Daughters of Memory: Paintings and Poems on the Nine Muses is an interdisciplinary show of works by Cindy Sowers exploring the elusive sources for the ancient figures of the Muses, as well as the appropriation of these figures by different artists through the ages.
Reception for the Artist: September 6, approximately 4:30pm. Refreshments will be served.
Cindy Sowers received her B.A. from Oakland University, her M.A. from University of Michigan in Comparative Literature, and her Ph.D. also from the University of Michigan in Comparative Literature. During her Masters program in 1973, she started teaching at the Residential College in the First Year Seminar and French programs. Her dissertation, The Shared Structure of Craft and Song: A Study of Homer’s Narrative Art, revealed passions for narrative and visual analysis comparatively understood that would characterize her teaching thereafter. She participated in an interdisciplinary group composed of Residential College humanities and fine arts faculty who together constructed the Arts and Ideas in the Humanities concentration. Cindy’s recent course offerings have included critical approaches to the literature and visual arts of classic modernism, postmodernism, Shakespeare and Rome, the heritage of Greece, the psychoanalytic interpretation of the arts, and many others. She combines analyses of literary texts, visual arts, and philosophy to hone in on the animating spirit of a cultural moment and space. She has presented at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2006 U-M residency, as part of the RC Faculty Colloquium, for the LSA Comparative Literature and the Colloquium on Critical Theory sponsored by the LSA Department of English Language and Literature, and at the Residential College’s 50th Anniversary celebration. She has received the Ford Foundation Fellowship, the Rackham Prize twice, the U-M Excellence in Teaching Award, the Matthews Underclass Teaching Award, and is a member of the Medieval Academy of America. Cindy retires from her position as a Senior Lecturer and Lecturer IV, having served in the Residential College for 46 years. She has an active art practice, and her work will be displayed in the RC Art Gallery in a fall 2019 exhibition. She also maintains a personal website, cynthiasowers.rc.lsa.umich.edu, where she publishes essays, poetry, and visual artwork.
CREES 60th Anniversary Signature Lecture. “The Ukrainian Famine: What We Know Now—And Why It Matters.” Anne Applebaum, author and foreign policy columnist, The Washington Post. Sponsors: CREES, CCPS.
Fri, Oct 4, 5:30 PM
CREES Distinguished Lecture and Film. “From the Soviet Gulag to Franco’s Spain: Historical Fiction’s Power for Global Dialogue.” Ruta Sepetys, author. Lecture followed at 7 PM by a screening of Ashes in the Snow. Marius A. Markevicius, director (98 min., 2018), based on the novel Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys. Sponsor: CREES. Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty.
Drawing on archival research and fieldwork, this talk will explore how B.K.S.Iyengar, (1918-2014) widely acclaimed as a man instrumental in bringing postural yoga to the West, came to understand yoga as an art and see himself as an artist.
The Center for World Performance Studies Faculty Lecture Series features our Faculty Fellows and visiting scholars and practitioners in the fields of ethnography and performance. Designed to create an informal and intimate setting for intellectual exchange among students, scholars, and the community, faculty are invited to present their work in an interactive and performative fashion.
Please join us as we welcome River Coello to campus as our keynote speaker for National Coming Out Week 2019 and LGBTQ History Month 2019.
About River:
River Coello is a queer and trans multidisciplinary artist from Guayaquil, Ecuador living in Chicago, Illinois.
As an actor, River has appeared on various stage productions, having trained at Acting Studio Chicago, Second City Training Center, and the University of Michigan. As a writer, River’s work explores various liminalities of the human condition through a focus on River’s own identities and experiences, grounded in a deeply spiritual perspective.
Historian Patricia Cost speaks about the history of the Benton family, who, among other things, invented the Century family of typefaces. Ben Denzer speaks about his artists’ books as well as his creative projects, such as Ice Cream Books.
This event is part of the 2019 Ann Arbor Wayzgoose & Printing Festival. See more works by Ben Denzer and the U-M Library Book Arts studio at the Wayzgoose Vendor Fair.
National Coming Out Day is observed annually to celebrate coming out as an LGBTQ+ or ally, and to raise awareness of the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights movement.
Our stories can be powerful to each other. Come celebrate the journey of coming out by witnessing local poets, writers, and artists perform pieces about their own journeys and identities.
This event is part of AADL’s 2019 National Coming Out Day events.
Lauren Bon is an environmental artist from Los Angeles, CA. Her practice, Metabolic Studio, explores self-sustaining and self-diversifying systems of exchange that feed emergent properties that regenerate the life web. Some of her works include: Not A Cornfield, which transformed and revived an industrial brownfield in downtown Los Angeles into a thirty-two-acre cornfield for one agricultural cycle; 100 Mules Walking the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a 240-mile performative action that aimed to reconnect the city of Los Angeles with the source of its water for the centenary of the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Her studio’s current work, Bending the River Back into the City, aims to utilize Los Angeles’ first private water right to deliver 106-acre feet of water annually from the LA River to over 50 acres of land in the historic core of downtown LA. This model can be replicated to regenerate the 52-mile LA River, reconnect it to its floodplain and form a citizens’ utility.
Co-presented with the Community of Food, Society and Justice Conference, October 17-18. This conference will engage students, faculty, staff, farmers, and the community in rigorous dialogue around the challenges of meeting the nutritional needs of our communities, while also protecting the planet, promoting healthy lives, and ensuring food justice. The conference is free and open to the public, thanks to its co-sponsors: the U-M Residential College, East Quad Garden, Michigan Dining, U-M Sustainable Food Systems Initiative, U-M Sustainable Food Program, U-M Campus Farm, Knight Wallace House, U-M Program in the Environment, Michigan Law Environmental Law and Policy Program, U-M Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, and the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speakers Series.
Based in Los Angeles,Lauren Bon is an artist who works with architecture, performance, photography, sound, and farming to create urban, public, and land art projects to galvanize social and political transformation. Her practice, Metabolic Studio, explores self-sustaining and self-diversifying systems of exchange that feed emergent properties that regenerate the life web. Some of her works include: Not A Cornfield, which transformed and revived an industrial brownfield in downtown Los Angeles into a thirty-two-acre cornfield for one agricultural cycle; 100 Mules Walking the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a 240-mile performative action that aimed to reconnect the city of Los Angeles with the source of its water for the centenary of the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Her studio’s current work, Bending the River Back into the City, aims to utilize Los Angeles’ first private water right to deliver 106-acre feet of water annually from the LA River to over 50 acres of land in the historic core of downtown LA. This model can be replicated to regenerate the 52-mile LA River, reconnect it to its floodplain and form a citizens’ utility.
Co-presented with the Community of Food, Society and Justice Conference, October 17-18. This conference will engage students, faculty, staff, farmers, and the community in rigorous dialogue around the challenges of meeting the nutritional needs of our communities, while also protecting the planet, promoting healthy lives, and ensuring food justice. The conference is free and open to the public, thanks to its co-sponsors: the U-M Residential College, East Quad Garden, Michigan Dining, U-M Sustainable Food Systems Initiative, U-M Sustainable Food Program, U-M Campus Farm, Knight Wallace House, U-M Program in the Environment, Michigan Law Environmental Law and Policy Program, U-M Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, and the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speakers Series.
Celebrate the new YpsiWrites and the National Day on Writing. Try out writing activities, learn from area writers and authors, and share your own writing experiences. There will be giveaways from local businesses. For more information, contact ypsiwrites@gmail.com
