WEEKLY
Monday Quarterback Luncheon – 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
Innmates lead vibrant talks on topics of their choosing. Discussion points are sent to members on Sundays to prepare for comments and questions.
Thursday Roundtable Luncheon – 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
Invited guests speak on a wide range of topics. Past Roundtable speakers include Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Nathans, Diane D. Turner, curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection of the Temple Libraries, and James Timberlake, founding principal of internationally renowned architecture firm KieranTimberlake.
On the third week of the month, Thursday Roundtable Luncheon is replaced by Friday Club Dinner.
NOVEMBER PROGRAMS
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
November 3 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Roberta Kangilaski is our Quarterback
Thursday Roundtable Luncheon
November 6 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Speaker is Joseph Farrell. His topic ‒ Ancient and Modern: An Indispensable Distinction?
Ancient and modern ‒ we treat these familiar words as total opposites like dead or alive. Their difference seems obvious, comprehensive, and even natural. Cultural commentators have long used them very specifically to get at the accepted distinction between then and now ‒ between “the ancients” and “the moderns.” Classics scholar Joseph Farrell has long argued that this approach distorts our understanding of antiquity, and therefore of ourselves. He invites us to describe our contemporary world without drawing contrasts to the usual characteristics of pre-modernity.
Joseph Farrell is Professor of Classical Studies and Watkins Professor in the Humanities at Penn, where he has taught since 1984. Through his teaching and research, he specializes in classical Latin poetry, and in Greek and Roman literature and culture more generally, including the ways they have been received in history. His most recent book is Juno’s Aeneid: A Battle for Heroic Identity (Princeton, 2022). He is currently co-editing a three-volume work, The Oxford History of Classical Literature.
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
November 10 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Palmer Hartl is our Quarterback
Thursday Roundtable Luncheon
November 13 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Speaker is André Dombrowski. His topic ‒ Monet’s Minutes
Claude Monet shared the desire of many Impressionist painters to render fleeting moments on canvas ‒ scenes that appeared to be over in an instant. This vision of “instantaneity” jarred the nineteenth-century art world, departing from aesthetic tradition arising in a period of increasing concern with time and the development of modern timekeeping. André Dombrowski explores this overlap in his book Monet’s Minutes: Impressionism and the Industrialization of Time (Yale University, 2023). Monet’s work shows his awareness of a cultural shift in measuring and valuing time, as in his paintings of trains and train stations with their newly strict schedules, and in serial paintings of single subjects seen with the passage of time or season. Monet’s gifts in capturing transient effects of light and color were a “sophisticated, beautiful, stunning response” to the emergence of routines and technologies of time.
André Dombrowski is the Frances Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Professor of 19th Century European Art in Penn’s Department of the History of Art, specializing in French art, circa 1850-1920. In addition to Monet’s Minutes, he is the author of Cézanne, Murder, and Modern Life (University of California Press, 2013), which won the Phillips Book Prize. He also edited the 2021 Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Impressionism and has written widely on Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, and Gustave Caillebotte, among other artists.
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
November 17 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Jonathan Barnett is our Quarterback
SPECIAL EVENT
The Key Party – A Committee for New Initiatives Event
Wednesday, November 19 from 6pm-8pm
Open Sesame, Innmates! Your Club is installing a key fob activated entry system. You’ll now have access to the Franklin Inn Club beyond “office” hours. Be here for a demo by a representative from our security company and receive a key fob. If you can’t make the Key Party, contact the Club Manager to set up a time to pick up your fob.
Free Admission with wine, beer, non-alcoholic beverages, and light fare.
Friday Club Dinner – a Cosmopolitan Club Joint Presentation
November 21 with Member mixer at 5:30pm followed by presentation, with dinner at 7pm
Speaker is Jeffrey Kallberg. His topic ‒ Chopin’s New Waltz: Discovery and Meaning
Jeffrey Kallberg guides us through a process that began in the summer of 2024 when the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan asked him to help in authenticating a never-before-seen Chopin waltz. Jeffrey has studied the composer’s works for five decades and has traveled the world to see the known Chopin manuscripts, which total about 230. “When I sat down and played it,” he says, “it confirmed in my mind… what I thought was the case: here was a piece by Chopin that we had not known of before.” We’ll have the pleasure of hearing him play the Waltz in A Minor and learn how diligence and serendipity validated this conclusion.
Jeffrey Kallberg is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Music at Penn. He has published widely on Chopin, most notably in his book Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre (Harvard, 1996). His current projects include books on Chopin’s nocturnes and “Chopin’s things” ‒ possessions that relate to his music ‒ as well as an investigation into the links between ideas of landscape and modernism in music, especially music from Scandinavia in the first half of the twentieth century. Jeffrey received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2019 he was appointed to the program board of the Chopin Institute in Warsaw, Poland.
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
November 24 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Rick Pasquier is our Quarterback
Tuesday Movie Night
November 25 at 6pm; feature at 6:30pm
Feature TBA
With snacks and drinks including light fare, popcorn, chips, nuts, soda, beer, and wine
Thursday, November 27
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Monthly
Friday Club Dinner: Dinners are held on the third Friday of the month. Guest Speakers present a wide range of topics including time for member discussion afterward. Member mixer at 5:30pm, followed by Guest presentation, culminating with dinner at 7:00pm.
Tuesday Movie Night: On the last Tuesday of the month, the Club presents classic films chosen by member and film critic Dan Rottenberg. Screenings followed by a “talk back”. Doors at 6:00pm with feature at 6:30pm. Free admission with snacks and drinks including light fare, popcorn, chips, nuts, soda, beer, and wine.
Recordings: Many weekly Roundtable Luncheon and monthly Club Dinner presentations are recorded. Scroll down to select month for Vimeo links. Click Here for months prior to March 2023.
Scroll Down to see all Monthly Events including the current month.
Annually
January: Annual Business Meeting of the general membership followed by the Benjamin Franklin Dinner. On a Friday evening closest to Franklin’s birthday on January 17th.
Summer: Picnic usually at the home of an Innmate.
December: Holiday Luncheon featuring housemade Fish House Punch.