The Vault

In 1982, the Institute held a multi day discussion of censorship. In this session from the Vault, sociologist Richard Sennett talks about Jean Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about censorship in the arts. The discussion is moderated by Aryeh Neier, and includes Sidney Morgenbesser, Susan Sontag, Joseph Brodsky, Richard Gillman, Frances Fitzgerald, Karen Kennerly, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Michael Sca...

In 1983, ten years after W. H. Auden’s death, the New York Institute for the Humanities organized a series of readings and discussions of his work. In this episode from the Vault, Edward Mendelson, Auden's literary executor, moderates a discussion between Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode from the Vault is a lecture by May Berenbaum about why insects are so scary. Professor Berenbaum is an American entomologist whose research focuses on the chemical interactions between herbivorous insects and their host plants. She teaches entomology at the University of Illinois, and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2014. She is also the organizer of the annual Insect Fea...

In April 2006, The Institute held a two day symposium about copyright and intellectual property, titled Comedies of Fair Use. In this session, Lewis Hyde talks about owning art and ideas. Hyde is a cultural critic and scholar, whose work focuses on the nature of imagination, creativity, and property. He is best known for his books, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, and Trickst...

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear the1982 Gallatin Lecture, in which Sir Edmund Leach discussed the work of Roman Jakobson, who he met in 1960, at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Jakobson was one of the pioneers of structural linguistics, and a major influence on Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. He taught at Harvard from 1940 until his reti...

In this week’s episode from the Institute’s Vault, Molly Haskell talks about her 2009 book, Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited, published by Yale University Press. Haskell grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and studied at the Sorbonne. She came to New York in the sixties to work for the French Film office, where she wrote a newsletter about French films. She wrote about movies for the Vi...

In this week’s episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear a lecture on the revival of narrative in history by Laurence Stone. Professor Stone taught at Princeton from 1963 to 1990. He died in 1991. He is best known for his books The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642, and Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800. Since 1977, the New York Ins...

In October 1981, Hans Magnus Enzensberger gave the Institute’s James lecture, titled “Second Thoughts on Consistency.” Enzensberger, who died in November, 2022, at the age of 93, was a German translator, editor, author, and poet. He was born in Bavaria, and was just 15 years old when the Third Reich collapsed. After studying literature and philosophy in university, he earned a doctorate at the Sor...

In this episode of the Vault, we hear Harry Berger’s talk about Leonardo da Vinci and Vassari’s "Lives of the Painters." Harry Berger was a scholar of Renaissance English literature who wrote books about art history, anthropology, and philosophy. He taught at UC Santa Cruz, where he was an emeritus professor until he died in 2021, at age 96. Since 1977, the New York Institute for the Humanities ha...

In this episode from the Vault, we hear from historian Eric Hobsbawm, a frequent visitor at the New York Institute for the Humanities. His talk, Literacy and the Tower of Babel, took place in November 1984. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this 2008 episode from the Vault we hear from fashion historian Anne Hollander, a longtime member of the Institute, and former president of the PEN American Center. Hollander was the author of Seeing Through Clothes, Moving Pictures, and Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress. At the time of her death, in 2014, she was working on a book about clothes in literature, which is the subject of...

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear from Tod Gitlin. Gitlin was president of the Students for a Democratic Society, and went on to become a sociologist, political activist, and journalist, teaching at Berkeley, NYU and Columbia. He wrote sixteen books, and spoke at the Institute in 2007 about his book, The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recov...

In this 2008 episode of The Vault, Greil Marcus reads from a Three Penny Review essay about the death of his father, who went down with the USS Hull in 1944, six months before Marcus was born. Marcus is a music journalist and cultural critic. His books include Mystery Train, Lipstick Traces, and Invisible Republic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this 2011 episode from The Vault, Hilton Als reads from, and discusses, His Sister, Her Monologue, a novella he published in Mcsweeney's #35. Als is a staff writer at the New Yorker, and his theater criticism was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He is the author of two books. The Women, published in 1996., and White Girls, which came out in 2014. "A Pryor Love," His New Yorker profile of Richa...

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, Samantha Power describes how Hannah Arendt influenced her thinking about politics and human rights. Power spoke during a two day symposium-- “Hannah Arendt Right Now”--which explored the philosopher’s impact on the 21st Century. The 2006 event was held on the hundredth anniversary of Arendt’s birth. Samantha Power was Barack Obama’s human rights adviser,...

A longtime Institute member, Katha Pollitt is an American poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. Her column for The Nation magazine, “Subject to Debate” won a National Magazine Award in 2003. In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, Pollitt talks about her 2007 book, Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories, a collection of personal essa...

From the Institute’s Vault, we have an excerpt from a two day symposium--“Hannah Arendt Right Now”--which explored the philosopher’s impact on the 21st Century. The 2006 event was held on the hundredth anniversary of Arendt’s birth. In this episode, Dr. Rony Brauman describes how Arendt influenced his thinking about the politics of humanitarian aid. Brauman was president of Doctors without Borders...

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we have an excerpt from a two day symposium--“Hannah Arendt Right Now”--which explored the philosopher’s impact on the 21st Century. The 2006 event was held on the hundredth anniversary of Arendt’s birth. The focus of this episode is Arendt’s 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. The session begins with historian Anthony Grafton, whose father, a journalist,...

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we have an excerpt from a two day symposium--“Hannah Arendt Right Now”--which explored the philosopher’s impact on the 21st Century. The 2006 event was held on the hundredth anniversary of Arendt’s birth. In this session, Azar Nafisi and Ladan Boroumand talk about how Arendt’s work on totalitarianism helped them understand the Islamic Revolution in Iran,...

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we have an excerpt from a two day symposium--“Hannah Arendt Right Now”--which explored the philosopher’s impact on the 21st Century. The 2006 event was held on the hundredth anniversary of Arendt’s birth. In this session, Kanan Makiya discusses Arendt’s influence on his thinking with Jonathan Schell. Makiya was born in Baghdad and educated at MIT. His bo...

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we have an excerpt from a two day symposium--“Hannah Arendt Right Now”--which explored the philosopher’s impact on the 21st Century. The 2006 event was held on the hundredth anniversary of Arendt’s birth. In the opening session, Jonathan Schell and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl discuss Arendt’s thoughts on the nuclear question. Schell, who died in 2014, was a w...

In this week’s episode from the Vault, we revisit a 2013 presentation by the Yale historian, Timothy Snyder, about the book he wrote with the historian, Tony Judt. Judt was diagnosed with ALS in 2008 and died in 2010. He spent those two years writing books and lecturing, as well as holding weekly conversations with Snyder. The result was Thinking the Twentieth Century, which was published in 2012....

In April 2006, the Institute held a symposium about copyright and intellectual property, titled Comedies of Fair Use. This panel is about documentary film, and was moderated by Duke professor law James Boyle.  It begins with Amy Sewell, whose 2005 documentary, Mad Hot Ballroom looks at the lives of New York City public school kids, as they prepare for a citywide ballroom dancing competition. Charl...

Institute fellow, and New Yorker staff writer, Masha Gessen is one of the foremost critics of Vladimir Putin. In 2014, Gessen spoke at the Institute with New Yorker editor David Remnick about Gessen's book, Words Will Break Cement, about Pussy Riot. Much of the conversation focused on Putin's ambitions for an imperial Russia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In April 2006, the Institute held a two day symposium about copyright and intellectual property, titled Comedies of Fair Use.  The event began with a keynote address by Lawrence Lessig, who currently teaches at Harvard Law School. Lessig is the author of twelve books, and his work has had an enormous impact on discussions of intellectual property and, more recently, the challenge institutional cor...