Lectures

1. Paris Postcards – The Golden Age
The introduction of the postcard in France in 1872 revolutionized communication and created the first form of social networking, equivalent to today’s email. Produced by the hundreds of millions and employing tens of thousands, postcards were highly collectible and became key to the French economy. Leonard’s spectacular collection of hand tinted vintage postcards provides a view of a Paris that has long since disappeared. The messages written to families back home in the US evoke the American experience of Paris at the turn of the century. Full of beauty, charm, loneliness and longing, this is the ultimate nostalgia trip.

2. Pursuing the Irish Healer – A true story
In 1989, Leonard Pitt stumbled onto the 17th century Anglo-Irish healer Valentine Greatrakes. For the next eight years he traveled back and forth to England and Ireland digging into the archives as well as trodding Greatrakes’s land in order to piece together the life of this enigmatic figure.

Followed by thousands wherever he went, Greatrakes was known for curing everything from cancer, to leprosy, and leukemia by the laying on of hands. His healing powers caused one of the great controversies of the age bringing him under the scrutiny of many of the great figures of the period including, scientist Robert Boyle, philosopher Henry More, and poet Andrew Marvell. They all ended up vouching for his talent.

In 1666, Greatrakes wrote a book defending himself against those trying to vilify him. Leonard saw an original copy of this book and decided he wanted one for himself. After searching the world and giving up, he found one, and in the most unlikely of places, San Francisco. From a stolen harp in Oakland, to an Irish street corner with Jasper the grave digger, to the Marquis of Hertford at his English manor, follow Leonard in his pursuit of the Irish healer.

3. The Women are Burning – A brief history of the European witch-hunts
The tension between men and women has been played out for centuries in personal relationships, family dynamics, and community mores. No more dramatic example of this tension exists than the Church’s organized persecution of women during the infamous witch-hunt trials. How did women come to be perceived as evil, all-powerful, and in the service of the Devil? What was the Church’s logic as it carried out this program of repression? What were the consequences?