September on CHQ Assembly
See what’s streaming on CHQ Assembly this September!
CHQ Assembly’s September 2023 Lineup
In September, we’re highlighting the 2023 Summer Assembly theme “On Friendship.”
There’s an oft-invoked medieval proverb: “Blood is thicker than water.” We take it to mean that bonds of the family are stronger than any other — that, simply, family comes first. But some have argued that the “blood” in the phrase is not one of family, but one of covenant, of choosing. This places heightened importance on friendship and fellowship, and on the family of our own making. Join Chautauqua lecturers Robert P. George, Cornel West, Karol Jackowski, De’Amon Harges, Michael Mather, Marisa G. Franco, Mohammed Al-Samawi, John T. Grant, Jr., Deborah K. Jones, Rev. Victoria White, Michael Frank, Sean Astin, and Adam Sandel as they explore how friendship has evolved over time and generations, and how we can tend to and nurture the ties that bind us?
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In the Spotlight
On Friendship
Notable Lectures
Robert P. George and Cornel West
Two of the foremost public intellectuals in American life, from two very different schools of thought, Robert P. George and Cornel West have both spoken individually throughout their careers at Chautauqua. Now, this “ideological odd couple” return to the Institution as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series to open a week on friendship and, more notably, the 2023 Summer Assembly Season with a conversation on their own friendship and how such civic friendships, woven across divides, can do more than just strengthen our social fabric, but preserve and strengthen American democracy itself.
Sean Astin
An actor, director, voice artist and producer with more than 200 credits to his name, Sean Astin is best known for roles as Mikey Walsh in “The Goonies,” the title character of “Rudy,” Samwise Gamgee in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and Bob Newby in “Stranger Things 2,” roles that epitomize hope, determination and loyalty in franchises with a common narrative thread: friendship. Astin joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series to close Week One of the 2023 Summer Assembly Season, reflecting on his work as it relates to the week’s theme.
Karol Jackowski
Karol Jackowski entered the Catholic Sisterhood in 1964, and is currently a member of the Sisters for Christian Community. She is a self-taught painter of “religious folk art,” the published author of several books, most recently Sister Karol’s Book of Spells, Blessings, and Folk Magic (Weiser 2021), and a faculty member in Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Karol lives forever and ever amen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Marisa G. Franco
An assistant clinical professor and collegiate fellow in the University of Maryland Honors College, Marisa G. Franco has studied connections and relationships intensively, researching all over the world, centering and prioritizing friendship in her work, which now includes the New York Times bestseller Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends. Drawing upon data and psychological underpinnings that gird such relationships, it is this book that will frame Franco’s presentation as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series as she shares her work on human connection and systemic loneliness.
Michael Frank
Michael Frank is the author of What Is Missing, a novel, and The Mighty Franks, a memoir, which was awarded the 2018 JQ Wingate Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by The Telegraph and The New Statesman. One Hundred Saturdays received the Jewish Book Council’s Natan Notable Book Award and was one of the Wall Street Journal’s top ten books of 2022. Frank is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and lives with his family in New York City and Camogli, Italy.
Watch all these lectures and more, exclusively on CHQ Assembly.