BookHampton Announces Winter Lectures
By Isabel Carmichael
(Jan 13, 2010) Research has shown that challenging the brain to process novel information may be one of the best ways to keep those synapses in shape. BookHampton in East Hampton will offer a series of free winter lectures beginning Saturday at 5 p.m., led by educators and writers, so that “our minds don’t have to freeze over,” according to Jeremy Nussbaum, the co-owner of the bookstore with his wife, Charline Spektor, adding that “Charline had the idea to open our doors a bit more and create a lecture series that explores a wide range of interests.”
“BookHampton is really a very special part of our neighborhood. The stores have a long relationship with great books and with great readers and what they’ve discovered in recent years is that there is a real hunger for interesting events in the winter,” said Ms. Spektor.
Organized by Laurie Newburger, who works for the bookstore and holds a doctorate in English literature, the series, which runs through April, will cover topics as diverse as climate change, education, Montaigne, memoir writing, and black history.
The inaugural lecture this Saturday will feature Dr. Elizabeth Newman, a professor of anthropology at Stony Brook Southampton and an expert on Mesoamerican studies, who will discuss “The Rise and Fall of the Aztec Empire.”
On Jan. 23, Dr. Kurt Bretsch, a professor at Stony Brook Southampton, will discuss “Biodiversity in the Ocean: Consumer Culture vs. Marine Life.” Dr. Bradley Peterson, an expert on Eastern seaboard ecosystems, will tackle the subject of the Long Island seascape and climate change on Jan. 30.
February’s lineup includes: “Exuberance: Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson,” a lecture by Julie Sheehan, a poet and professor at Stony Brook Southampton (Feb. 6); “Oekologie to Oecology to Ecology: the History and Essence of a Young Science” by Dr. James Hoffman (Feb. 13); “Writing Your Own Story,” a talk on the art of memoir writing by Lou Ann Walker (Feb. 20), and “The Economics of Education: The Cost of Teaching for All Our Children” by Dr. Pedro Noguera on Feb. 27.
To further the conversations before and after, BookHampton has come up with a suggested reading list of books, both nonfiction and fiction, related to the subject of the talk that will be available at the bookstores. The full schedule of lectures is available at the store’s Web site, bookhampton.com. I.C.