October 3, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Matthew McGovern is our Quarterback.
October 6, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Innmate Peter Conn. His topic—Monuments and Memory: Versions of the American Past.
Along with works of history, biographies, novels, paintings, and photographs, we bring sculptures and monuments into our reconstructions of the past. Peter will offer thoughts on the making, and the often shifting meaning, of several American monuments.
Peter Conn retired from Penn as Vartan Gregorian Professor of English and Professor of Education.
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October 10, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Alan Penziner is our Quarterback.
October 13, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Louis Natali. His topic—The Innocence Project: Exoneration, Prevention, Reform.
Professor Natali will trace the creation and work of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project from his efforts in its 2009 launch to the present. He will focus on the teamwork of lawyers and students from the state’s major law schools in exonerating the convicted innocent, and also on the project’s efforts to prevent wrongful convictions and improve the criminal justice system. Reviewing the history and current state of death penalty law, he will show its impact on the drive for criminal justice reform. Pennsylvania ranks high among states with large populations of death row prisoners, a status that has major economic and social consequences.
Louis M. Natali, Jr., professor of law emeritus at Temple’s law school, is currently a board member of the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization formed to assist individuals convicted of crimes they did not commit. His legal career has been devoted to criminal defense work and teaching at Temple and Rutgers Law Schools as well as the University of Rome summer program. He has written numerous articles on the death penalty. Currently, he is director of Temple’s Death Penalty Project.
Video: To see a recording of this presentation, click on Play Event. Click on the play button at the bottom left of the screen that comes up to see the presentation. To see Closed Captions, move your cursor to the lower right corner of the video to see available options, click on the “cc” icon, and then click on the “English (auto-generated) cc” option in the pop-up menu.
October 17, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Gresham Riley is our Quarterback.
October 21, Friday Club Dinner, starting with cocktails at 5:30 p.m.
Speaker is David Sorensen. His topic—Reconsidering the “Great Man” as Leader and Hero.
David will trace the tumultuous course of Thomas Carlyle’s “great man” thesis and explore its relevance to challenges threatening the future of liberal democracy today. Carlyle, the Victorian social critic and historian, made powerful, cogent arguments for his view that history is biography, or essentially “the history of the great men who have worked there” in his 1840 lectures and later book On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. The debates he provoked on the importance of personal power have risen and fallen in intensity since that time. Are remarkable individuals the drivers of history, or are they surfers who manage to ride the choppy waves of social and economic disruption? The answers are provocative now, as we see the rise of authoritarians in governments around the globe.
David R. Sorensen, Professor of English Literature at Saint Joseph’s University, is also Senior Editor of the Duke-Edinburgh Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle and co-editor of the Carlyle Studies Annual. He co-edited the three-volume edition of Carlyle’s The French Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2020) and an edition of Carlyle’s On Heroes and Hero-Worship (Yale University Press, 2013). David and his wife Deena Kobell live with their two daughters in Philadelphia. When not immersed in research at libraries in the US and UK, he enjoys walking his two beloved Cavalier King Charles Spaniels on the streets of Center City.
October 24, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Roberta Kangilaski is our Quarteback.
October 27, Thursday Luncheon Roundtable – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Speaker is Gus Faucher. His topic—A Booster Shot of Information on the Economy.
We’re expecting Gus to share his usual clear perspective on the economy at a time when most of us lack it. Known to the wider world as Augustine Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, he comes to the Inn as a familiar venue with Innmate, and father, Denny Faucher.
Before joining PNC in 2011, Gus 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.
Video: To see a recording of this presentation, click on Play Event. Click on the play button at the bottom left of the screen that comes up to see the presentation. To see Closed Captions, move your cursor to the lower right corner of the video to see available options, click on the “cc” icon, and then click on the “English (auto-generated) cc” option in the pop-up menu.
October 31, Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 to 1:45 p.m.
Ruth Morelli is our Quarterback.