28^th Annual Frieze Lectures Considers “the End” with Four Academic Takes on Death

 Over its 28-year history, Augustana College professors participating in the Rock Island Public Library’s Frieze Lecture series have tackled many of life’s big questions. The 2025 theme considers one of the biggest questions of all, with four lectures centered around our common mortality. 

The Rock Island Public Library and Augustana College present the 2025 Frieze Lecture series This Is the End, Four Takes on Death on four Thursday afternoons from October 23 through November 13. The 2 pm lectures are held at the Rock Island Public Library’s Downtown Community Room, 401 19^th Street. 

This year’s theme was inspired by a lecture by cultural anthropologist Dr. Adam Kaul, on how various cultures do, or do not, deal with issues of death and dying. The series has expanded to consider subjects related to death, dying and mortality through the additional academic lenses of psychology, art, and poetry. Dates, topics, and speakers for the 2025 series are as follows: 

• October 23: Death and the Psychologist, presented by Dr. Jayne Rose, professor emerita of psychology. 
• October 30: Death and the Artist, presented by Dr. Margaret Morse, professor of art and art history. 
• November 6: Death and the Poet, presented by Rebecca Wee, professor of English and Quad Cities poet laureate emerita.
• November 13: Death and the Anthropologist, presented by Dr. Adam Kaul, professor of anthropology.

All presentations begin at 2:00 p.m. and are free and open to any member of the public. Each lecture includes time for discussion and reflection with other attendees afterwards over complimentary refreshments. The Downtown Library building offers ample parking and an accessible entrance with an elevator to the second floor on the south side of the building. 

Taped lectures are usually available within a week afterwards via the Augustana College and Rock Island Library YouTube channels. 

The Frieze Lecture Series was created by the late Ruth Evelyn Katz, a library board member and 1938 graduate of Augustana College, to celebrate the library's 125th anniversary in 1998. The name was inspired by the architectural feature around the top of the Downtown Library. The authors carved into the sandstone frieze are Homer, Longfellow, Emerson, Virgil, Hugo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Burns, Hawthorne, Tegner, and Bancroft. The names of Tegner, a Swedish poet, and Bancroft, a naval historian, are less familiar now, but would have been popular literary figures in 1903, when the library’s first permanent building opened. 

For additional information, please visit the Rock Island Public Library website or call 309-732-READ.