(via Dr. Clara Chu–Director and Mortenson Distinguished Professor at Mortenson Center, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library)
Join us for the 35th Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture, featuring Amanda Rubin, documentary filmmaker and journalist, who has brought The Third Reich of Dreams, a long-overlooked classic, back to print in a newly-translated English edition (Princeton Press, 2025). Rubin will share Journalist 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”. The event will take place on Thursday, September 4, and consist of a hybrid lecture from 3:30 to 5:00 PM CDT, followed by an in-person reception and book signing from 5:00 to 5:45 PM CDT. The in-person part will take place at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Sciences in Champaign, IL.
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.
A documentary filmmaker, journalist, and independent scholar, Amanda Rubin works at the intersection of cultural history, music, the arts, and science. Her works have been featured on BBC, Channel 4, The History Channel, and Discovery+, among other notable channels. It was while researching a film about journalist Charlotte Beradt and her unique dream anthology The Third Reich of Dreams that Amanda discovered the lost English-language rights to the book. She was the force behind its republication in English in April 2025 with Princeton University Press to excellent reviews. She is currently also making a radio documentary for BBC Radio 4 about the dream collection and the role of psychotherapy under the Nazis.
Please register here. The Lecture celebrates Libraries for Peace (L4P) Day, in observation of International Day of Peace with the world community. The theme for the International Day of Peace in 2025 is “Act Now for a Peaceful World”.