Author Richard Adler is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, the author of several articles on baseball, and an Associate Professor of Microbiology at U-M, and author of a 2014 biography of U-M’s Victor Vaughan.
Victor Vaughan’s career at the University of Michigan spanned more than four decades, beginning with his graduate studies in physiological chemistry during the 1870s and ending in 1921 with his retirement after three decades as dean of the medical school. Not only was he instrumental in modernizing medical training at Michigan, his work in areas of hygiene, epidemiology and the study of toxins and infectious disease was highly regarded on the national scene. Twice he was called upon to serve his country in times of crisis. During the Spanish-American War he was a key member of the Typhoid Commission which investigated the outbreak of the life-threatening fever among army recruits in southern camps. During World War I, he was a member of the medical board within the Council of National Defense contended with an unprecedented influenza outbreak. Vaughan’s professional work included more than 250 published papers and some 17 books, many that outlined laboratory techniques which modernized the newly evolving field of bacteriology.
Cat Warren, author of What The Dog Knows is a university professor and former journalist with an admittedly odd hobby: She and her German shepherd have spent the last seven years searching for the dead. Solo is a cadaver dog. What started as a way to harness Solo’s unruly energy and enthusiasm soon became a calling that introduced her to the hidden and fascinating universe of working dogs, their handlers, and their trainers.
Warren interviews cognitive psychologists, historians, medical examiners, epidemiologists, forensic anthropologists—as well as the breeders, trainers, and handlers who work with and rely on these remarkable and adaptable animals daily. Along the way, Warren discovers story after story that proves the remarkable capabilities—as well as the very real limits—of working dogs and their human partners. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, Warren explains why our partnership with working dogs is woven into the fabric of society, and why we keep finding new uses for the working dog’s wonderful nose.
Warren is an associate professor at North Carolina State University, where she teaches science journalism, editing, and reporting courses. She lives with her husband and her German shepherds, Solo and Coda, in Durham, North Carolina. Visit CatWarren.com.
The second year of the Zell Fellows Reading Series continues , featuring fresh writing from the third year fellows in the U-M Helen Zell Writers’ Program, program alumni, and special guests. March’s theme is “Sports.” Readers include Zell Fellows Chris McCormick and Mindy Misener with Zell alums John Ganiard and Tricia Khleif.
Each term, Semester in Detroit and the U-M Detroit Center partner to organize community classroom events that are free and open to the public. Detroit community members join together with U-M students, faculty and staff to learn more about Detroit’s past and present. Format varies from traditional panels to poetry readings to trips to jazz and cultural clubs throughout Detroit. Topics of discussion range from Education Reform to the Contemporary Labor Movement to implementing the Detroit Future City Framework. Always dynamic and sometimes quite hot! Free to everyone and always preceded by some yummy food! So check out the dates below and plan to participate this fall!
1/22 – 1967: Part 1 -What Happened and Why – Stephen Ward and David Goldberg, Dan Aldridge
2/5 -A General Gordon Baker Jr. Memorial Panel
Detroit 1967: Part 2 – The Aftermath – Stephen Ward and Dan Aldridge, Maria Guadiana, Roy Levy Williams
2/19 – We Are Here: A multilayered presentation on the roles men and boys of color play in the development and healing of communities – Anita Gonzalez and Antonio Lyons and company
3/12 – Detroit Music Beyond the Motown Sound – Lolita Hernandez and Ozzie Rivera
3/26- Foundations and Detroit “Development” – A Public Evaluation – Craig Regester and Dale Thomson, Shea Howell, Ed Egnatios
4/9- Digging Deeper into Detroit’s Downtown “Boom” – Craig Regester and Ryan Felton
4/16 – Final Reflection – Lolita Hernandez/Craig Regester
Free transportation is provided by the MDetroit Center Connector which departs the Central Campus Transit Center (CCTC) at 5:40pm on Thursdays.
Rachel Hartman‘s new book, Shadow Scale, is forthcoming from Random House. As a child, Hartman played cello, lip-synched Mozart operas with her sisters, and fostered the deep love of music that inspired much of her previous novel, Seraphina. Rachel earned a degree in comparative literature but eschewed graduate school in favor of bookselling and drawing comics. Born in Kentucky, she has lived in Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, England, and Japan. She now lives with her family in Vancouver, Canada. To learn more, please visit SeraphinaBooks.com or RachelHartmanBooks.com.
Reading by local poet Joseph Chapman, whose poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. The program begins with open mike readings.
Monthly open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. Each month 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on the monthly theme. The 3 judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early. March theme: Confusion. $8. Doors open, and sign up start at 6.
Talk by the Oxford based scholar-translator Rosamund Bartlett, author of an acclaimed new translation of Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina. Bring a bag lunch, if you like. Room 1636.
“My Beautiful Hook-Nosed Beauty Queen Strut Wave and Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems”
Poet and fiction writer Stuart Dybek will be the RC’s 2015 Artist in Residence, March 19-21, 2015. He will also be keynote speaker at the second annual Voices of the Middle West conference, at the RC on March 21st.
