Look at the Great Lakes region through the eyes of Michigan children’s authors, including Tom Pohrt, Nancy Willard, and Joan Blos. In addition to published works, we will also have selected archival materials and artwork on display.
The Great Lakes represent the largest body of freshwater in the world and are surrounded by diverse ecosystems and communities, from the rust belt steel mills that sit on Indiana’s sand dunes to the protected forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Nonetheless, from Western New York to Eastern Minnesota, to grow up in the Great Lakes region means to grow up anchored to a landscape shaped by water, and to a social and economic environment built on a history of using (and often abusing) this abundant water source.
This event follows a lecture by Elizabeth Goodenough at 3:00pm, Growing Up Near the Great Lakes. Please join us for both events!
This event is part of Special Collections After Hours, a monthly open house series sharing highlights from the many books, documents, and artifacts in the Special Collections Research Center. Each event is open to everyone and will offer a new group of themed materials for visitors to explore. Open houses are held on the second Tuesday of each month during the academic year. Light refreshments are provided.
Most adults today experience some degree of anxiety. In the United States alone, 51% of adults report feeling anxious. And what is one of the top causes of this chronic anxiety? Money.
Join us as Lindsay Bryan-Podvin discusses financial anxiety and her new book The Financial Anxiety Solution: A Step-by-Step Workbook to Stop Worrying about Money, Take Control of Your Finances, and Live a Happier Life.
Financial anxiety is ranked #2 in terms of what is stressing Americans out. And the more anxious a person is about money, the less likely they are to take action toward improving their financial health. Here’s the good news—anxiety is treatable and financial literacy is easier than you think. This presentation will address how to conquer money-related stress and take control of your financial life.
Lindsay Bryan-Podvin (pronouns she/her/hers) is a biracial female social worker-turned-financial therapist and author. The first financial therapist in Michigan, she holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan, and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Michigan State University, and practices in Washtenaw County.
This event is in partnership with Literati Bookstore and includes a signing with books for sale.
We welcome critic Donna Rifkin in support of her book, The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood.
About the book: The little-known story of screenwriter Salka Viertel, whose salons in 1930s and 40s Hollywood created a refuge for a multitude of famous figures who had escaped the horrors of World War ll.
Hollywood was created by its “others”; that is, by women, Jews, and immigrants. Salka Viertel was all three and so much more. She was the screenwriter for five of Greta Garbo’s movies and also her most intimate friend. At one point during the Irving Thalberg years, Viertel was the highest-paid writer on the MGM lot. Meanwhile, at her house in Santa Monica she opened her door on Sunday afternoons to scores of European émigrés who had fled from Hitler–such as Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and Arnold Schoenberg–along with every kind of Hollywood star, from Charlie Chaplin to Shelley Winters. In Viertel’s living room (the only one in town with comfortable armchairs, said one Hollywood insider), countless cinematic, theatrical, and musical partnerships were born.
Viertel combined a modern-before-her-time sensibility with the Old-World advantages of a classical European education and fluency in eight languages. She combined great worldliness with great warmth. She was a true bohemian with a complicated erotic life, and at the same time a universal mother figure. A vital presence in the golden age of Hollywood, Salka Viertel is long overdue for her own moment in the spotlight.
Donna Rifkind‘s reviews appear frequently in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times Book Review. She has also been a contributor to the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, American Scholar, and other publications. In 2006 she was a finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle.
We’re pleased to welcome faculty members from the University of Michigan’s History Department as they present their recent publications. Copies of the titles will be available for purchase.
Howard Brick, et al., At the Center: American Thought and Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Joshua Cole, Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria
Juan Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires
Henry Cowles, The Scientific Method: An Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey
Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, Racial Migrations: New York City and the Revolutionary Politics of the Spanish Caribbean
Victoria Langland, et al., The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics
Alexandra Minna Stern, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination
Ellen Muehlberger, Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity
Perrin Selcer, The Cold War Origins of the Global Environment
Julius Scott, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution
Free and open to the public. Reception and book signing to follow.
Join us for a reading by Lacy M. Johnson, author of The Reckonings and professor of creative nonfiction at Rice University. David Morse, Lecturer at the Ford School’s Writing Center, will moderate the conversation and Q&A.
From the speaker’s bio:
Lacy M. Johnson is a Houston-based professor, curator, activist, and is author of The Reckonings, which was named a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist in Criticism and one of the best books of 2018 by Boston Globe, Electric Literature, Autostraddle, Book Riot, and Refinery 29. She is also author of The Other Side. For its frank and fearless confrontation of the epidemic of violence against women, The Other Side was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an Edgar Award in Best Fact Crime, the CLMP Firecracker Award in Nonfiction; it was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writer Selection for 2014, and was named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus, Library Journal, and the Houston Chronicle. She is also author of Trespasses: A Memoir, which has been anthologized in The Racial Imaginary and Literature: The Human Experience.
She worked as a cashier at WalMart, sold steaks door-to-door, and puppeteered with a traveling children’s museum before earning a PhD from University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, where she was both an Erhardt Fellow and Inprint Fondren Fellow. As a writer and artist, she has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Houston Endowment, Rice University’s Humanities Research Center, Houston Arts Alliance, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Kansas Arts Commission (may it rest in peace), the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, Inprint, and Millay Colony for the Arts. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Tin House, Guernica, Fourth Genre, Creative Nonfiction, Sentence, TriQuarterly, Gulf Coast and elsewhere. She teaches creative nonfiction at Rice University and is the Founding Director of the Houston Flood Museum.
How can literature address a climate of growing intolerance and hate? How can empathy in literature be used to confront exclusionary discourses by examining their underlying agendas? Canadian novelist and crime & fantasy author (A Deadly Divide, Among The Ruins) Ausma Zehanat Khan will discuss the importance of counter-narratives that open up spaces for members of minority communities to speak. She explores questions of identity and belonging, marginalization and exclusion, through the lens of a Canadian Muslim detective who investigates crimes connected to global human rights issues. Through the stories she tells, she considers the disproportionate impact of these issues on minority communities, reflecting on how our understanding of justice is shaped by our ability to achieve it. Finally, she discusses the vital role literature can play in developing and deepening empathy, thus challenging intolerance and serving to defuse hate.
This event includes a signing with books for sale and is in partnership with the Department of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University.
ONE PAUSE POETRY SALON is (literally) a greenhouse for poetry and poets, nurturing an appreciation for written art in all languages and encouraging experiments in creative writing.
We meet every Weds in the greenhouse at Argus Farm Stop on Liberty St. The poems we read each time are unified by form (haiku, sonnet, spoken word), poet, time / place (Tang Dynasty, English Romanticism, New York in the 70s) or theme / mood (springtime, poems with cats, protest poems). We discuss the poems and play writing games together, with time for snacks and socializing in between.
Members are encouraged to share their own poems or poems they like – they may or may not relate to the theme of the evening. This is not primarily a workshop – we may hold special workshop nights, but mostly we listen to and talk about poems for the sake of inspiring new writing.
Whether you are a published poet or encountering poetry for the first time, we invite you to join us!
$5 suggested donation for food, drinks and printing costs.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
Before Grace Lin was an award-winning and NY Times bestselling author/illustrator of picturebooks, early readers and middle grade novels, she was the only Asian girl (except for her sisters) going to her elementary school in Upstate NY. That experience, good and bad, has influenced her books—including her Newbery Honor WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON, her Geisel Honor LING & TING, her National Book Finalist WHEN THE SEA TURNED TO SILVER and her Caldecott Honor A BIG MOONCAKE FOR LITTLE STAR.
That experience also causes Lin to persevere for diversity: She is an occasional New England Public Radio commentator, she gave a TEDx talk titled “The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf,” and she authored a PBSNewHour video essay called “What to do when you realize classic books from your childhood are racist?” She continues this mission with her two podcasts kidlitwomen* and Book Friends Forever. In 2016, Lin’s art was displayed at the White House and Lin was recognized by President Obama’s office as a Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling.
Political strategist Dan Pfeiffer’s new book, Un-Trumping America, offers readers three critical insights: first, Trump is not an aberration, but rather the logical extension of the modern Republican Party; second, how Democrats can defeat Trump in 2020; and third, preventing the likes of Trump from ever happening again with a plan to fix democracy.
Un-Trumping America dismantles toxic Trumpism and offers a way forward. Dan Pfeiffer worked for nearly twenty years at the center of Democratic politics, from the campaign trail to Capitol Hill to Barack Obama’s White House. Here, Pfeiffer urges Democrats to embrace bold solutions—from fixing the courts to abolishing the electoral college to eliminating the filibuster—in order to make America more democratic (and Democratic).
This event is in partnership with Literati Bookstore and includes a signing with books for sale.
Free and open to the public. Reception and book signing to follow.
This event will be livestreamed. Check back here right before the event for viewing details.
Join us for an armchair conversation with Robin DiAngelo, author and Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Washington, and Elizabeth Moje, Dean of the University of Michigan School of Education. Dr. DiAngelo and Dean Moje will discuss themes and ideas stemming from Dr. DiAngelo’s best-selling book, “White Fragility.”
White people in the U.S. live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress. DiAngelo calls this lack of racial stamina “white fragility.” White fragility is a state in which even a minimal challenge to the white position becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive responses. These responses function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and maintain white control. DiAngelo will provide an overview of the socialization that inculcates white fragility and provide the perspectives and skills needed to build racial stamina and develop more equitable racial practices.
From the speaker’s bio:
Dr. Robin DiAngelo is Affiliate Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington. In addition, she holds two Honorary Doctorates. She is a two-time winner of the Student’s Choice Award for Educator of the Year at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. She has numerous publications and books. In 2011 she coined the term White Fragility in an academic article which has influenced the international dialogue on race. Her book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism was released in June of 2018 and debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List. In addition to her academic work, Dr. DiAngelo has been a consultant and trainer for over 20 years on issues of racial and social justice.
From the moderator’s bio:
Elizabeth Birr Moje is dean, George Herbert Mead Collegiate Professor of Education, and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture in the School of Education. Moje teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in secondary and adolescent literacy, cultural theory, and research methods and was awarded the Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize with colleague, Bob Bain, in 2010. A former high school history and biology teacher, Moje’s research examines young people’s navigations of culture, identity, and literacy learning in and out of school in Detroit, Michigan.
Moje has published 5 books and numerous articles in journals such as Science, Harvard Educational Review, Teachers College Record, Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Literacy Research, Review of Education Research, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, International Journal of Science Education, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. She chairs the William T. Grant Foundation Scholar Selection Committee and is a member of the National Academy of Education.
Sponsored by: Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, School of Education, the U-M Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, the University of Michigan Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and the CEW+ Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund
