Events for Our 2026 Season

June 14 – The 19th Annual Young Musicians Series

7:30 PM, Historic Kupferle Chapel

The Chautauqua Historical Society is pleased to present the 19th Annual Young Musicians Series featuring bassoonist Sutherland Allen.

Sutherland is a bassoonist from Highland, Illinois who studied at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He will be accompanied on piano by Vera Parkin of the Community Music School of Webster University.

We continue to be grateful for our longstanding partnership with Vera Parkin of the Community Music School of Webster University, who makes this concert and series possible.

July 5 – 22nd Annual Platform Lecture

Laura Westhoff, Ph.D: Hope in a Historical Context

7:30 PM, Auditorium

Professor Westhoff is a professor and former chair of the History Department at UMSL. She developed a course entitled “St. Louis: Hope in Action” while serving as a Signature Course Fellow at Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good.

Professor Westhoff has published her research on U.S. Gilded Age and Progressive Era reform, democracy and social movements, the scholarship of teaching and learning history (SoTL), and the history of education. She is the author of A Fatal Drifting Apart: Democratic Social Knowledge and Chicago Reform (The Ohio State University Press) and is currently working on a book on mid-twentieth century democratic practices.

Professor Westhoff holds a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Washington University in St. Louis, and maintains a deep curiosity about the role historical understanding plays in personal and collective meaning-making and social action for the common good.

Donations to the CHS and proceeds from the PCEF helped to make this lecture possible.