About Across the Waves:
In 1931, the United States and France embarked on a broadcasting partnership built around radio. Over time, the transatlantic sonic alliance came to personify and to shape American-French relations in an era of increased global media production and distribution. Drawing on a broad range of American and French archives, Derek Vaillant joins textual and aural materials with original data analytics and maps to illuminate U.S.-French broadcasting’s political and cultural development. Vaillant focuses on the period from 1931 until France dismantled its state media system in 1974. His analysis examines mobile actors, circulating programs, and shifting governmental and other institutions shaping international radio’s use in times of war and peace. He explores the extraordinary achievements, the miscommunications and failures, and the limits of cooperation between America and France as they shaped a new media environment. Throughout, Vaillant explains how radio’s power as an instantaneous mass communications tool produced, legitimized, and circulated various notions of states, cultures, ideologies, and peoples as superior or inferior
Derek Vaillant is an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Sounds of Reform: Progressivism and Music in Chicago, 1873-1935 .
One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
This week’s reading features Graham Cotten and Clayton Wickham.
Graham Cotten is from Birmingham, Alabama. Before entering the MFA Program here, he clerked for Chief Judge Blackburn in the Northern District of Alabama, and worked as a litigator. His short stories have appeared in American Short Fiction and on NPR.org.
Clayton Wickham is a fiction writer from Richmond, VA. He currently lives in Ann Arbor.
University of Michigan Museum of Art, 525 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI, 48109. Free. 734.764.0395. http://umma.umich.edu/events/4270/mark-webster-reading-series
Performance by this award-winning local slam poet and community activist, who recently became the Neutral Zone literary arts director. Her poetry is known for its emotional honesty in exploring how past trauma affects present action. Preceded by a poetry open mike.
7 p.m. Espresso Royale, 324 S. State. $5 suggested donation. facebook.com/AnnArborPoetry.
Students, nominated by their instructors, have been invited to read their own poems and short stories to a peer audience. For many student writers, Café Shapiro is a first opportunity to read publicly from their creative work. For others, it provides a fresh audience, and the ability to experience the work of students they may not encounter in writing classes.
Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal discuss how to develop an idea that sustains a novel-length plot. For adult and teen (grade 6 & up) fiction and nonfiction writers. Also, Kourvo and Neal host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects at 7 p.m. on Feb. 19.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-8301.
Local short story writer Alex Kourvo and young adult novelist Bethany Neal discuss host an open house for writers to connect with one another and/or work on their projects at 7 p.m.
7-8:45 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-8301.
Students, nominated by their instructors, have been invited to read their own poems and short stories to a peer audience. For many student writers, Café Shapiro is a first opportunity to read publicly from their creative work. For others, it provides a fresh audience, and the ability to experience the work of students they may not encounter in writing classes.
Jan 2 & 16. 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 teams of judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. $8. 764-5118.
Students, nominated by their instructors, have been invited to read their own poems and short stories to a peer audience. For many student writers, Café Shapiro is a first opportunity to read publicly from their creative work. For others, it provides a fresh audience, and the ability to experience the work of students they may not encounter in writing classes.
An open mike for poets, who are welcome to read their own work or a favorite poem by another writer. Followed by a reading by a featured poet TBA.
7 p.m., Bookbound, Courtyard Shops. Free. 369-4345.
