Senior Class Poet contestant Joey Bagnasco reads his poem “A Sunday” during the Open Mic Poetry Reading 2012 in Speakers’ Corner.

Focus today: Speakers’ Corner

The Library sponsors events, but it also hosts many campus events, and its major forum is affectionately called Speakers’ Corner. Inaugurated as a new space for intellectual, cultural, and social programming in February 2012, Speakers’ Corner is a public area on the first floor of Falvey.

“It serves as a place for our community to congregate both formally and informally in the exchange of ideas,” says Scholarly Outreach / Theology Librarian Darren Poley. This highly visible event space is a popular venue in Falvey, and events in this venue are always open to the public. Poley further says, “Students see and hear what is going on in Speakers’ Corner serendipitously, and we think that is one of its advantages.” It is suitable for the wide range of community gatherings that Falvey supports in the engagement of the minds and spirits of students, faculty, staff and guests.

Programming in Speakers’ Corner has included poetry readings, book signings, musical and orientation events.

Professor Michael Hollinger, CLAS ’89, associate professor in the Department of Theatre, speaks at the Alumni Authors’ Panel, with Sean Harvey, PhD, CLAS ’00, and novelist Judy Lee Burke, CLAS ’75, Speakers’ Corner, June 2015.

The Library is a crossroads at the heart of campus. Having multi-purpose common areas assists Falvey in providing room for the structured, as well as the anarchic, ongoing conversations which surround the pursuit of knowledge in a residential learning community. The most recent event held in Speakers’ Corner was an alumni authors’ panel discussion as a part of Reunion Weekend 2015. When it is not engaged for events, Speakers’ Corner serves as a study lounge where collaboration is commonplace.

If you are interested in booking an event, or just more information about Speakers’ Corner, please contact a member of Falvey’s Scholarly Outreach team, which manages this event space for the Library.

Check here each day this week for information on each of Falvey’s other event venues: including the Learning Commons Lounge and Rooms 204 and 205.