Month: May 2010

Lecture: Sex and the City: The Early Years

admin

In 1633, Griet Reyniers invented the role of the Manhattan woman on the prowl, personifying the bawdy world the Dutch created when they settled in the Hudson Valley and surrounding region. On May 14th, Bill Greer explores this world in his talk “Sex and the City: The Early Years” as part of the New York State Library’s noontime programs.

Using art, literature and folklore, Bill will discuss the Dutch culture of the era and the libertine characters like Griet who transplanted it to the Hudson Valley. The wanton ways of these early settlers helped fuel a conflict between the people and their rulers, a conflict many historians argue laid the foundation for the freedom-loving society that America became.

Bill is the author of The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan, a novel of New Amsterdam. De Halve Maen, Journal of the Holland Society, describes the book as a “romp through the history of New Netherland that would surely have Petrus Stuyvesant complaining about the riot transpiring between its pages.” He is a trustee and the Treasurer of the New Netherland Institute, a nonprofit organization supporting research and education in Dutch-American history. The Institute currently is working with the New York State Office of Cultural Education to establish the New Netherland Research Center in Albany.

The talk will be in the Huxley Theater on the first floor of the Cultural Education Center, home of the New York State Library, Museum and Archives, at 310 Madison Avenue, Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY. It will run from 12:15 to 1:15 on Friday, May 14th. The program is free and attendees are invited to bring lunch.

Lecture: Law, Justice, And The Holocaust

admin

The Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York in partnership with US Holocaust Memorial Museum will hold an event on May 11th, 6:00 PM, at The New York City Bar (42 West 44th Street, NYC). The program, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust: Lessons for the Courts Today, will include a presentation by a US Holocaust Memorial Museum historian, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman.

The panelists are: Albert M. Rosenblatt, Former Associate Judge, New York Court of Appeals, John Q. Barrett, Professor of Law, St. John’s University and Elizabeth S. Lenna Fellow- Robert H. Jackson Center- and William F. Meinecke, Jr., PH.D., Historian, National Institute for Holocaust Education, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The program will conclude with a reading of remarks by the late Matthew Jasen, Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals (1968-1985) who was formerly a judge of the United States Military government Court at Heidelberg, Germany.

The program is free of charge and open to the public but an RSVP is essential. Information about the program and online registration can be found at http://www.courts.state.ny.us/history/