The 35th Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture will feature Amanda Rubin, documentary filmmaker and journalist. Her lecture focuses on The Third Reich of Dreams, a long-overlooked classic book about Charlotte Beradt’s incredible untold story and legacy of courage as a woman, journalist, and refugee. The lecture will focus on the power of the irrepressible imagination and the potent symbolism of books, writing and archiving as “witnesses to history”.
Book Description:
Set in Berlin, 1933. shortly after Hitler is elected Chancellor, Journalist Charlotte Beradt (1906-1968) begins to experience vivid, disturbing nightmares. Realizing she’s not alone, she embarks on a quiet mission to record the dream life of her Jewish and non-Jewish friends, colleagues, and neighbors in Berlin. She compiles an extraordinary document of the slow colonization of the unconscious as the Third Reich’s persecutions and propaganda seep into the last refuge of the private self. The resulting book: The Third Reich of Dreams
Date: September 4, 2025
Time: 3:30- 5:30pm CDT
Location: School of Information Sciences building, Room 126, 501 E. Daniel St., Champaign and Livestreamed
Register: Online & In-Person Registration
Sponsors:Mortenson Center for International Library Programs | The Program in Jewish Culture & Society | School of Information Sciences | UNESCO Center for Global Citizenship | University of Illinois Library Urbana-Champaign.
Thursday, 19 September 2024 | 3:30-5:00 pm CT Lecture :: 5:00-5:45 pm CT Reception in person to follow (Check for local time here: 
The 33rd Mortenson Center Distinguished Lecture featured Dr. Ricardo L. Punzalan, associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, and a scholar of archives and digital curation. His lecture “Reciprocity, Reparative Actions, and Decolonial Work” explored the case of “decolonizing” U.S. Philippine materials to transform our digital work to enact reparative actions that connect collections with communities that have been long separated by colonization. View recording at: