The BPL Bookmobile
BPL's Bookmobile will join Night in the Library; it will be parked on Eastern Parkway just outside the Central Library Plaza. The Bookmobile takes library service on the road, bringing books, technology and programs to neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn. Every year, the Bookmobiles…
Bookmobile @ Night in the Library
Bookmobile support for Night in the Library programming.
DJ Zenon Marko
Helming the Grand Lobby at Night in the Library: Out of Darkness, Zenon Marko is a composer, producer, electronic musician, DJ, drummer, and philosopher residing in New York City. Marko produces, composes, and performs in genres ranging from ambient, electronic, neoclassical,…
Night in the Library: Out of Darkness
Out of Darkness will present different takes on facing hardship rather than evading it. Performances and conversations will challenge audiences to confront our difficult era with honesty and curiosity to actively understand our world without counterproductively retreating from it.
…
Night in the Library: Out of Darkness Keynote (CART and ASL)
Room: Grand Lobby, 1st Floor
The 2024 Night in the Library: Out of Darkness keynote will be delivered by Astra Taylor.
Astra Taylor is cofounder of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors. She is the director of numerous documentaries and the author of The Age of Insecurity:…
ACLU's At Liberty LIVE: The Light of Magical Thinking (ASL)
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
Just after the keynote, join the ACLU podcast At Liberty for a LIVE recording featuring author and poet Ian Manuel. Ian will be in conversation with Kendall Ciesemier, host of At Liberty. Manuel will perform poetry and tell stories about how "…
Wendy’s Subway: Symbols of Palestinian Resistance
Room: The Dweck Center, Basement Level
In the young adult anthology, “Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah” (Wendy's Subway, 2023), writers, artists and scholars explore the rich ethical tradition of social justice within Jewish culture and embrace the practice of inquiry and discourse…
The Dilemma Series, co-curated by Ian Olasov
Room: Information Commons Room 4, 1st Floor
From 8PM to 11:30, this iconic Night in the Library annual series returns with a group of philosophers examining some of the quirkiest or most troubling problems of our times.
8:00, Ian Olasov: My neighbor’s “In this house, we believe…
Lama Justin von Bujdoss: How to Die: A Talk with a Buddhist Monk
Join Lama Justin as he shares how to die - offering key instructions on entering into the experience of death and how this makes life more livable.
Lama Justin von Bujdoss is an American vajrayana Buddhist teacher, writer, and the is a co-founder of Bhumisparsha an experimental…
Yasmine Seale: Writing in the Dark: Shahrazad & the Art of Staying Alert (ASL)
Room: Art & Music, 3rd Floor
In "Writing in the Dark: Shahrazad & the Art of Staying Alert," The Annotated Arabian Nights translator Yasmine Seale discusses literatures most loquacious liberator and what her method teaches us now.
Yasmine Seale’s work includes poetry,…
Nikhil Goyal: Live to See the Day: Poverty, Mass Incarceration & 2024 (ASL)
Room: Society, Sciences & Technology, 2nd Floor
Nikhil Goyal makes the case that we must transform a society that sanctions premature death for the many and a decent life for the few.
Nikhil Goyal is a sociologist and policymaker who served as senior policy advisor on…
Joe Baker: The Erased: The Lenape In & Out of New York (ASL)
Room: History, Biography, Religion, 2nd Floor
Lenape Center Executive Director Joe Baker takes the stage at Night in the Library: Out of Darkness to remind us that the erasure of the Lenape—New York City's original people—did not end with the Lenape's forced removals beginning in the early…
Jay Mimes and Daralee Vázquez García: Restorative Justice: Navigating Safety through Darkness
Darkness is often seen as something abstract and other, outside of ourselves. The current criminal "justice" (legal) system in the US operates on this reasoning, encouraging us to buy into a binary of us vs. them: the innocent civilians and the cruel criminals. Restorative justice implores us to…
Nora Krug: Drawing War
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
Co-presented with Goethe-Institut New York, this talk will focus on the subjects of war, history, and politics, including “Belonging,” a visual memoir about WWII and Krug's own German family history; “Diaries of War,” her recent work of visual…
Jenny Cooper: Live Clothing Mending
We will be talking a little bit about the value of mending in our over consumed world and the different visual desires from mending. We like to use a simple, easy access method, that prioritizes visibility, longevity and wearability with large patches simply attached by machine. The…
Tashi Chödrön: Bardo: The Awakening Practice: Art & Meditation
Room: Grand Lobby Stage, 1st Floor
In this talk, Tashi Chödrön will discuss the symbolism, meaning, benefits and stories of Bardo Thoedrol, the “Liberation Upon Hearing” text, and lead a transformative guided meditation for the Night in the Library: Out of Darkness's attendees.
…
Noah Feldman: To Be a Jew Today
Room: Society, Sciences & Technology, 2nd Floor
In his timely reckoning with how Jews can and should make sense of their tradition and each other, Noah Feldman asks a wide array of questions: What does it mean to be a Jew? At a time of worldwide crisis, venerable answers to this…
Fred Moten: Poems on Darkness & Light: A Reading (ASL)
Room: Art & Music, 3rd Floor
At 8:30, Fred Moten takes the stage at Night in the Library: Out of Darkness to read poems about darkness and light.
Fred Moten teaches at New York University. His recent projects include a poetry collection, Perennial Fashion Presence Falling (…
Philip Gourevitch: The Life After — Rwanda Thirty Years On (ASL)
Room: History, Biography, Religion, 2nd Floor
In three decades since the genocide of Tutsis decimated Rwanda —with a million slaughtered in a hundred days — that country has been engaged in the most ambitious and intensive process of reckoning and accountability ever undertaken by any…
Asad Dandia: Ramadan as a Month of Resistance
Asad Dandia is a Brooklyn-born local historian, community organizer, and tour guide. He is the founder of New York Narratives, a walking tour company and storytelling agency with a special focus on the city's immigrant and minority communities. He works as the Outreach and Partnerships Manager…
Ajay Singh Chaudhary: The Exhausted of the Earth: On the Politics of Climate Change (ASL)
Room: History, Biography & Religion, 2nd Floor
Climate change is not only about the exhaustion of the planet, it's about the exhaustion of so many of us, our lives, our worlds, even our minds. So, what is to be done? In this talk, Ajay Singh Chaudhary answers this question by…
Ask a Philosopher
Room: Front Lobby, 1st Floor
Throughout the early hours of Night in the Library: Out of Darkness, several public philosophers will attend to audience members' questions by answering their philosophical concerns. With Ian Olasov, Travis Timmerman and Ignacio Choi
Ian Olasov is a…
[CANCELLED] Ampersand Paris: Life Amongst Decay: Fermentation Workshop
Ampersand Paris (they/them) is an interdisciplinary performing artist and fermentation revivalist. Their current practice is coining and cultivating a trans-microbiopolitic for making and being. They concern themselves with taking care of nearly invisible things: bacteria, yeast, lines of code,…
Cantastoria: Courage & The Foot
Room: Grand Lobby, 1st Floor
America's oldest political theater troupe, The Bread & Puppet Theater was founded by Peter and Elka Schumann in New York's Lower East Side in 1963. Steeped in the Cheap Art movement and influenced heavily by Marxist political thought,…
Emerson Sykes: How South Carolina Silences the Voices of the Incarcerated & What You Can Do About It (ASL)
Room: Art & Music, 3rd Floor
Prisons across the United States restrict communications with and among incarcerated people, often without any legitimate justification. South Carolina prohibits anyone in its custody from doing any media interview on any topic for any reason—it is likely…
Emi Nietfield & Alissa Quart: The American Bootstraps Myth: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (ASL)
Room: Society, Sciences & Technology, 2nd Floor
Self-reliance is central to America's mythology. But what if this ideal holds us back—as well as being false, classist, corrosive and even sick-making? Join Alissa Quart, author of Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the…
Sarah Lewis: How We Teach the Truth (ASL)
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
Sarah Elizabeth Lewis’s talk is an extension of her Vision & Justice course, discussing images, truth, representation, and justice. The initiative Vision & Justice, founded and spearheaded by Lewis, builds awareness of the impact of…
Gabrielle R. Gatto: Death Literacy, Presented by a Death Doula
What’s the mortaliTEA? This talk will be focused on making the end of life to-do list less daunting. We’ll be going over the BIG questions to ask yourself and your loved ones, common procedures and practices in NY for end of life rituals, and where to get started. The goal is to take a taboo we…
Marlon Peterson: Groping for the light: My father died on my only child's 2nd birthday (ASL)
Room: Art & Music, 3rd Floor
An exploration of finding the light in people and communities during our darkest moments. My father was my support in one of my darkest moments, and when it was hard to find any light, he was there every step of the way. For my daughter's birthday, in…
Sasha Issenberg: The Lie Detectives: Winning Elections in the Disinformation Age (ASL)
Room: Society, Sciences & Technology, 2nd Floor
There has never been an election season like this one: voters in the United States, India, Mexico, Indonesia, United Kingdom and European Union all go to the polls in 2024. In The Lie Detectives, a follow-up to the book Politico called “…
Ross Perlin: Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York
Room: History, Biography, Religion, 2nd Floor
Contemporary New York is the most linguistically diverse city in the world—and in the history of the world. What does that mean, and how did it get that way? Ross Perlin, author of the new Language City: The Fight to Preserve…
Chester Higgins: Sacred Nile, the missing link (ASL)
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
SACRED NILE is a photo history book that connects us to the buried foundational links of our heritage and uncovers the African influence on philosophy, spirituality, and religion before Genesis and slavery. Black people are taught everybody’s…
ArinMaya: Slumber in Sound: A Restful Sound Bath
ArinMaya is an inspirational singer, songwriter, sound healer, and activist who has sung and studied with Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock and Bobby McFerrin. A dedicated practitioner and student of sound healing for over 10 years, Arin is a graduate of Howard University, Stanford…
The Dream Mapping Project: Homo Homini Lupus: Exploring Aggression through Dreams
The Dream Mapping Project is a global artists collective which explores the realm of dreaming. Curated by Alisa Minyukova and produced by Dr. Kelly Bulkeley. DMP aims to bridge dream science with the creative process. Through our work we have discovered the language of dreams to point to what…
Lama Justin von Bujdoss: How to Die: A Talk with a Buddhist Monk
Join Lama Justin as he shares how to die - offering key instructions on entering into the experience of death and how this makes life more livable.
Lama Justin von Bujdoss is an American vajrayana Buddhist teacher, writer, and the is a co-founder of Bhumisparsha an experimental…
Jenny Cooper: Live Clothing Mending
We will be talking a little bit about the value of mending in our over consumed world and the different visual desires from mending. We like to use a simple, easy access method, that prioritizes visibility, longevity and wearability with large patches simply attached by machine. The…
Eric Klinenberg: We Were Wrong About What Happened in 2020: A Reckoning (ASL)
Room: Society, Sciences & Technology, 2nd Floor
Crises have a way of revealing things. Who we are. What we value. Whose lives matter. In this talk, NYU sociologist and bestselling author Eric Klinenberg draws on his new book, 2020, to shed light on what happened to New York City in a…
National Sawdust presents Molly Joyce
Molly Joyce (she/her) has been deemed one of the “most versatile, prolific and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome” by The Washington Post. Her work is concerned with disability as a creative source. Molly’s creative projects have been presented and commissioned by…
Leila Taylor: Architecture of Shadows: Etienne-Louis Boullée’s Cenotaph for Isaac Newton
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
In 1785, French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée envisioned a memorial in homage to his hero, mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, Isaac Newton. This illustrated lecture on Boullée’s Cenotaph for Isaac Newton explores his attempt to…
Amy Cunningham: 'Hope is the thing with feathers': How an earth-friendly funeral director helps grieving people see the light in death (ASL)
Room: History, Biography, Religion, 2nd Floor
Death has long been associated with darkness, but Brooklyn funeral director Amy Cunningham insists her work in the dismal trade isn't depressing at all. In fact, getting acquainted with what is newly possible in today’s end-of-life rituals is a…
Asad Dandia: Ramadan as a Month of Resistance
Asad Dandia is a Brooklyn-born local historian, community organizer, and tour guide. He is the founder of New York Narratives, a walking tour company and storytelling agency with a special focus on the city's immigrant and minority communities. He works as the Outreach and Partnerships Manager…
Peter Catapano & Simon Critchley: Music & Mysticism
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
Mysticism is about existential ecstasy, finding or recovering an intensity of experience. Embracing mysticism can refresh our thinking and allow us to live deeper and freer lives. Mysticism lives on in music. Listening to the music we love…
[CANCELLED] Ampersand Paris: Life Amongst Decay: Fermentation Talk
Ampersand Paris (they/them) is an interdisciplinary performing artist and fermentation revivalist. Their current practice is coining and cultivating a trans-microbiopolitic for making and being. They concern themselves with taking care of nearly invisible things: bacteria, yeast, lines of code,…
Nate Schweber: This America of Ours: Bernard & Avis DeVoto & the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild
Room: History, Biography, Religion, 2nd Floor
In the mid-20th century, dashing literary duo Bernard and Avis DeVoto exposed a plot by corrupt Western senators to sell off our national parks, forests and grasslands. As the DeVotos' public lands advocacy got them blacklisted by the FBI and…
Gretchen Sisson: Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
Room: Society, Sciences & Technology, 2nd Floor
Over the course of a decade, sociologist Gretchen Sisson interviewed over a hundred women who have relinquished their children for domestic adoption. Her new book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of…
Kat Mustatea: Voidopolis & the Art of Disappearing
Room: Art & Music, 3rd Floor
Voidopolis (2023, The MIT Press / Leonardo Series) is a hybrid digital artistic and literary project in the form of an augmented reality (AR) book made to disappear, which retells Dante's Inferno as if it were set in pandemic-ravaged New York City. Every…
National Sawdust presents: Holland Andrews & yuniya edi kwon
Holland Andrews (they/them) is a vocalist, composer, producer, and performer whose work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build soundscapes encompassing both catharsis and dissonance. Frequently highlighting themes surrounding vulnerability and healing,…
Daralee Vázquez García and Jay Mimes: Restorative Justice: Navigating Safety through Darkness
Darkness is often seen as something abstract and other, outside of ourselves. The current criminal "justice" (legal) system in the US operates on this reasoning, encouraging us to buy into a binary of us vs. them: the innocent civilians and the cruel criminals. Restorative justice implores us to…
Bianca Graulau: Puerto Rico: A Modern-Day Colony
Room: History, Biography, Religion, 2nd Floor
This talk discusses how the United States exerts power over Puerto Rico and how local communities are responding by creating their own systems. Whether it's food, energy or housing, Puerto Ricans are leaning on mutual aid to resist oppressive…
Cantastoria: By the Light of Man
Room: Grand Lobby, 1st Floor
America's oldest political theater troupe, The Bread & Puppet Theater was founded by Peter and Elka Schumann in New York's Lower East Side in 1963. Steeped in the Cheap Art movement and influenced heavily by Marxist political thought,…
Marisa Holmes: The World We Want: The Radical Imagination of Occupy Wall Street
Room: Art & Music, 3rd Floor
In the darkest of moments, we must dare to dream. Now, we are living through the death of neoliberalism, and the rising threat of fascism. An alternative is vital for our own survival. How can we, the 99%, act now, in the present? What world do we want? Let…
National Sawdust presents Erica "Twelve45" Blunt
Erica "Twelve45" Blunt (she/her) is a rising force known for her prowess as a Composer, DJ, and Sound Designer. Captivating audiences, Erica has performed at renowned venues such as the National Gallery of Art, Highline Ballroom, and Brooklyn Museum. Her video mix series Day by Day combines…
Important Phrases in American Sign Language
This will be taught by Cathy M. Markland.
Cathy M. Markland is an ASL/English interpreter for close to 45 years. She graduated from an Interpreter Education Program way back in 1979 from Gallaudet University. She lives in New York City and is a native Californian. Cathy enjoys theatrical…
Matthew Liao: The Ethics of AI
Room: Society, Sciences & Technology, 2nd Floor
Artificial intelligence (AI) is progressing rapidly. AI can now recognize objects in images and videos, transcribe speech, translate between languages, beat humans in Jeopardy, at Go and poker, paint in the style…
Laurence Lowe: The Power of the Peer Movement to Transform our Response To The Mental Health Crisis
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
A growing body of evidence—as well as Laurence's personal experience—shows that a model incorporating peer support specialists into mental health services creates a more holistic and effective approach to recovery. So why have so few people…
ArinMaya: Slumber in Sound: A Restful Sound Bath
ArinMaya is an inspirational singer, songwriter, sound healer, and activist who has sung and studied with Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock and Bobby McFerrin. A dedicated practitioner and student of sound healing for over 10 years, Arin is a graduate of Howard University, Stanford…
Gwenda-lin Grewal: The World As Seen From A Balloon
Home: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
Antiquity didn’t have an ivory tower, but it did have a balloon. Aristophanes was its maker, Socrates its passenger. In a balloon, Socrates floated above the crowd, looking from the sky rather than the ground. He didn’t seem to be afraid of…
Norman Finkelstein: October 7, 2023: Analyzing the Events
Room: Dweck Center, Basement Level
This talk will cover both the history that led to October 7th and potential outcomes in the Middle East.
Norman G. Finkelstein received his PhD from the Princeton University Politics Department in 1987. He is the author of many books that have been…
Gabrielle R. Gatto: Death Literacy, Presented by a Death Doula
What’s the mortaliTEA? The Death Cafe is a simple concept. Bring strangers together to discuss one of the great universal truths: death. With thousands of chapters in over 25 countries around the world, Death Cafes are informal gatherings that aim to “increase awareness of death with a view…
Lama Justin von Bujdoss: Midnight Meditation: Entering into the Experience of Death
Room: Grand Lobby, 1st Floor
The practice of developing capacity around understanding death through meditation is as old as time. Join us for a midnight meditation session that recreates aspects of the death journey as found within the practice of Vajrayana Buddhism.
Lama Justin von…
Hadrien Coumans: Present Thoughts for a Collective Future
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
Anthropocentrism, the belief that humans are at the center of everything, often leads to the misguided notion that we have the capability to single-handedly solve the complex issue of climate change. However, this assumption is flawed, especially…
Lee Rowland: Let Us Shout Fire!
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
“We all know you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater.” This is often the go-to phrase that many people use when they think specific speech isn’t, or shouldn’t be, protected by the First Amendment. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to a free speech…
Vincent Colapietro: The Rhetoric of Evil, Inescapable, Dangerous & (Occasionally) Justifiable: A Homage to Richard J. Bernstein
Room: Languages & Literature, 1st Floor
It seems appropriate to mark this gathering by a recollection of Richard J. Bernstein, whose roots were in a Jewish working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. He returned, time and again, to questions pertaining to evil. Often, he did so in…
