Calendar

Jan
21
Mon
EMU MLK Day Keynote Lecture: Keith Boykin @ EMU Student Center Auditorium
Jan 21 @ 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Talk by this CNN political commentator and bestselling writer, author of For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough, winner of the American Library Association Stonewall Award for Nonfiction in 2013.
2 p.m., EMU Student Center Auditorium, 900 Oakwood, Ypsilanti. Free. 487-1849.

Jan
24
Thu
Kentaro Toyami: The Future of Work @ Towsley Auditorium, Lawrence Bldg, Washtenaw Community College
Jan 24 @ 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Literati is proud to be the bookseller at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of Ann Arbor’s event with Kentaro Toyama at the Washtenaw Community College.

The Future of Work
Speaker’s Synopsis: Will artificial intelligence (AI) take away jobs or usher in a prosperous utopia? Will self-driving cars reduce our use of fossil fuels or accelerate emissions? What will a college degree be worth when knowledge work can be done by machine? This talk considers these and other questions through the lens of technology’s “Law of Amplification.” Paradoxically, what is needed most in a world of advanced technology is greater attention to human values.

Kentaro Toyama is W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information, a fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT, and author of Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology. In previous lives, Kentaro taught at Ashesi University in Ghana and co-founded Microsoft Research India, where he did research on the application of information and communication technology to international development.

Event date:
Thursday, January 24, 2019 – 10:00am
Event address:
4800 E. Huron River Dr.
Ann ArborMI 48105
MLK Lecture: James Forman, Jr.: Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America @ 1010 Weiser Hall
Jan 24 @ 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Yale law professor James Forman, Jr. reads from his Pulitzer-winning book examining the response by African American elected officials and citizens to the surge in crime and drug addiction that began in the 1970s.
4-5:30 p.m., 1010 Weiser Hall, 500 Church. Free. 615-8482.

Feb
11
Mon
Panel Discussion: Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction @ Literati
Feb 11 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Literati is excited to host this special panel discussion with contributors from the new book Elemental: A Collection of Creative Nonfiction

About Elemental: A Collection of Creative Nonfiction:
Elemental: A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction comes to us from twenty-three of Michigan’s most well-known essayists. A celebration of the elements, this collection is both the storm and the shelter. In her introduction, editor Anne-Marie Oomen recalls the “ritual dousing” of her storytelling group’s bonfire: “wind, earth, fire, water-all of it simultaneous in that one gesture. . . . In that moment we are bound together with these elements and with this place, the circle around the fire on the shores of a Great Lake closes, complete.”

The essays approach Michigan at the atomic level. This is a place where weather patterns and ecology matter. Farmers, miners, shippers, and loggers have built (or lost) their livelihood on Michigan’s nature-what could and could not be made out of our elements. From freshwater lakes that have shaped the ground beneath our feet to the industrial ebb and flow of iron ore and wind power-ours is a state of survival and transformation. In the first section of the book, “Earth,” Jerry Dennis remembers working construction in northern Michigan. “Water” includes a piece from Jessica Mesman, who writes of the appearance of snow in different iterations throughout her life. The section “Wind” houses essays about the ungraspable nature of death from Toi Dericotte and Keith Taylor. “Fire” includes a piece by Mardi Jo Link, who recollects the unfortunate series of circumstances surrounding one of her family members.

Elemental‘s strength lies in its ability to learn from the past in the hope of defining a wiser future. A lot of literature can make this claim, but not all of it comes together so organically. Fans of nonfiction that reads as beautifully as fiction will love this collection.

Anne-Marie Oomen is author of Love, Sex, and 4-H, House of Fields, Pulling Down the Barn, and Uncoded Woman, among others. She teaches at Solstice MFA at Pine Manor College, Interlochen’s College of Creative Arts, and at conferences throughout the country.

Feb
18
Mon
Carolyn Dunn: Anishaabe Theatre Exchange Residency @ 2435 North Quad
Feb 18 @ 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm

Scholar, poet and playwright Dr. Carolyn Dunn will lecture on the aesthetics of Native and Indigenous Theater. Dunn was born in Southern California and is of Cherokee, Muscogee Creek, Seminole, Cajun, French Creole, and Tunica-Biloxi descent. She earned a BA from Humboldt State University, an MA from UCLA, and a PhD from the University of Southern California. Her collections of poetry include Outfoxing Coyote (2001) and Echolocation: Poems and Stories from Indian Country L.A. (2013). She has edited the anthologies Through the Eye of the Deer (1999) and, with Paula Gunn Allen, Hozho: Walking in Beauty: Native American Stories of Inspiration, Humor, and Life (2001). Dunn is the coauthor, with Ari Berk, of the nonfiction book Coyote Speaks: Wonders of the Native American World (2008). Her play The Frybread Queen was produced by the Montana Repertory Theater in Missoula, Montana, and Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles.
Dunn’s scholarly work focuses on American Indian women’s literature and American Indian identity. She has taught at Humboldt State University, Four Winds Indian School, and California Polytechnic State University. A founding director of the American Indian Theatre Collective, she is also a member of the female Native American drum group the Mankillers. She is director of the American Indian Resource Center at UC Santa Cruz.

All events are free and open to the public. Visit www.lsa.umich.edu/world-performance for more info.
If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact Center for World Performance Studies, at 734-936-2777, at least one week in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the University to arrange.

This residency is co-sponsored by the U-M Residential College, CEW+, Institute for Research on Women & Gender, SMTD Department of Theatre & Drama, Institute for Humanities, SMTD Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Department of American Culture.

RC Lecture: Mark Jonathan Harris: Displaced Children in an Uncertain World @ Rm 1423, East Quad
Feb 18 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

This lecture is on Foster Care and Orphans of War with Mark Jonathan Harris, producer, known for Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000), The Long Way Home (1997) and Breaking Point: The War for Democracy in Ukraine (2017).
Room 1423, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free. rc.communications@umich.edu https://lsa.umich.edu/rc/news-events/all-events.detail.html/59958-14803942.html

Feb
19
Tue
Jim Glenn: A History of the English Language: Influences on American English @ AADL Westgate
Feb 19 @ 7:00 pm – 8:45 pm

Local storyteller and language maven Jim Glenn continues his series on English by taking a lively look at cultural influences on the American dialect. Learn the origins of words and phrases that have entered common speech from the realms of politics, crime, war, transportation, and food.

 

Jim Glenn: A History of the English Language: The Story of American English (Part 3) @ AADL Westgate
Feb 19 @ 7:00 pm – 8:45 pm

Local storyteller Jim Glenn performs the 3rd part of his storytelling program on the history of English, focusing on the influence of immigrants and various historical events on American English. For grade 8-adult.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.

 

Feb
23
Sat
Caryl Churchill Festival: Leigh Woods: Caryl Churchill at 80 @ Mendellsohn Theatre
Feb 23 @ 5:00 pm – 5:15 pm

U-M theater studies professor Leigh Woods gives a lecture on “Caryl Churchill at 80” (5 p.m.) at Mendelssohn Theatre.

 

32nd Annual Storytelling Festival @ The Ark
Feb 23 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Feb. 23 & 24 (different programs). Performances for adults (Sat.) & families (Sun.) by 3 top storytellers from around the country. Headliner is Hand Christian Andersen Storytelling Center (NYC) director Laura Simms, an internationally celebrated veteran storyteller whose repertoire includes both traditional tales and personal narratives. Also, playwright and performance artist Edgar Oliver, a celebrated NYC raconteur best known for his mesmerizing one-man show about his childhood in Savannah with his songster and his mentally ill mother, and Ivory D. Williams, a veteran Detroit storyteller known for his engaging, interactive renditions of traditional African and African American tales.
7:30 p.m. (Sat.) & 1 p.m. (Sun.), The Ark, 316 S. Main. Tickets $20 (Sat.) & $10 (Sun. family concert) in advance at the Michigan Union Ticket Office (mutotix.com) & theark.org, and at the door. To charge by phone, call 763-TKTS.

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