Book Salon & Dinner: Willa Cather’s "Death Comes for the Archbishop"HighlightsIn-Person

Willa Cather’s novel Death Comes for the Archbishop is not often taught, but this program isn’t about teaching. It’s about learning for its own sake, and is our inaugural offering in a new program series we are calling Feed Your Head.

This salon, led by the brilliant Katherine Marshall, will focus on Cather’s masterpiece and its historical background. Dinner will follow.

Cather’s 1927 historical novel spans many decades of the nineteenth century, and follows the lives of two Catholic priests as they confront the transformation of the Mexican-American frontier and the legacies of colonial expansion. Through Cather’s novel, and other documents from the period, we will learn how the 1920s viewed the landscapes, cultures, and the intersection of faith and power in the nineteenth-century American west.

This program, held in partnership with the New-York Historical Society, includes a private tour of the Society’s exhibit “Acts of Faith: Religion and the American West.” The exhibit explores the interplay between religion and US expansion, illuminating how religion became such a vital and contested part of American life, and includes the story of Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the French American prelate whose career inspired Cather’s novel.