February 3, Thursday Zoom Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Robert Berry. His topic—Seeing Ulysses: Word Into Image.
This year is the centenary of the publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, recognized as one of the great works of Modernist literature in Western culture. Robert Berry will celebrate it with us, asking the “big questions”: Is Ulysses still important today? Why should we read it?
The book has a singular connection with Philadelphia because the manuscript lives here at our own Rosenbach Museum & Library. Artist and teacher Robert Berry has been carefully studying and adapting the work as a graphic novel for nearly 15 years. He teaches at Penn and the Rosenbach and has traveled worldwide to show his work on Bloomsdays to a global community of readers. His 2010 creation of an iPad app for his adaptation caused a stir with Apple because of the company’s regulations against sexual imagery, reviving the argument over artistic expression that Joyce’s novel fueled at the start. He says, “In years of teaching Ulysses, I’ve come to realize that I’m not here to teach Modernism or English literature. That’s not really my background or my training. I teach art through the prism of Ulysses and, I hope, try to get folks excited by all that this book can teach us.”
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February 7, Quarterback Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Alan Penziner is our Quarterback.
February 10, Thursday Zoom Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Steven Ujifusa. His topic—Yankee Merchants and Vessels of the China Trade: Barons of the Sea.
Philadelphia author and historian Steven Ujifusa brings us the saga of the 19th century Yankee merchant dynasties and the storied clipper ships that bore their luxury cargos in the China Trade. Warren Delano II, maternal grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, takes center stage in the narrative. Barons of the Sea and Their Race to Build the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship (Simon & Schuster, 2018) is a tale of daring entrepreneurship and brutal competition—a sheen of glamour and innovation overlaid by a secretive shadow of criminality because the merchant barons often financed their New York–bound cargos of coveted teas, fine fabrics, and delicate porcelains with profits made by smuggling opium from India to Chinese traffickers. In their relentless drive for profits, they challenged shipbuilders and naval architects to build for speed. Dramatically, “extreme clippers” met the challenge, roughly halving the time from Canton to New York.
Steven holds a master’s degree in historic preservation and real estate development from Penn and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in history. He received the Philadelphia Athenaeum’s 2012 Literary Award for Nonfiction for A Man and His Ship, the biography of William Francis Gibbs, designer of the SS United States. His third book, on large-scale immigration to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, will be published by HarperCollins, and you’ll find many articles with his byline on the urban history website PhillyHistory.org.
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February 14, Quarterback Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Gresham Riley is our Quarterback.
February 17, Thursday Zoom Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group. His topic—A Booster Shot of Information on the Economy.
The club is a familiar venue for Gus, as a son of Innmate Denny Faucher. Prior to joining PNC in 2011, he spent ten years at Moody’s Analytics, where he managed the computer model of the U.S. economy, edited a monthly publication on the U.S. economic outlook, covered fiscal and monetary policy, and analyzed various regional economies Before that, he worked at the Treasury Department and taught at the University of Illinois. Gus is frequently cited in international, national, and regional media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and major broadcast and cable TV networks. And you’ll hear him featured on CBS radio, NPR, and “Marketplace.” His academic credentials: Ph.D. in economics from Penn and B.A. in economics from Cornell. He spoke to the Franklin Inn Club in June 2020 about the U.S. economic outlook in the pandemic.
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February 21, Quarterback Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Ruth Morelli is our Quarterback.
February 24, Thursday Zoom Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Innmate Dan Rottenberg. His topic—Education of a Journalist, based his just-published professional memoir.
Through 70 years of media turmoil, Dan Rottenberg carved a rewarding life as journalist, editor, and author. In The Education of a Journalist, he records his firsthand impressions of notable people he encountered and recalls how journalists practiced their craft during the declining decades of the printing press. And he suggests how, even in a digital age, aspiring journalists might follow in his footsteps.
Dan has been chief editor of seven innovative publications, most recently Broad Street Review, the online arts and culture salon he created in 2005. As an advocate for free expression and alternative media, he successfully defended seven libel suits and received Temple University’s Free Speech Award in 1992. His twelve published books include Finding Our Fathers (Random House, 1977), which launched the modern Jewish genealogy movement, and Death of a Gunfighter (Westholme Publishing, 2008), which was honored as Best Western History Book of 2008 by the Wild West History Association. He served as a consultant in 1981 when Forbes magazine launched its annual “Forbes 400” list of wealthiest Americans. His syndicated film commentaries appeared in monthly city magazines around the U.S. from 1971 to 1983. Earlier, he was a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, executive editor of Philadelphia Magazine, managing editor of Chicago Journalism Review, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and editor of a daily newspaper in Indiana.
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February 28, Quarterback Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Roberta Kangilaski is our Quarterback.