People today have more tools for communication than any generation in history, but the simple act of sitting in a room with others — talking, listening, and sharing and debating ideas — sometimes seems like a lost art.
Sam Dorf, the University of Dayton Alumni Chair in Humanities, launched a year-long series of campus and community events inspired by the Parisian salon tradition. Typically hosted by wealthy women in private homes, salons were social and intellectual gatherings where guests met to discuss art, music, literature, science, philosophy and politics, influencing the cultural development of their community.
“In 2026, we don’t get together as often,” said Dorf, a professor of musicology. “We meet on Zoom instead of over coffee. We don’t touch grass; we scroll through social media. The beauty of a salon is that it’s this idea of hospitality, to celebrate art, culture and the sharing of ideas, and that’s why I love universities.”
His own interest in salons stems from his research and resulting book about Natalie Clifford Barney, an early 20th-century writer and poet from Dayton who hosted a weekly literary salon at her Paris home that drew the likes of Colette, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes and Ezra Pound. Barney, who knew she was a lesbian by age 12, is honored with an Ohio Historical Marker in downtown Dayton, erected in 2009 by the Greater Dayton LGBT Center and other state and local partners.
Dorf’s programming series, “In the Same Room,” honors the salon as a historical subject and living practice. Its anchor events include a 150th birthday party for Barney at 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, in the Kennedy Union Torch Lounge, and a March 11, 2027, mini residency on campus by award-winning writer Hanif Abdurraqib.
Previous Dayton-area events included a “Salon on the Patio” in June honoring The Rubi Girls’ Ohio Historical Marker and a “Poetry Salon at Swoon” in August.
UD’s student-produced literary and artistic magazine, Orpheus, will host a salon to honor Barney and celebrate the campus-wide release of its Fall/Spring 2026 print journal at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27, in Jesse Philips Humanities Center room 257.
“It’s refreshing to participate in a gathering where no electronics are permitted,” said Meredith Doench, a principal lecturer in the UD Department of English and Orpheus faculty advisor, who also helped facilitate the poetry salon. “We need more spaces where our intellectual growth is through discussion with one another and not through the use of phones, PowerPoints, Google slides, etc., particularly in this time when we are all navigating the use of AI. Dr. Dorf’s celebration of Barney’s salons allows for the sense of intellectual freedom and community.”
The 150th birthday party in Torch Lounge is a partnership with the Dayton Metro Library, Dayton LGBT Center and the Ohio Lesbian Archives. The event is free and open to the public, and requires an RSVP.
The event will feature a traveling exhibition from the library’s Natalie Clifford Barney Collection that highlights her impact on the culture she helped curate, including drafted poetry by Renée Vivian, art by Romaine Brooks and Laura Dreyfus Barney, photography by Gisele Freund, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness and Djuna Barnes’ Ladies Almanack, among other items.
In addition, poet Samantha Pious of Pennsylvania and writer Suzanne Stroh of Virginia will read from their recent translations of Barney’s poetry, published by Headmistress Press.
“As much as you can see Barney’s indomitable spirit through the art she produced over decades in her life, you can also find her fingerprints across the work of the many world-renowned artists she hosted in her salons, and that’s what we wanted to emphasize,” said Gideon McDaniel, Dayton Metro Library special collections director. “Legacy is so much more than what an individual accomplishes. If you’re cultivating community, engaging intellectually with the world around you, and pushing the boundaries of what people think is possible, you’ve got an impact, and Natalie Clifford Barney really epitomizes that idea.”
The exhibition, Her Literary Legacy: 150 Years of Living Loudly with Natalie Clifford Barney, will be displayed at Dayton Metro Library branches through Dec. 16.
Dorf's salon series builds toward the mini residency by Abdurraqib, a Columbus, Ohio-based poet, essayist, cultural critic and contributing writer for The New Yorker. His 2021 essay collection, Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, received the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. He also received a MacArthur Fellowship, colloquially called the “Genius Grant,” in 2021.
Dorf’s plans call for Abdurraqib to visit classes, meet with faculty and students, give a public talk and sign books.
“Hanif is a beloved writer,” Dorf said. “I adore his writing and his poetry, because he writes about intimacy, grief, loss, love, basketball and performance — particularly Black performance in America. He writes in a way that reminds you why it’s so great to be human and so great to be alive despite how difficult it can be.”
Dorf said his salon series isn’t nostalgia for the Paris of the 1920s. Instead, it’s a vision for the humanities of the future and an argument about their value.
“The humanities are not just a set of texts,” he said. “The salon reminds us that the humanities are more importantly a set of practices: reading together, listening together, disagreeing together and being changed together.”
Photo: UD lecturers Meredith Doench and Masha Kisel recite poetry at a “Barney salon” in August at Swoon Books & Wine in Oakwood, Ohio.