Calendar 2026

Join us at the Michigan Theatre for a viewing and discussion of the documentary Reclaiming Ground Zero, which follows New Yorkers in the aftermath of 9/11 as they struggled to decide what to do with the site of the attacks.

After the 9/11 attacks, once the smoke cleared and the rubble was removed, New Yorkers had a city to rebuild. There was one fundamental question: no one could agree on the future of Ground Zero. Some wanted the towers back, while others believed the site should remain a memorial. Then, a single event changed everything…

Then the city decided to do one of the bravest—or stupidest—things in the history of city planning. They gathered 5,000 representative New Yorkers into the largest town hall in American history to vote on the city’s six proposals. People expected chaos and yelling. But instead, the representatives rejected all the proposals and this top-down approach and successfully charted a new path forward. It was this meeting that determined what is at Ground Zero today.

The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness begins with good health for all. Since George Washington ordered mass smallpox inoculation for soldiers during the Revolutionary War, public health has quietly protected our unalienable rights over the past 250 years. On September 15, the University of Michigan School of Public Health brings this history into the light with an expert panel that will explore public health innovations in the United States - including the history of the uniformed Public Health Service Commissioned Corps - and the school's own part in leading transformative change.

Ever wonder how animators make a character walk? In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn how to pose your own hand-drawn characters in 2-, 4-, or 8-frame "walk cycles." Each participant's finished drawing will be scanned and processed into a playable digital avatar inside a custom web-based video game, setting the stage for community game tournaments at early voting sites this October!

"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that can not be limited without being lost." - Thomas Jefferson

Two hundred fifty years ago this summer, a group of delegates in Philadelphia signed a document that risked everything on a single conviction: that ordinary people, given truthful information about those in power, could govern themselves. But that promise is harder to keep every year. The Information Age has transformed into information overload; it’s more difficult than ever to know what to trust, and in cities and towns across America, there are far fewer independent reporters demanding government transparency and holding our officials to account.

Join Christopher Baxter, 2016 Knight-Wallace Fellow and founder of the Pennsylvania nonprofit newsroom Spotlight PA, for a discussion on how local news lost its way, why the future of our free society and the future of a free press are inextricably linked — as the founders understood in 1776 — and what journalists and the public can do to ensure the press can fulfill its constitutional role in service to "We the People."

Join us on the Diag for democracy centered film features this week!

The Words That Built America is a 2017 HBO Documentary Films special directed by Alexandra Pelosi and narrated by historian David McCullough. It features diverse Americans—including U.S. presidents, politicians, journalists, and school children—reading the text of three foundational U.S. documents

Historian and author of "Canal Dreamers: The Epic Quest to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the Age of Revolutions," Jessica M. Lepler walks us through the failed idea to build the world’s first interoceanic canal.

In the 1820s, there was a little-known dream to unite the world by building a waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As Spanish American nations declared independence and new canals intensified US expansion and British industrialization, many imagined the construction of an interoceanic canal as predestined.

Although the idea of literally changing the world by connecting the oceans proved too revolutionary for the Age of Revolution, the quest itself changed history. Canal dreams prompted political transformations, financial crisis, recognition of new countries, concern about climate change, and more. Full of adventure, corruption, far-reaching consequences, and present-day parallels, Lepler’s absorbing narrative cuts through two centuries, revealing that dreams do not need to come true to make history.

This episode is sponsored by an anonymous Bookworm patron.

The Clements Bookworm is a free monthly webinar series featuring guests discussing topics in American history.