(via Dr. Clara M. Chu, UIUC’s Mortenson Center for International Library Programs)
The Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will hold its 26th annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture, in conjunction with the Center’s 25th anniversary celebration. The event will take place at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center on the UIUC campus, from 1:00 to 6:00 PM CST on Friday, October 14. It is co-sponsored by UIUC’s Center for Global Studies and School of Information Sciences. The program will be livestreamed here.
The event will begin with the Chai Wai and Mortenson Center Dialogue, “International Perspectives on Censorship”, which lasts from 1:00 to 2:30 PM and is co-sponsored by UIUC’s International Studies Library. The session will be moderated by Barbara Jones, a past Director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. Panelists are Marianna Tax Choldin, Founding Director of the Mortenson Center and author of Garden of Broken Statues: Exploring Censorship in Russia; and Ann Morgan, author of The World Between Two Covers: Reading the Globe. Attendees are invited to recommend their favorite international banned books on the “Banned Books Exchange Wall”. Virtual attendees will be able to tweet their #bannedbooks suggestions to @MortensonCenter.
The presentation will be followed by the investiture of Mortenson Distinguished Professor Dr. Clara M. Chu, from 3:00 to 3:30. From 3:30 to 4:00, there will be a reception, followed by a lecture given by Ann Morgan, lasting from 4:00 to 5:30. Morgan’s talk is titled “Reading the Globe: Exploring the World’s Literatures, Discovering Ourselves”. Afterwards, she will sign copies of her book.
To learn more about the Mortenson Center’s history and the other activities celebrating its 25th anniversary, go here. A recording of the October 14 event will be available here.