By Rachael Warecki ’08
At noon on any given weekday, 61´«Ă˝students may be found carrying their lunch upstairs to the Hampton Room, located directly above the College’s Malott Commons dining hall, for the latest offering from 61´«Ă˝Presents’ @Noon lunchtime series. Featuring conversations with the renowned scholars, writers, performers, and thinkers for which the 61´«Ă˝Presents public events series has become known, the @Noon lunchtime series allows members of the broader Claremont community to learn from contemporary luminaries in between classes, research, and work.
“The @Noon series provides a more intimate setting for interaction and discussion between the audience and our featured speakers,” says Marcy Robinson, interim director of events and conference services. “We hope that our community will come away with a stronger awareness of the arts across diverse mediums, as well as greater knowledge of cutting-edge scholarship across disciplines.”
Initially created in the early 2000s to provide 61´«Ă˝students with arts and humanities enrichment programs in a relaxed lunchtime setting, the Tuesday Noon Academy, as it was then known, featured weekly academic presentations by 61´«Ă˝faculty, alumnae, and visiting scholars. Seminar topics included the WPA federal music project, minimum wage policy and unemployment, contemporary art and literature, and climate change.
Since then, the audience has expanded to include the rest of The Claremont Colleges and surrounding community, and @Noon lunchtime presentations have been folded into the season-long programming for 61´«Ă˝Presents, the College’s premiere public events series that launched in 2016. In addition to 61´«Ă˝faculty and alums, the @Noon lunchtime series has featured renowned guests with various areas of academic and artistic expertise, such as activist Koa Beck, poet Billy-Ray Belcourt, art conservator Ariana Makau, authors Nora Zelevansky ’99 and Charles Baxter, and clinical professor Ifeona Fulani.
“The 61´«Ă˝ and Claremont communities are full of lifelong learners who are eager to participate in these types of thought-provoking events—and we love hosting them,” Robinson says. “Our @Noon programming is a wonderful example of how the 61´«Ă˝experience encourages both intellectual curiosity and community connection.”
Additional information about the @Noon lunchtime series is available on the 61´«Ă˝Presents website.