Calendar

Start your National Letter Writing Month off right with a letter and card writing party! We’ll have stationery, pens, envelopes, stamps, and stickers—you bring your address book! We’ll get you on track with ideas to keep the letter writing going all month long.

Featuring 3 RC alumni. This alumni panel will showcase and celebrate the university’s rich history of contributions made by International Studies alumni, while providing valuable insight for current students as they start to develop their own career paths. The panel will include a student Q&A portion; a networking reception with light appetizers will follow.
5-6:30 p.m., 555 Weiser Hall, 500 Church. Free. 

Our spring Family Read culminates with a visit by the author of Lucky Broken Girl, Ruth Behar. Join us for a fun-filled evening at Riverside Arts Center, with hands on Cuban drumming, cha-cha lessons, a youth art exhibit, hopscotch, Cuban snacks, and an author reading and book signing.

Ypsilanti District Library

Riverside Arts Center

Phone:734-482-4110Email:info@ypsilibrary.orgWebsite:www.ypsilibrary.org

When

Monday March 18, 2019: 7:00pm to 8:45pm

Where

Westgate Branch: West Side Room

Description

Come with questions, a work in progress, or an empty notebook. All writers are welcome in this casual, supportive environment. Authors Bethany Neal and Alex Kourvo will be on hand to answer questions and give encouragement. Bethany and Alex will also provide private, one-on-one critiques if you choose to have them read your work. Sharing your writing with other attendees is not required and is completely voluntary.

This is an excellent opportunity to meet your fellow Ann Arbor writers as well as get feedback from published authors. This is a monthly meet-up that welcomes all writers to ask questions, connect with other writers, or simply have a dedicated time and place to work on their projects. Do you have a completed manuscript? Consider submitting it to the library’s new imprint, Fifth Avenue Press.

Naomi Long Madgett and Gabrielle Civil will join us in the Hopwood Room for a public conversation about living a literary life: What does it mean to be a black woman / poet today? How has the role or impact of poetry changed? What’s most vital in a poet’s education? How can we rethink and reclaim publishing? How we can bridge the divides between different schools of poetry? How can we reconcile the ivory tower and the community center? What can poetry do in our communities? What good books are we reading (songs are we singing, art are we seeing)? What do we love? How can we brave joy?

About the presenters:

Mentored by poet Langston Hughes, Naomi Long Madgett moved to Detroit in 1946. In the 1960s, she joined a group of African American writers who met regularly at Boone House, including Margaret Danner, Dudley Randall and Oliver LaGrone. Madgett was named Detroit poet laureate in 2001. In her poetry, influenced by the work of Emily Dickinson, John Keats, and Langston Hughes, Madgett often engages themes of civil rights and African American spirituality. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including One and the Many (1956), Exits and Entrances (1978), and Octavia and Other Poems (1988, reissued and expanded in 2002). In 1972, Madgett founded Lotus Press. She edited the anthology Adam of Ifé: Black Women in Praise of Black Men (1992), and her own work was included in the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro, 1746–1949 (1949, edited by Langston Hughes) and Ten: Anthology of Detroit Poets (1968, edited by Oliver LaGrone). A selection of her papers, documenting her poetry career and the history of Lotus Press, is held by the University of Michigan’s Special Collections Library.

Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered fifty original solo and collaborative performance works around the world. Signature themes included race, body, art, politics, grief, and desire. Since 2014, she has been performing “Say My Name” (an action for 270 abducted Nigerian girls)” as an act of embodied remembering. She is the author of Swallow the Fish and Tourist Art (with Vladimir Cybil Charlier). She currently teaches Creative Writing and Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.Experiments in Joy is forthcoming from CCM Press.

During our 2018-19 Year of Humanities and Environments, we’ve organized faculty panels to explore contributions of humanistic inquiry around specific environmental subjects. Today: “Criminal Justice and the Built Environment” with:  Claire Zimmerman (Architecture, History of Art), Heather Thompson (History, Residential College), and David Thatcher (Architecture, Public Policy).

Jill Dougherty (BA Russian ’70), former foreign affairs correspondent, CNN

Lots of countries lie.

Some call it “winning hearts and minds,” others call it “strategic communications,” still others call it “softening the battlefield.” However it’s described, propaganda is a key component of international relations, a tool employed both by diplomats and warriors. Russia has used propaganda since the 1917 Russian Revolution both to mold the minds of its own citizens and to spread the gospel of Marxism-Leninism around the world. Today’s Russia uses a well-honed media strategy to craft public opinion at home—and to promote the country’s public image abroad.

But the Kremlin also uses propaganda—now turbo-charged by digital advances like artificial intelligence, machine learning and big-data analytics—as a tool of war, a less-costly form of conflict than shedding blood, to undermine and weaken foes.

Jill Dougherty, former CNN Moscow Bureau Chief, examines how Russia uses information, and disinformation, to achieve its strategic objectives.

Jill Dougherty served as CNN correspondent for three decades, reporting from more than 50 countries. She is a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. and a CNN Contributor who provides expert commentary on Russia and the post-Soviet region. Ms. Dougherty joined CNN in 1983, and was appointed Moscow Bureau Chief in 1997. During nearly a decade in that post, she covered the presidencies of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s post-Soviet economic transition, terrorist attacks, the conflict in Chechnya, Georgia’s Rose Revolution and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. After a long career with CNN, Ms. Dougherty pursued academic interests, most recently as a Distinguished Visiting Practitioner at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. An alumna of the University of Michigan, she has a B.A. in Slavic languages and literature, a certificate of language study from Leningrad State University, and a master’s degree from Georgetown University. In addition to writing for CNN.com, her articles on international issues have appeared in the “Washington Post,” “Huffington Post,” and “The Atlantic,” among other publications. Jill Dougherty is also a member of track-two diplomatic initiatives seeking to improve the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Join the Conversation

In October, 2017, The New Yorker published reporter Ronan Farrow’s exposé detailing the first on-the-record accounts of alleged assault and rape by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, followed by a series of pieces on the systems that enabled him. Farrow’s investigation helped spur a worldwide movement that redefined our cultural and institutional responses to sexual harassment and assault. Word of Weinstein’s abusive behavior had circulated among Hollywood and media circles for years. In 2002, the acclaimed author and New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta published a deeply reported profile detailing the powerful producer’s threats and intimidation tactics, but he could not get any of the women alleging sexual assault to go on the record. What changed—in Hollywood, in media, in society—to make 2017 such a turning point?

Join Wallace House Presents for an evening with reporters Ken Auletta and Ronan Farrow as they discuss their individual attempts to get to the truth about Harvey Weinstein and how reporters ultimately stood together in confronting one of the biggest stories in recent memory.

Questions for speakers? Tweet us using #WallaceHouse.

About the Speakers

Ronan Farrow is a contributing writer for The New Yorker and the author of “War and Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence.” His next book, “Catch and Kill,” about how Weinstein and other power brokers wield influence to suppress explosive stories, is forthcoming. In 2018, Farrow received a Livingston Award for his New Yorker investigation of Harvey Weinstein. A native of New York City, he is a lawyer and former government advisor. Farrow is a graduate of Bard College and Yale Law School.

Ken Auletta is an author and media writer who has written the “Annals of Communications” profiles and essays for The New Yorker since 1992. He joined the Livingston Awards national judging panel 37 years ago and is now the program’s longest serving judge. He recused himself from voting in the national reporting category in 2018. The author of twelve books, his most recent book, “Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else),” was published in 2018. His writing and journalism has been recognized with numerous awards and honors including the 2002 National Magazine Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society of Silurians.

This event is co-sponsored by
U-M College of Literature, Arts and Science
Department of American Culture
Department of Women’s Studies
Department of English Language and Literature

This event is produced with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Literati is pleased to parnter with First United Methodist Church of Ann Arbor to welcome author and theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber who will be discussing her new book Shameless.

NADIA BOLZ-WEBER first hit the New York Times list with her 2013 memoir–the bitingly honest and inspiring Pastrix–followed by the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller Accidental Saints in 2015. A former stand-up comic and a recovering alcoholic, Bolz-Weber is the founder and former pastor of a Lutheran congregation in Denver, House for All Sinners and Saints. She speaks at colleges and conferences around the globe.