The University Libraries, the Division of Student Affairs and the School of Social Work are hosting an exhibit of rare books and materials from the Remnant Trust in Mullins Library through Monday, May 12. The Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum exhibit represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for visitors to view extremely rare materials. The Libraries are hosting two events this week that celebrate these materials.

Feb. 26 – Brandyn D. Smith selected and arranged poems from the sonnet cycle Tuckahoe: Poems of Frederick Douglass’s Homeland by Robert D. Madison, professor emeritus of English at the U.S. Naval Academy. They will be performed by Smith (graduate student, Drama), Kara George (undergraduate student, Drama), and Zachary Stolz (undergraduate student, Drama) in the Walton Reading Room of Mullins Library at 7 p.m.

Madison composed his cycle of 50 contemporary sonnets while living near Frederick Douglass's birthplace on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and during production of Madison's prize-winning play Prospect for Freedom: Frederick Douglass and John Brown (Baltimore Artscape 96).

Smith, a native of Dallas, Texas, is pursuing the M.F.A. in directing at the University of Arkansas. This will be his fifth production at the university.

Feb. 27 – Michael Press, a research fellow at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, will lecture on the composition and transmission of the Bible (copying, translation and publication) in different communities in Mullins Library Room 104 at 2 p.m. A page from the Gutenberg Bible, the King James Bible, and a Vulgate Bible from the 13th century, as well as a 16th century Torah fragment and an 18th century Koran are all included in the Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum exhibit of rare materials from the Remnant Trust.

The Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum provides the public with the opportunity to view seminal works that changed the world by Aristotle, Augustine, Cicero, Copernicus, Galileo, Hippocrates, Newton, Ovid, Plato, and Virgil. The exhibit also contains a page from the first printed book, the Gutenberg Bible (1455), Queen Marie de Medici’s personal copy of Archimedes’ Opera (1675), the Articles of Confederation (1789), the Magna Carta (ca. 1350), an Egyptian scroll fragment of the Torah (ca. 1600), a Koran manuscript from the late 18^th century, Shengji Ti’s The Illustrated Life of Confucius (1592), Marco Polo’s Travels (1627), Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1793), and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848).  For more detail, see the full list of works in the exhibit.

Upcoming lecturers include:

• Professor Beth Schweiger of the history department: Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 4.
• Professor Liang Cai of the history department: Shengii Ti's The Illustrated Life of Confucius, 2 p.m. Thursday, March 6.
• Professor Jennifer Hoyer of the world languages, literatures and cultures department: Martin Luther’s To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 11.
• A panel of professionals in medicine will discuss medical ethics as it relates to Hippocrates of Kos's Coi Prefagiorum Libri on Thursday, March 13, at 4 p.m. in the Walton Reading Room of Mullins Library. The panel will include Dr. Neil Allison, Liebolt Chair of Premedical Sciences, University of Arkansas; Mark Thomas, M.D., medical director, Clinic Medical Affairs and Palliative Care, Washington Regional Medical Center; and Fran Hagstrom, assistant dean of health professions in the College of Education and Health Professions.
• Professor Lissette Szwydky of the English department: Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Wednesday, March 19, time to be announced.
• Professor Scott Burcham of the School of Social Work: Thomas Paine's Common Sense, 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 9.

The Remnant Trust in Winona Lake, Ind., is a place where everyone – from scholars to school-age children – can handle, read, and learn from the wisdom contained in their extensive collection of rare materials representing ideas that span over 2,500 years. Segments of the collection are loaned to universities, colleges, secondary schools, and other venues to host multidisciplinary exhibits.