Readings from UNC’s Rare and Banned Books

Date/Time
Date(s) - 10/02/2012
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm

Celebrate First Amendment Day with readings from original editions of banned and censored books held by the UNC Rare Book Collection. Readers will share excerpts from a variety of rare books, including a fifteenth-century edition of the Ars Amatoria of the ancient Roman poet Ovid; the 1861 first printing in alphabetic K’iche’ of the Popol Vuh, a sacred Maya text that survived the Spanish Conquest’s destruction of indigenous books in only one transcription; Alton Trials: Of Winthrop S. Gilman, Who was Indicted . . . for the Crime of Riot . . . While Engaged in Defending a Print Press From an Attack . . . by an Armed Mob (1838);
the short story “Dexterity,” by Russian émigré Nadezhda Teffi, whose works were banned under Stalin in the Soviet Union; and
Walker Percy’s copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Among the readers will be Hugh Stevens, Raleigh-based First Amendment attorney and former chair of the board of directors of the UNC Friends of the Library; University Librarian Sarah Michalak; UNC professors Emilio del Valle Escalante and Sharon James; and Kashif Powell, actor and UNC Ph.D. student in Performance Studies. Other librarians, students and guests will read further selections.

A reception and book display will begin at 5 p.m. The reading will begin at 5:30 p.m. This event is being planned by Claudia Funke, UNC’s curator of rare books.