Signature Event Archive

Search the Signature Event Archive to discover past Library events. Watch videos, hear speaker interviews, and listen to audio recordings of previous presentations. Search by keyword (event title, subject, or presenter name), location or by date range.
Signature Event Video Video Signature Event Audio Audio Signature Event Interview Interviews
E.g., 2020/02/21
E.g., 2020/02/21

Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl

Jeannie Vanasco

In a discussion of her new book, Towson University’s Jeannie Vanasco walks through her lingering trauma, feelings of betrayal, and need for accountability more than a decade her rape by a close friend from high school. Setting the #MeToo-era memoir apart: She also gives voice to her attacker, who spoke to Vanasco at length.

 

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In a discussion of her new book, Towson University’s Jeannie Vanasco walks through her lingering trauma, feelings of betrayal, and need for accountability more than a decade her rape by a close friend from high school. Setting the #MeToo-era memoir apart: She also gives voice to her attacker, who spoke to Vanasco at length.
Thursday, February 20, 2020 6:30 pm
Reception: 
6 pm
Central Library
Event Audio

Smacked: A Story of White-Collar Ambition, Addiction, and Tragedy

Eilene Zimmerman

In a discussion of her memoir Smacked, former New York Times business columnist Eilene Zimmerman looks at the troubling pervasiveness of drug addiction in such high-pressure, white-collar professions as law, finance, and technology – a discovery she made after the stunning, drug-induced death of her former husband.

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In a discussion of her memoir Smacked, former New York Times business columnist Eilene Zimmerman looks at the troubling pervasiveness of drug addiction in such high-pressure, white-collar professions as law, finance, and technology – a discovery she made after the stunning, drug-induced death of her former husband.
Wednesday, February 19, 2020 6:30 pm
Reception: 
6 pm
Plaza Branch
Event AudioEvent Videos

When My Time Comes

Diane Rehm

Arguments in the divisive right-to-die debate range from legal to spiritual, ethical, and social. Longtime public radio host and podcaster Diane Rehm found her position and voice—in favor of laws allowing the terminally ill to end their lives with medical assistance—with the 2014 death of her husband.

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Longtime public radio host and podcaster Diane Rehm examines both side of the divisive right-to-die issue in a discussion of her new book. She draws from the harrowing experience of her late husband, plus interviews with other terminally ill patients, spouses and other relatives, ethicists, and right-to-die opponents.
Tuesday, February 18, 2020 6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
Event Audio

Always in Season

Indie Lens Pop-Up

A 17-year-old African American is found hanging from a swing set in the middle of an all-white trailer park in North Carolina. Police quickly declare it a suicide—despite doubts by family members and questionable circumstances.

Could the 2014 tragedy have been a lynching? Do they remain a modern-day occurrence?

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With a screening and discussion of the 2019 documentary Always in Season, the Indie Lens Pop-Up cinema series examines the lingering impact of lynching, connecting this decades-ago form of terrorism to today’s racial violence and asking: Does it still occur?
Thursday, February 13, 2020 6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
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What's Your Pronoun? Beyond He & She

Dennis Baron, C.J. Janovy

Merriam-Webster has thrown its considerable weight behind the use of “they” as a singular, gender-neutral pronoun, expanding its dictionary definition and then proclaiming “they” the 2019 Word of the Year. Traditionalists and other critics argue: miscarriage of meaning!

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University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron puts today’s search for nonbinary pronouns – i.e., the singular “they” – in historical context in a discussion of his new book What’s Your Pronoun? KCUR’s C.J. Janovy joins him in a public conversation.
Tuesday, February 11, 2020 6:30 pm
Reception: 
6 pm
Plaza Branch
Event AudioEvent Videos

John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves

EARTh

Premiering in 1971, winner of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle and off-Broadway Obie awards for best American play, The House of Blue Leaves is John Guare’s most popular and arguably most important work.

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Kansas City’s Equity Actors' Readers' Theatre (EARTh) delivers a script-in-hand reading of John Guare’s most popular and arguably most important work. The House of Blue Leaves explores the dark underside of the American dream, depicting one man’s desperation for success as a songwriter and how it clashes with his demanding, lower middle-class family life.
Monday, February 10, 2020 6:30 pm
Plaza Branch

The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour: Race, Media, and America's National Pastime

Phil Dixon
Missouri Valley Sundays

In 1934, brothers Dizzy and Daffy Dean were stars of Major League Baseball’s regular season and World Series. Following their St. Louis Cardinals’ victory over the Detroit Tigers in the Series’ seventh and deciding game, the pair joined a 14-game barnstorming tour in which they competed against the best African American baseball teams in the country—including the Kansas City Monarchs.

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In a discussion of his new book, baseball historian and author Phil Dixon revisits the 14-game, cross-country tour in which freshly minted World Series champions Dizzy and Daffy Dean and their all-star teammates took on the best African American baseball teams in the land – including the Kansas City Monarchs. Alas, media coverage reflected the racial bias of the day.
Sunday, February 9, 2020 2:00 pm
Central Library
Event Audio

From Page to Screen: Disobedience

Reed Maxwell, Lonita Cook, Kaite Stover
Searching the Psyche Through Cinema

The Library continues this year’s Searching the Psyche Through Cinema series – featuring films adapted from books – with the 2017 drama Disobedience (R, 114 min.).

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This year’s Searching the Psyche Through Cinema screening-and-discussion series continues with the film adaptation (2007; R) of Naomi Alderman’s novel Disobedience, the story of a woman who returns to the Orthodox Jewish community in London that she fled as a child.
Sunday, February 9, 2020 1:30 pm
Reception: 
Following
Plaza Branch

Love Potion

StoneLion Puppet Theatre
Friday Night Family Fun

Join Kansas City’s StoneLion Puppet Theatre in celebrating Valentine’s Day and the season of love with tangoing flamingos, dancing chocolate Kisses and affectionate orangutans. Hearts young and old will melt.
 

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Join Kansas City’s StoneLion Puppet Theatre in celebrating Valentine’s Day and the season of love with tangoing flamingos, dancing chocolate Kisses and affectionate orangutans. Heats young and old will melt.
Friday, February 7, 2020 6:30 pm
Plaza Branch

Early: An Intimate History of Premature Birth and What It Teaches Us About Being Human

Sarah DiGregorio, John Lantos

When journalist Sarah DiGregorio’s daughter was born nearly three months prematurely, she was cast into a place—the neonatal intensive care unit—where science, humanity, and ethics collide. Parents, doctors, and nurses wrestle with difficult, sometimes unanswerable questions. When does life begin? When and how should it end? How do we define being human?

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In a discussion of her new book, New York-based journalist Sarah DiGregorio recounts the harrowing experience of her daughter’s three-months-premature birth and her introduction to the complex world of neonatology – where science, humanity, and ethics collide in dramatic and deeply personal ways.
Tuesday, February 4, 2020 6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
Event AudioEvent Videos

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