This event is free and open to the public. There will be a catered reception to follow the lecture.
Mary Kathryn Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She currently serves as the Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program. She is also a partner at Pipestem Law, P.C., where she works to protect tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Indian Nations to protect their women and children from domestic violence and sexual assault. Nagle has authored numerous briefs in federal appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court. Nagle studied theater and social justice at Georgetown University as an undergraduate student, and received her J.D. from Tulane Law School where she graduated summe cum laude and received the John Minor Wisdom Award. She is a frequent speaker at law schools and symposia across the country. Her articles have been published in law review journals including the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, Yale Law Journal (online forum), Tulsa Law Review, and Tulane Law Review, among others.
Nagle is an alumn of the 2012 PUBLIC THEATER Emerging Writers Group, where she developed her play “Manahatta” in PUBLIC STUDIO (May 2014). Productions include “Miss Lead” (Amerinda, 59E59, January 2014), and “Fairly Traceable” (Native Voices at the Autry, March 2017), “Sovereignty” (Arena Stage), “Manahatta” (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), and Return to Niobrara (Rose Theater). In 2019, Portland Center Stage will produce the world premiere of “Crossing Mnisose.”
Nagle has received commissions from Arena Stage (“Sovereignty”), the Rose Theater (“Return to Niobrara,” Omaha, Nebraska), Portland Center Stage (“Mnisose”), Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Yale Repertory Theatre (“A Pipe for February”), and Round House Theater.
The Berkhofer Lecture series (named for a former U-M professor and founder of the field of Native American studies) was established in 2014 by an alumni gift from the Dan and Carmen Brenner family of Seattle, Washington. In close consultation with the Brenners, Native American Studies decided to create a public lecture series featuring prominent, marquee speakers who would draw audiences from different communities (faculty and students, Ann Arbor and Detroit, and Michigan tribal communities as well as writers and readers of all persuasions). Native American students at U-M have consistently expressed their desire to make Native Americans more visible both on campus and off, and we believe that this lecture takes a meaningful step in that direction. Additionally, because of the statewide publicity it generates, we think it is already becoming another recruitment incentive for Native American students. It goes without saying that the speakers we are inviting provide tremendous value to the mission and work of Native American Studies at U-M.
Best selling author Tahereh Mafi comes to AADL to discuss Defy Me, her latest book in the Shatter Me series of dystopian adventure young adult fiction. She is joined in conversation with YA author Caleb Roehrig.
Tahereh Mafi is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of A Very Large Expanse of Sea, the Shatter Me series, Furthermore, and Whichwood. She can usually be found overcaffeinated and stuck in a book. You can find her online just about anywhere @TaherehMafi or on her website, www.taherehbooks.com.
Caleb Roehrig is the author of Death Prefers Blondes, White Rabbit and Last Seen Leaving, which was called one of the Best YA Novels of 2016 by Buzzfeed.com. Caleb lives with his husband in Chicago.
This event includes a book signing and books will be on sale, courtesy of Literati Bookstore.
Literati is pleased to be partnering with the Ann Arbor Downtown Library to host graphic novelist Box Brown who will be discussing his new book Cannabis: The Legalization of Weed in America.
About Cannabis:
Mexico, 1519 CE.
During the Spanish conquests Cortés introduced hemp farming as part of his violent colonial campaign. In secret, locals began cultivating the plant for consumption. It eventually made its way to the United States through the immigrant labor force where it was shared with black laborers. It doesn’t take long for American lawmakers to decry cannabis as the vice of “inferior races.”
Enter an era of propaganda designed to feed a moral panic about the dangers of a plant that had been used by humanity for thousands of years. Cannabis was given a schedule I classification, which it shared with drugs like heroin. This opened the door for a so-called “war on drugs” that disproportionately targeted young black men, leaving hundreds of thousands in prison, many for minor infractions. With its roots in “reefer madness” and misleading studies into the effects of cannabis, America’s complicated and racialized relationship with marijuana continues to this day.
Author Box Brown delves deep into this troubling history and offers a rich, entertaining, and thoroughly researched graphic essay on the legacy of cannabis legislation in America.
Box Brown is an Ignatz Award–winning cartoonist, illustrator, and comic publisher from Philadelphia. His books include the New York Times–bestselling Andre the Giant: Life and Legend and Tetris. Box Brown’s independent comics publishing house, Retrofit Comics, was launched in 2011.
Animals have played a crucial role in human history, and continue to do so until today. The interaction between humans and animals can affect the environment, and vice versa. In the ancient Egyptian Nile Valley, in addition to providing food, transportation, raw materials, companionship and entertainment, animals played a key role in religion. As such, they inspired divine iconography and language, and served both as manifestations as well as offerings to gods. Ultimately, in the twilight of Egypt’s pharaonic history, animals played a part in defining cultural identity and world-view. This talk will focus on a critical locus of this agency: animal mummies in ancient Egypt, and what they tell us not only about Egyptian culture, economy, and human-animal relationships, but also about Egypt’s changing environment.
Salima Ikram is Distinguished University Professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo, and has worked as an archaeologist in Turkey, Sudan, Greece and the United States. After double majoring in history and classical and near eastern archaeology at Bryn Mawr College, she received her MPhil in museology and Egyptian archaeology and PhD in Egyptian archaeology from Cambridge University. She previously directed the Animal Mummy Project, the North Kharga Darb Ain Amur Survey, Valley of the Kings KV10/KV63 Mission co-directed the Predynastic Gallery project and the North Kharga Oasis Survey. She has also participated in several other archaeological missions throughout Egypt. She has lectured on her work internationally, and publishes in both scholarly and popular journals. She also has an active media presence.
With the young republic in crisis, President Washington chose as general an aging brigadier whose private life was mired in scandal. Follow the story of General Anthony Wayne, drawn from his own passionate letters where he vividly confessed his deepest thoughts. Writer and historian Mary Stockwell was an Earhart Foundation Fellow at the Clements Library. Her book “Unlikely General: ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America” was published by Yale University Press in 2018. She has a B.A. in history from Mary Manse College and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Toledo. Register online.
Join the Bailey Library and Entrepreneurship Center for an inspirational talk on entrepreneurship by Lisa Ludwinski, founder of Sister Pie, and author of Sister Pie, The Recipes and Stories of a Big-Hearted Bakery in Detroit
Born and raised in Michigan, Lisa trained at New York’s Milk Bar and Brooklyn’s Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Sister Pie started as a home-based business out of her parents’ kitchen, and has been featured in Bon Appetit and the New York Times, among other publications. Lisa will showcase her book which pays homage to Motor City ingenuity and all-American spirit.
Part of the Carceral State Project, a year of dialogue about criminal justice, policing, imprisonment, inequality, and what we can do about it. Presented by the U-M Carceral State Project with support from the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, the Department of History, the Residential College, the Crime and Justice Minor, the Social Theory and Practice Major, the Prison Creative Arts Project, the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, the Institute for the Humanities, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of Sociology.
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.
Literati is pleased to be partnering with Donia Human Rights Center at the University of Michigan to welcome Catharine MacKinnon at Rackham Amphitheatre. Literati will have copies of Professor MacKinnon’s latest book Butterfly Politics available for purchase.
Professor Catharine A. MacKinnon will address the politics and law of sexual harassment, focusing on its violation of equality rights, in light of the #MeToo movement, exploring those developments in light of the theory of her most recent book, “Butterfly Politics: Changing the World for Women.”
About Butterfly Politics:
Under certain conditions, the right small simple actions can produce large and complex “butterfly effects,” as the #MeToo movement has shown. Thirty years after Catharine A. MacKinnon won the U.S. Supreme Court case establishing sexual harassment in law, this timely collection captures MacKinnon in action: the creative and transformative activism of an icon. Butterfly Politics provides the grounding for #MeToo, explains its momentum, and proposes more legal interventions that could have further butterfly effects on women’s rights.
Catharine A. MacKinnon is Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law (Long-Term) at Harvard Law School.
Perfect for this new, fresh, sweet springtime: For the April edition of the Motor Signal Reading Series, two innovative, multi-genre writers are going to crack us open and help us imagine what’s possible.
Motor Signal, now in its sixth season, jolts the typical literary reading out of its traditional form. An activity of co-creation connects the featured writers with the audience in a unique way. In celebration of the beauty of text, an artist at Signal-Return makes a handset, limited-edition broadside of the writers’ work for event attendees. And we proudly pay writers for their time and talent.
Hosted by RC writing alumna Anna Clark.
ELIZABETH SCHMUHL is a multidisciplinary artist–writer, dancer, and painter– and the author of Premonitions (Wayne State University Press). She illustrates essays for The Rumpus, has taught writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and worked in digital development at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. She is currently Shamel Pitts’ Marketing and Campaign Manager and works at U-M; she is also an RC writing alum.
KELLY FORDON’S work has appeared in The Florida Review, The Kenyon Review (KRO), Rattle and various other journals. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, was chosen as a 2016 Michigan Notable Book among other awards. On the Street Where We Live, a one-act play adapted from her poetry was chosen for the 2018 Dream Up Festival in New York. She is the author of three award-winning poetry chapbooks and a full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press 2019). www.kellyfordon.com
