The Society Library joins our fellow historic New York City institution All Souls Unitarian Church to celebrate its bicentennial. In this one-time-only event, Barnard College scholar and Library trustee Linn Cary Mehta looks at the mission and history of the city's liberal institutions, including All Souls and the Library, in the first half of the 19th century, when they were used by writers including Herman Melville and Catharine Sedgwick.

Linn Cary Mehta serves on the boards of the New York Society Library, Goddard-Riverside Community Center, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, and of ID Studio Theater Performance and Research Center, a Hispanic theater in the South Bronx. A writer, translator, and poet, she teaches literature of the Americas at NYU and Barnard College. She holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from the University of Oxford, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has also studied at the Freie Universität, the Sorbonne, and Universidad Católica in Lima, Peru. She is the author of Poetry and Decolonization: Yeats, Tagore, Senghor, Césaire and Neruda.

Established in 1819, All Souls Unitarian Church is celebrating its Bicentennial year. All Souls is a self-governing congregation of nearly 1,500 people who come together to worship, serve the community, and create an enriching, non-dogmatic religious environment. All Souls is dedicated to providing an environment in which all feel welcome regardless of race, sexual orientation, or physical ability. The church is led by the Rev. Galen Guengerich, Senior Minister, and Rev. Audette Fulbright, Associate Minister. For more about All Souls' congregation, please visit AllSoulsNYC.org.

This event is co-sponsored with All Souls Unitarian Church.