The Alumni Chair in Humanities provides leadership in establishing the humanities in the curriculum and in the broader intellectual life of the community. Through these events, the chair hopes to maintain a visible presence for the humanities on campus and in the community.
In the 1920s, at 20 rue Jacob on the Left Bank of Paris, a woman from Dayton, Ohio, was doing something deceptively simple: she was putting people in a room together. Natalie Clifford Barney — writer, memoirist, unapologetic lesbian, and one of the great connectors of the twentieth century — hosted a Friday salon that ran for more than sixty years at her home. Poets sat next to philosophers. Critics argued with artists. The wayward, lost, and creative of the world found each other. There was no agenda, no syllabus. Just people, thinking out loud, in the same room.
A century later, we find ourselves in an era that has mastered the simulation of connection. We have more tools for communication than any generation in history, and yet the simple act of sitting in a room with other people, listening, disagreeing, being surprised, being honest, feels like a lost art.
In the Same Room is a year-long series of events that takes the salon as both historical subject and living practice. We kick off the year with a 150th birthday party for Natalie Clifford Barney on October 30, 2026 (and yes, there will be cake). In partnership with the Dayton Metro Library, and the Dayton LGBT Center, UD will host a traveling exhibition of works from the library's Natalie Barney Collection and welcome translator, Suzanne Stroh to read from her recent translation of Barney. The year builds toward a mini residency by Hanif Abdurraqib on March 11–12, 2027, bringing to campus a writer whose work across poetry, criticism, and memoir consistently explores how we live, grow, grieve and love together sharing space, sound, and community.
Between and around these anchor events, we'll host a series of gatherings designed to do what Barney's salon did best — put people from different disciplines and different backgrounds in the same room and see what happens. Some will be structured. Some won't. All of them will proceed from a conviction that the humanities are not a body of knowledge to be transmitted but a set of practices best performed together, in person and in real time.
This is not nostalgia for the Paris of the 1920s. It is a vision for the humanities of the future — an argument about what they are for. The Humanities are not just a set of texts, but the salon reminds us that the humanities is more importantly a set of practices: reading together, listening together, disagreeing together, being changed together.
Join us in celebrating the life of Dayton-born salon hostess and writer, Natalie Clifford Barney!
On the eve of her 150th Birthday, join the University of Dayton, in partnership with the Dayton Metro Library, and the Dayton LGBT Center, for an exhibition of works from the DML library’s Natalie Barney Collection and welcome translator Suzanne Stroh to read from her recent translation of Barney at a birthday reception. Yes, there will be cake and celebratory beverages! RSVP with this form.
Interested in hosting your own salon? Complete this form to express interest in hosting.
Previous Events in this SeriesIn 2027, the Alumni Chair will be bringing Hanif Abdurraqib to campus, a writer whose work across poetry, criticism, and memoir consistently explores how we live, grow, grieve, and love together while sharing space, sound, and community.
Thursday, March 11, 2027: University of Dayton — mini residency and keynote address by Columbus-native poet, essayist and cultural critic, Hanif Abdurraqib. More details forthcoming.
