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.
Drawing from his book Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap, University of Connecticut history professor Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar explores the genre and its performers. He also challenges the notion that hip-hop is socially dangerous, noting how many rappers critically view the crime-focused lyrics and antisocial messages of their peers.
Robert Alter, the foremost modern translator of the Hebrew Bible into English, discusses that work, the significant implications from even the tiniest alterations to biblical text, and his push to look beyond the 17th-century King James Version and give closer study to the Hebrew Bible.
Three local business owners -- Kemet Coleman, La’Nae Robinson, and La’Nesha Frazier -- help the Library kick off a new four-part series on how to make entrepreneurship in Kansas City more inclusive, diverse, equitable, accessible, and liberating – more IDEAL for all. The discussion is moderated by Chelsey M, founder of Kansas City Black Owned
Emanuel Cleaver, Kay Barnes, Mark Funkhouser, Sly James, Nick Haines
Four former Kansas City mayors gather for the first time in an extraordinary forum co-presented by the Citizens Association of Kansas City and Kansas City PBS. They take stock of our city today while looking back at what their administrations were able to achieve, what they’d hoped to accomplish but couldn’t, and why some perennially promised things are so hard to deliver.
In a discussion of his definitive biography, bestselling author Jeff Pearlman discusses the life and exploits of one of the greatest athletes in history. Bo Jackson starred in baseball (with the Kansas City Royals) and football, and Nike’s “Bo knows” commercials helped cement him as a cultural icon. A career-shortening injury only fed his legend: What more might he have done?
In the launch of a new series, Turning Points, in partnership with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, military historian David W. Mills looks at America’s decision to provide desperately needed food relief to vanquished Germans at the end of World War II. It eventually turned Germany into a close ally, which it remains to this day.
John Musgrave has been candid about his Vietnam War experiences and related struggles, notably as a featured voice in Ken Burns’ documentary series The Vietnam War and most recently in an acclaimed memoir, The Education of Corporal John Musgrave. In a special Library event, the Independence native discusses the book and his life during and since the war.
Military historian Dirk Ringgenberg assesses the historical accuracy of the 2001 film Black Hawk Down, which depicts the horrific battle that erupted when U.S. forces attempted to capture two lieutenants of a notorious Somali warlord in 1993. The presentation is part of the Hollywood vs. History series in partnership with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
From physical risk to psychological strain, the COVID-19 pandemic has weighed heavily on our nation’s health care workforce for more than 2½ years. Patrick Robinson, president of Kansas City’s Research College of Nursing, joins a panel of nurses in examining those burdens and the ongoing impact of the outbreak on frontline medical staff – nurses in particular.
Six days before the pivotal midterm elections of 2022, The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman examines one of the most complicated and controversial figures in our nation’s history in a discussion of her new blockbuster book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.
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