“Beyond Solidarity” traces a genealogy of rebel care work. Without imposing a future, what political, cultural and social questions emerge when we center dignity in thinking beyond solidarity? Specifically with regards to the complimentary, contested and contradictory relationships between the university and the prison, who produces and benefits from the creation and production of knowledge? What is considered knowledge?
What is the role of Ethnic Studies in how we imagine and create a society not centered and organized around the idea that vengeance is justice, that punishment should only mean exile and imprisonment? What is the role of the university in the after-life of incarceration and the after-life of detention, for the communities that students come from, or in relation to policy or pedagogy? How does/can the university reproduce and undue the prison as a total institution? (Strike for print material)
Alan Eladio Gómez is a historian, Southwest Borderlands Scholar and associate professor of justice and social inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. He is also an affiliated faculty member with the School of Transborder Studies and the Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts. Gómez is the author of The Revolutionary Imaginations of Greater Mexico: Chicana/o Radicalism, Solidarity Politics & Latin American Social Movements (University of Texas Press, 2016)
Literati is thrilled to be partnering with the Neutral Zone and the Ann Arbor District Library to celebrate the NEA Big Read month-long exploration of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen
Community members will come together and celebrate the culmination of this month-long NEA Big Read program around Citizen by Claudia Rankine. Featured artist Kush Thompson will perform poetry and talkback with the audience. Members of the Neutral Zone teen book club will also share their poetic responses to Citizen and all of the identity collages created earlier in the month will be displayed for viewing.
The NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) designed to broaden our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the sharing of a good book. For more information, see www.arts.gov/national-initiatives/nea-big-read. This event is in partnership with the Neutral Zone.
Each week will feature different Detroit-based speakers and guests who will explore the given topic and engage the students through a combination of formal remarks, presentations, and public discussion. Light dinner provided; free transportation from Ann Arbor to Detroit; public welcome and encouraged to attend.
Literati is excited to welcome the Creative Writing Sub-concentration seniors in the English Department at the University of Michigan for a night of poetry and prose readings!
Each year the Creative Writing Sub-concentration selects no more than 14 students who spend their senior year working with faculty to complete a creative thesis of poetry or fiction. These collections, the same size as many MFA theses, are first attempts to create book-length manuscripts, and to prepare the writers for their work in the future.
Readers include…
Reema Baydoun transferred to the University of Michigan as a sophomore, and has since spent her time in Ann Arbor studying English and caring for her cat. As an Arab-American poet, she often spends weekends in Dearborn for inspiration and good food.
RC student Ariel Everitt hails from a one-stoplight town in Northeast Michigan and is a junior studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, where they have been a research assistant in a biogerontology lab, become a peer writing consultant, and won a Hopwood Award. Their fiction tackles the boundaries between people and genres, applying dream logic to science and human connections wherever possible. Ariel plans to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in the near future.
Madeleine Gaudin is a writer and future Elementary School teacher originally from Austin, Texas. Formerly the Managing Arts Editor at the Michigan Daily, she wrote about movies, music, books and the wonderful hellscape of the Internet for four years before turning her attention to ghost stories and fiction about the apocalypse.
Jenny Hong is a senior studying English with a Sub-concentration in Creative Writing (Poetry). She loves cooking, blogging, and binging TV series on lazy days—and also chatting with people around campus. She is sad that she will no longer be a student in May and enroll in workshops that will give her friendly nudges to write, but she’s also pretty excited for what’s next!
Kate Velguth is a senior studying English. She’s received four Hopwood Awards, and her fiction has appeared in The Washington Square Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere.” Her thesis, a collection of short stories, is entitled The World of Hidden Things. She hopes to teach English in South Korea next year.
Maxim Vinogradov is a local playwright, Michigan student, and is very excited to be reading at Literati! You may have seen his work in productions at Theatre Nova, Slipstream Theatre Initiative, Basement Arts, Outvisible Theatre Company, and others in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. He has had the pleasure of receiving two Hopwood Awards in Drama, two Wilde Awards, the National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center, and has spent this past summer in internships and residences with The Public Theater and O’Neill Theater Center. He’d love to thank the University of Michigan and Literati for this privilege, and hopes you enjoy his goofy writing!
Ellison Zak is a senior transfer student at the University of Michigan studying English, creative writing, and linguistics. Her thesis grapples with the secrets we all keep and the toll they can take on ourselves and our relationships. She spends her summers between school road tripping across the country and camping at national parks. More than anything else, she hopes to find employment after graduation.
n celebration of Literati Bookstore’s Sixth Anniversary, please join us for a reading of original poetry and prose by Literati Bookstore booksellers past and present!
A political drama by Beau Willimon, presented by RC Players. Farragut North tells the story of Stevie Bellamy, a young press secretary working for Morris, a candidate in the democratic presidential primary. . Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.
Like the original Blue Beard, Heinrich Blaubart brings death to women he meets. Unlike the original Blue Beard, though, he doesn’t seek to do so; in fact, his fear of relationships makes him try to avoid women. Presented in German by students enrolled in RCHUMS 334: From the Page to the Stage. Surtitles will make it possible for even non-German speakers to follow the action on stage. April 6, 8pm-10pm and April 7, 2pm-4pm, Keene Theater. Non-perishable food items or donation at the door.
Music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, presented by Room 6 Productions. A cautionary tale of a high school honors student who falls for a cute transfer girl. He goes to great lengths to oblige her request for marijuana in the hopes of winning her affection – only to find out that his crush is actually an undercover cop planted in the school to find drug dealers. Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.
Every story follows a recipe. There are scenes and pivotal moments that must be added to the mix to create a satisfying story. In this workshop on story structure, Alex Kourvo and Bethany Neal will break down the myth that plot and structure are formulaic and explain the common ingredients all novel-length stories need.
This is part of the monthly Emerging Writers Workshops, which offer support, learning, and advice for local authors. Each month, two weeks after the workshop, there is a meet-up where the instructors will read samples of your work and offer advice and assistance in a casual, supportive atmosphere.
Do you have a completed manuscript? Consider submitting it to the library’s imprint Fifth Avenue Press.
Marcin Wodzinski has produced the first cartographic reference book on Hasidism, one of the modern era’s most vibrant and important mystical movements. In this lecture, he will discuss Hasidism’s emergence and expansion in Eastern Europe; its spread to the New World; and its remarkable postwar rebirth. Wodzinski’s innovative mapping allows him to show to what extent Hasidism dominated the Eastern European Jewry, which Hasidic dynasties were strongest and why, and how the Hasidim resurrected in the Post-Holocaust era.
Marcin Wodziński (b. 1966) was born and raised in Silesia, Poland. He currently works at the Department of Jewish Studies, University of Wrocław, Poland, where he is professor of Jewish history and literature. His research focuses on the history and culture of East European Jews in modern times, especially the Haskalah and Hasidism. Of his recent publications, he is most proud of “Historical Atlas of Hasidism” (2018) and “Hasidism: Key Questions” (2018).
