Hugh Stevens Featured at UNC's First Amendment Day
Readings from UNC’s Rare and Banned Books @ Pleasants Family Assembly Room in Wilson Library
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Celebrate First Amendment Day with readings from original editions of banned and censored books held by the UNC Rare Book Collection. Readers will share excerpts from a variety of rare books, including a fifteenth-century edition of the Ars Amatoria of the ancient Roman poet Ovid; the 1861 first printing in alphabetic K’iche’ of the Popol Vuh, a sacred Maya text that survived the Spanish Conquest’s destruction of indigenous books in only one transcription; Alton Trials: Of Winthrop S. Gilman, Who was Indicted . . . for the Crime of Riot . . . While Engaged in Defending a Print Press From an Attack . . . by an Armed Mob (1838); the short story “Dexterity,” by Russian émigré Nadezhda Teffi, whose works were banned under Stalin in the Soviet Union; and Walker Percy’s copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Among the readers will be Hugh Stevens, Raleigh-based First Amendment attorney and former chair of the board of directors of the UNC Friends of the Library; University Librarian Sarah Michalak; UNC professors Emilio del Valle Escalante and Sharon James; and Kashif Powell, actor and UNC Ph.D. student in Performance Studies. Other librarians, students and guests will read further selections.
A reception and book display will begin at 5 p.m.