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This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and the Princeton University Humanities Council, the Program in Humanistic Studies, the Department of English at Princeton University and Labyrinth Books and with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The author, joined in conversation by Simon Gikandi, presents his new book “Atlas’s Bones: The African Foundations of Europe.”

About the book (from the publisher):
Virgil. Chaucer. Petrarch. These names resonate with many as cornerstones of European culture. Yet, in "Atlas’s Bones," D. Vance Smith reveals that much of what is claimed as European culture up to the Middle Ages—its great themes in literature, its sources in political thought, its religious beliefs—originated in the writings of African thinkers like Augustine, Fulgentius, and Martianus Capella, or Europeans who thought extensively about Africa. In fact, a third of Virgil’s Aeneid takes place in Africa. Francis Petrarch believed his most important achievement was his epic "Africa;" while Geoffrey Chaucer wrote repeatedly about the figures of Scipio Africanus, actually two different men who defeated and destroyed Carthage.

Smith tells the story of how Europe created a false “medieval” version of Africa to acquire resources and power during the era of imperialism and colonialism. The first half of the book, “Reading Africa,” traces Egypt’s, Libya’s, and Carthage’s influence on classical and medieval thinking about Africa, highlighting often ignored literary and legendary traditions, for example, that Alexander the Great named himself the son of an African god. The second part, “Writing Africa,” focuses on how the different cultures of the two great African cities—Carthage and Alexandria—shaped modern literary criticism and political theology and examines the cross-influences of modern anthropology, medieval studies, and colonial law.

"Atlas’s Bones" firmly re-establishes the significance of Africa in European intellectual history. It will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how much of Africa informs our artistic and cultural world.

In Conversation:
D. Vance Smith is a professor in the English Department at Princeton University. His research bridges African and decolonial literature and theory, Africanfuturism, the history of anthropology, and the medieval roots of colonial structures, governance, and thought. His work also centers community engagement, community building, and radical pedagogy in Trenton, New Jersey, where he serves as the Board Chair of Trenton Artworks and as the Board Vice-President of Passage Theater. In Fall 2025, Smith co-taught the Humanities Sequence “Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture” in the Program in Humanistic Studies.

Simon Gikandi is the Class of 1943 University Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Princeton University, where he is also affiliated with the Departments of Comparative Literature and African American Studies and the Program in African Studies. Gikandi’s major fields of research and teaching are Anglophone literatures and cultures of Africa, India, the Caribbean, and postcolonial Britain; literary and critical theory; the black Atlantic and the African diaspora; and the English novel. His current research projects are on slavery and modernity, Decolonization and African Literature, and Global Modernism.

This event was recorded on February 05, 2026.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Labyrinth Books. The author presents and discusses her novel "And the Ancestors Sing."

About the Books (from the publisher):
In 1978, as the Cultural Revolution fades into history, Lei is bartered away into marriage for two cartons of cigarettes and a handful of eggs. She finds herself in the unfamiliar village of her new husband where she is met with indifference. When a disaster upends their world, Lei and her husband are forced to join China’s vast wave of city-bound, rural migrants, leaving behind children whom they may never see again.

Sixteen-year-old LuLu arrives in Shanghai with nothing but ambition. Denied a factory job and determined to keep her family from starving, she turns to sex work, navigating the dangers of the city’s underbelly with sharp wit and a fierce will to survive. When a powerful client offers her a chance at security, LuLu faces an impossible choice: seize a future that could lift her family from poverty, or risk everything for a life on her own terms.

Spanning decades of seismic change in post-Cultural Revolution China, "And The Ancestors Sing" is a sweeping, multigenerational novel of resilience, sacrifice, and the unbreakable pull of home, perfect for fans of "Pachinko" and "The Island of Sea Women."

In Conversation:
Radha Lin Chaddah was born in London to an East Indian father and a Malaysian Chinese mother, she grew up in Kenya, the UK, and the US. After earning medical, law, and public health degrees, she and family have lived across the globe before settling in Philadelphia. Radha enjoys learning new Mandarin characters, tackling novice knitting projects, painting with watercolors and acrylics, catching a live, stand-up comedy show with husband Avery, trying out new recipes with daughters Yani and Ayo, and, of course, jotting down story notes for her next writing project.

Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir "Cinderland" and the novel "Shiner," which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick and an NPR Best Book of the year. Her latest novel, "Mercury," is a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick, a Book of the Month Pick, a People Magazine Book of the Week, and an Editor’s Choice selection in The New York Times. Amy Jo’s next novel, "Wait for Me," is coming March 3, 2026.

This event was recorded on February 08, 2026.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Princeton Classics. The author and classicist, joined in conversation by Joshua Billings, presents her new book "Revolution: Modern Uprisings in Ancient Time."

An open access edition of this book is available through BibliOpen at the link below:
https://bibliopen.org/p/bopen/9780226843049

About the Book (from the publisher):
A consideration of how modern revolutions have employed tropes of classical antiquity.

Despite its Latin etymology, “revolution” in its modern understanding arguably did not exist in antiquity, and revolution as we know it today is considered by many theorists to be a term born in modernity. While they certainly had times of momentous political upheaval, the Greeks and Romans tended to understand such events as part of a narrative of political continuity rather than novelty or rupture. Nevertheless, modern revolutions have repeatedly appropriated tropes of classical discourse, such as freedom, tyranny, tragedy, and fraternity.

With this book, Miriam Leonard offers a conceptual history of revolution, unraveling modernity’s yearning for the new and questioning why ancient concepts continue to play such an important role in political uprisings. Leonard looks at examples of appeals to antiquity during the French and Haitian Revolutions, in anticolonial struggles, and feminist and queer movements and considers works of theorists such as Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Sigmund Freud that foreground an engagement with antiquity.

In Conversation:
Miriam Leonard is professor of Greek literature and its reception at University College London. She is the author of "Athens in Paris," "How to Read Ancient Philosophy," "Socrates and the Jews, "and "Tragic Modernities." She is the editor of "Derrida and Antiquity" and coeditor of "Tragedy and the Idea of Modernity" (with Joshua Billings) and "Laughing with Medusa: Classical Myth and Feminist Thought" (with Vanda Zajko).

Joshua Billings researches ancient Greek literature and philosophy and modern intellectual history, with a particular concentration on tragedy. He has published two books: "Genealogy of the Tragic: Greek Tragedy and German Philosophy" (Princeton 2014) traces the emergence of modern conceptions of tragedy and the tragic in the 18th and 19th century; and "The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens" (Princeton 2021) explores how Greek drama can be understood as a form of philosophical thought before the discipline of philosophy. This interest in fifth-century BCE intellectual history is also the impetus behind the "Cambridge Companion to the Sophists" (co-edited, with Christopher Moore), which was published in 2023.

About the series:
This virtual conversation is the first event in the Public Humanities Initiative's author series on revolution, highlighting the connection between the American Revolution and other modern movements of national liberation or cultural revolution. By exploring the topic of revolution beyond the American context, this series investigates the history of the American Revolution and its consequences for our national history, even as that history is situated with respect to a more far-reaching history of revolutions in the modern period.

Public Humanities programs and resources at the library are presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event was recorded on January 25, 2025.

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. The authors explore two influential women in Islamic history, Lady Fatima and Lady Zaynab, and demonstrate how they embodied courage, spiritual clarity and resistance against injustice.

In observance of Muslim Heritage Month this conversation between two scholars explores their recently published books on two of the most influential women in Islamic history. Through scholarship that blends history, moral philosophy, and reflection on the contemporary relevance of these women's lives, the authors demonstrate how a mother and daughter, Lady Fatima and Lady Zaynab, embodied courage, spiritual clarity, and principled resistance against injustice across generations. This event invites readers of all backgrounds to discover how their legacies continue to inspire global movements for dignity, truth and social transformation.

In Conversation:
Noor Zaidi is assistant professor of history at UMBC and a scholar of the Middle East and South Asia. She specializes in the history of gender, sectarianism, and Shi’a Islam in national and transnational spaces. Her current book manuscript analyzes how the seventh-century figure, Zaynab bint Ali, granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammed, has been used in 20th-century contexts, tracing the development and evolution of pilgrimage to two female shrines in Syria (the Sayeda Zaynab shrine) and Pakistan (Bibi Pak Daman) and prisons in Iraq as sites of memory and identity construction. Based on oral interviews, fieldwork and archival research in Syria, Pakistan, and Iraq, Prof. Zaidi’s work explores the physical and imaginative spaces in which identity is made and contested and shows how transnational narratives become embedded in local contexts.

Mahjabeen Dhala teaches Islamic studies and comparative theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where she served as assistant professor, director of the Madrasa-Midrasha Program, and chair of the Women’s studies in religion program. Dr. Dhala’s work focusses on the contributions and challenges of pre-modern Muslim women viz-a-viz Islamic understandings of faith, philosophy, and justice. Her interdisciplinary research features an integration of Islamic theological texts with feminist theories. She is committed to advancing interreligious and intersectional dialogue through her research, teaching, and mentoring, and through her global travels, presenting on topics such as Muslim diversity and leadership, religious and cultural understanding, women’s empowerment, and social justice.

Moderator:
Debbie Almontaser is an internationally recognized, award-winning educator, entrepreneur, speaker, authority on cross cultural understanding and author of, "Leading While Muslim: The Experiences of American Muslim Principals After 9/11." She is an influential community leader and the Founder and CEO of Bridging Cultures Group Inc., a for-profit business that provides professional development and coaching for companies, nonprofits, universities, firms, and K–12 education personnel. Dr. Almontaser was the founding and former principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, NY. A twenty-five-year veteran of the NYC Public School System, she taught special education, inclusion, trained teachers in literacy, and served as a multicultural specialist and diversity advisor. Dr. Almontaser is an advisor on cultural and religious diversity issues for Public Advocate Jumaani Williams, Borough President Eric Adams, the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, the NYC Commission for Human Rights, and New York City Council members. She is also a member of the NYC Department of Education Diversity Advisory Board. Currently, she is the Board President of the Muslim Community Network (www.mcnny.org) and sits on the boards of the Yemeni American Merchants Association (www.yamausa.org), Therapy and Learning Center Preschool, and 21in21 (www.21in21.org).

Public Humanities programs and resources are presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event was recorded on January 21, 2026.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Blue Ear Books. The author reads from and discusses "Where the Mithuns Are: Essays on War, Art and Beasts" her new book of inspiring essays.

About the Presentation:
Author/activist Edith Mirante presents her newest book, "Where the Mithuns Are: Essays on War, Art and Beasts." Subjects of her inspiring essays include the current war in Myanmar (Burma), ancient Indigenous Moundbuilders, land artist Micheal Heizer, the natural/cultural history of arctic muskoxen, and legendary Japanese-American labor firebrand, Manzanar internee Karl Yoneda.

About the Author:
Edith Mirante is the founder of Project Maje which distributes information on Burma (Myanmar) human rights and environmental issues. She is an artist and the author of two Burma books, "Burmese Looking Glass" and "Down the Rat Hole," as well as "The Wind in the Bamboo" about Black Indigenous Asians. She lives in the Pacific Northwest but grew up in New Jersey, with family ties to Princeton. Her latest book is "Where the Mithuns Are."

Presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event was recorded on January 15, 2026.

This recording is presented by Princeton Public Library. The author is joined by writer/editor Ken Jaworowski to discuss her debut murder mystery "The Gallagher Place," selected as the December 2025 Top Pick by LibraryReads.

About the Book (from the publisher):
A layered exploration of family secrets, sibling misconceptions, and an unsolved murder in this chilling debut set in New York’s Dutchess County.

When Marlowe Fisher, an illustrator living in New York City, returns to her family’s bewitching Hudson Valley home for the holidays, she discovers a body in the woods—a murder that draws her back into the haunting case of her teenage best friend’s disappearance two decades earlier. What happened to Nora?

As police descend on the sprawling Fisher property, Marlowe is pulled into an investigation that threatens to unravel the town’s fragile loyalties and expose the shadowed legacy of a weekend home steeped in secrets. Marlowe must confront the fallibility of her own memory and the feeling that everyone—including her brothers—is hiding something if she’s to uncover the shocking truth about her lost friend. In this gripping debut, Julie Doar delivers a chilling mystery that explores the corrosive power of silence and the tension of family secrets.

About the Authors:
Julie Doar grew up in New York. As a child, she loved to imagine the abandoned barns and rolling countryside of the Hudson Valley were haunted. She attended Rice University for undergrad and studied English. She's worked as a cold-calling Sales Rep, a Starbucks barista, and a romance novel ghostwriter. Currently, she is a middle school English teacher.

Ken Jaworowski is an editor at The New York Times. He graduated from Shippensburg University and the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he was an amateur boxer, and has had plays produced in New York and Europe. He lives in New Jersey with his family.

This event was recorded on January 11, 2026