from the era, and then engage with recent mystery novels set in early 20th-century Harlem. During this session we will be focusing on Nekesa Afia’s, Dead Dead Girls (2021)

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Course | The Sonnet in English with Sean Hughes | Virtual Program
Mar
12

Course | The Sonnet in English with Sean Hughes | Virtual Program

In this course, we’ll explore how great poets across the centuries have used the sonnet. Authors will likely include William Shakespeare, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Keats, Christina Rosetti, John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wanda Coleman, William Butler Yeats, and Percy Shelley. This course will be enjoyable for both people who are new to reading poetry and aficionados alike. 

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Behind the Bookcase Tour | [SOLD OUT] Mary Shelley: The Godmother of Goth | In-Person
Mar
27

Behind the Bookcase Tour | [SOLD OUT] Mary Shelley: The Godmother of Goth | In-Person

In this tour we will explore the life and works of this radical, proto-feminist, and quintessential Romantic as we sift through early editions of her works, along with manuscripts and letters of her husband, poet Percy Shelley, and the couple’s questionable company.

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Workshop | Moods: Yin Yoga Illuminated by the Poems of Mercedes de Acosta | In-Person
Mar
29

Workshop | Moods: Yin Yoga Illuminated by the Poems of Mercedes de Acosta | In-Person

Join yogi Liza Seltzer and Rosenbach John C. Haas Director Kelsey Scouten Bates for this poetry-inspired yin yoga practice. You’ll be guided into passive, longer-held poses that invoke both stillness and openness in body and mind; you’ll listen from this place of openness to the writing poet Charles Hanson Towne describes in his introduction to Moods as having “a haunting quality, a breath of mystery, as though a ghost walked into a garden.” 

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Course | The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai with Melissa R. Klapper | In-Person
Mar
30

Course | The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai with Melissa R. Klapper | In-Person

Join the Rosenbach for a special seminar on Jewish women’s history in the beautiful parlor of the Rosenbach brothers’ home on Delancey Place. Led by gifted teacher and scholar Melissa Klapper, the course explores the new book The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai.

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Excursion | New York International Antiquarian Book Fair 2025 | In-Person
Apr
4
to Apr 5

Excursion | New York International Antiquarian Book Fair 2025 | In-Person

  • April 4, 2025

  • April 5, 2025

Every year, Rosenbach staff and our Delancey Society journey north to New York, to experience the antiquarian book fair, visit the city’s cultural institutions, and get up close and personal with the Rosenbach’s collection development strategy. This year, the Delancey Society will kick off the weekend on Friday, April 4 with an exclusive visit to the private collection of Susan Jaffe Tane, followed by a cocktail reception at Freeman’s|Hindman auction house. On Saturday, April 5, we will enjoy a group brunch at The East Pole followed by a curated tour of the Fair with members of the Rosenbach’s Department of Outreach & Engagement, stopping at the booths of leading booksellers for insights into the book trade—past, present, and future.

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Rosenbacchanal 2025
Apr
26

Rosenbacchanal 2025

Rosenbacchanal 2025: The Power of the Book will feature a conversation between writer and essayist Adam Gopnik, best known as a staff writer at The New Yorker for the past forty years, and Honoree Arthur Spector, the Rosenbach’s Chair Emeritus. Their discussion will explore the allure, the potency, and the omnipresence of one the most powerful objects the world has ever known: the book.

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[ONE SEAT LEFT] The Republic of Letters: The Rosenbach’s American History Book Club, in Partnership with Carpenters’ Hall
May
6
to May 6

[ONE SEAT LEFT] The Republic of Letters: The Rosenbach’s American History Book Club, in Partnership with Carpenters’ Hall

The book club’s first season is titled “The Founders, Revisited.” Inspired by rare books and manuscripts in the Rosenbach and Carpenters’ Hall collections, this season’s book club meetings will critically examine the contributions and complicated legacies of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Benjamin Rush. 

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[SOLD OUT] Book-Club | The Ladies of the House of Love: “Horrid Novels”: Gothic Inspirations for Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey  | In-Person
May
13

[SOLD OUT] Book-Club | The Ladies of the House of Love: “Horrid Novels”: Gothic Inspirations for Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey  | In-Person

  • May 13, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • June 3, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • July 8, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • September 9, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • October 14, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • November 11, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • December 9, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

This special book club season of The Ladies of the House of Love will begin with three iconic Gothic works, including one, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), that Austen heavily satirizes in Northanger Abbey. Then, the club will explore lesser-known books that Austen references as “horrid novels” in Northanger. Finally, on December 9, 2025, just one week before Austen’s 250th birthday, the club will read Northanger Abbey and hold a birthday party for the Authoress.  Don’t miss this unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the world of the Gothic as part of a community of fellow book lovers and Janeites!

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[SOLD OUT] Course | Ulysses Weekly with Robert Berry | Virtual Program
Feb
20

[SOLD OUT] Course | Ulysses Weekly with Robert Berry | Virtual Program

  • February 20, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • February 27, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • March 6, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • March 13, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • March 20, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • March 27, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • April 3, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • April 10, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • April 17, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • April 24, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • May 1, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • May 8, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • May 15, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • May 22, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • May 29, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • June 5, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

This immersive weekly course will help readers explore (and enjoy) the intricacies, enigmas and hilarities of Ulysses. First time readers of the novel will find many resources for understanding this challenging work.

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[SOLD OUT] Course | Huck and James: Reading Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Percival Everett’s James with Edward Whitley | Virtual
Feb
18

[SOLD OUT] Course | Huck and James: Reading Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Percival Everett’s James with Edward Whitley | Virtual

In this five-week online class, we will spend the first two weeks reading Huckleberry Finn. For our third meeting, we will explore the legacy of Huck and Jim in African American culture with a series of short readings from authors such as Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, and John Keene. We will spend the final two weeks reading Everett’s James.

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Biblioventures | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Virtual
Feb
17

Biblioventures | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Virtual

February 24, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
March 3, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
March 10, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
March 17, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
March 24, 2025 | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Join us on a new Biblioventure with a special subscription-only show on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

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Reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Last Man with Vivian Papp | Virtual Course
Feb
11

Reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Last Man with Vivian Papp | Virtual Course

In this class we will map a chronological route through these two texts from 1818 to today. Shelley will have us rethinking our positions as human beings in a world where the giddy rate of technological advancement far exceeds our potential to maintain even the slightest semblance of balance.  

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[SOLD OUT] Reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey with Claudia L. Johnson | Virtual Course
Feb
5

[SOLD OUT] Reading Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey with Claudia L. Johnson | Virtual Course

Our class will examine Austen’s simple-seeming language carefully. Having told us that “A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can,” we will consider the knowledge this novel conceals beneath its sunny un-Gothic surface. 

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[SOLD OUT] Reading Dracula with Edward G. Pettit | Virtual Course
Jan
23

[SOLD OUT] Reading Dracula with Edward G. Pettit | Virtual Course

  • January 23, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

  • February 6, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

  • February 20, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

  • March 6, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

  • March 20, 2025 | 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

In this course we’ll consider how Dracula highlights the fears and anxieties of the culture that produced it and discover how this vampire story is just as much about themes of difference and otherness, race and ethnicity, and sexuality and gender, issues still relevant for contemporary readers.

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[SOLD OUT] Course | Reading Moby-Dick with Hester Blum | Virtual
Nov
13

[SOLD OUT] Course | Reading Moby-Dick with Hester Blum | Virtual

  • November 13, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • December 11, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • January 8, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • February 12, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • March 19, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

  • April 9, 2025 | 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

In this course, which welcomes first-time Melville readers and Moby-Dick obsessives alike, our discussions will range from the novel’s most thunderous, epic heights to its quirkiest, crudest jokes.

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