Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for the Author’s Forum’s presentationof “Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method,” a conversation with Joan Kee and David Chung.
A crucial artistic movement of twentieth-century Korea, Tansaekhwa (monochromatic painting) also became one of its most famous and successful. In this full-color, richly illustrated account—the first of its kind in English—Joan Kee provides a fresh interpretation of the movement’s emergence and meaning that sheds new light on the history of abstraction, twentieth-century Asian art, and contemporary art in general. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the most controversial and influential artistic movement in contemporary Korean art. With detailed formal analysis on the important artworks and locating them within the broader historical and intellectual framework, Joan Kee vividly portrays how Korean artists responded to the international art world and positioned Tansaekhwa as an alternative to Euro-American art. Contemporary Korean Art makes essential reading for anyone interested in the non-Western artists’ negotiations to global art in the twentieth century.
This event will be recorded
Join us for a special mystery-lovers evening as historical mystery writers Maureen Jennings and Nancy Herriman discuss their work and the history/mystery genre. This event, cosponsored by Aunt Agatha’s Mystery Bookstore, includes a book signing and books will be for sale. Note: mystery writer Tasha Alexander, also scheduled to present, is unfortunately unable to attend this event.
Born in England, Maureen Jennings emigrated to Canada as a teenager. The first acclaimed Detective Murdoch mystery was published in 1997. Six more followed, all to enthusiastic reviews.
In 2003, Shaftesbury Films adapted three of the novels into movies of the week, and four years later the Murdoch Mysteries TV series was created. It is now shown around the world.
The Detective Inspector Tom Tyler series, set in World War II-era England, got off to a spectacular start with 2011’s Season of Darkness, followed by Beware This Boyin 2012.
Her newest book, “Dead Ground in Between,” is the haunting fourth novel in the DI Tom Tyler series. Set in Britain during the darkest days of World War II, this is a must-read especially for those interested in wartime dramas.
Nancy Herriman abandoned a career in Engineering to chase around two small children and take up the pen. She hasn’t looked back. A multi-published author, she is also a former winner of the Romance Writers of America’s Daphne du Maurier award for Best Unpublished Mystery/Romantic Suspense.
Oct. 26: Readings by Kalamazoo Valley Community College English teacher Robert Haight, the author of 3 poetry collections, and Joy Gaines-Friedler, a widely published Detroit-area poet who has released 2 collections, Followed by a poetry and short fiction open mike.
Literati is pleased to welcome poets Troy Jollimore and Heather Altfeld for a reading and signing.
Troy Jollimore’s most recent collection of poetry, Syllabus of Errors, was chosen by the New York Times as one of the best poetry books of 2015. His previous poetry books are At Lake Scugog (2011) and Tom Thomson in Purgatory, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for 2006. He teaches philosophy at California State University, Chico, and is the author of two philosophical works,Love’s Vision and On Loyalty. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Heather Altfeld is the author of The Disappearing Theatre, chosen by Stephen Dunn for the Poets at Work prize. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, ZYZZYVA, Pleiades, Copper Nickel, The Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Watershed, and others, and she has written essays for North American Review, Superstition Review, and Poetry Northwest. Her research and areas of interest include Children’s Literature, Anthropology and Poetry, Waldorf Education for K-12, and things that have vanished. She has taught in Juvenile Hall, California Poets-in the Schools, Teachers and Writers Collaborative in New York City, and various campuses in the North State.
This bestselling children’s writer and illustrator-author of many pop-up books, including America the Beautiful and A Winter’s Tale: An Original Pop-Up Journey-discusses his work and leads a hands-on pop-up book-making activity for adults.
7 p.m., Concordia University Kreft Center Black Box Theater, 4090 Geddes at Earhart. Free, but reservations required. 995-7537.
Literati is delighted to be the bookseller for the DISC Distinguished Lecture, “Gender and Sexuality in the Islamic Culture,” delivered by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shirin Ebadi. This event is hosted by the Islamic Studies Program and co-sponosored by the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, International Institute, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies, Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, and Law School.
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, former judge, and human rights activist. On October 10, 2003, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights – especially women’s, children’s, and refugee rights. She was the first Iranian to ever receive the prize. Ebadi became Iran’s first female judge when she was just 23 years old. She also became the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to be awarded the Nobel peace prize. Despite initially supporting the Iranian revolution like many Iranians, Ebadi soon became its scourge. Although described as “the worst nightmare of Iran’s hardline clerics,” her fight for human rights, particularly those for women, is not anti-religion. “I am against patriarchy, not Islam,” she says.
Demoted to a secretary in her own court by the regime, which considered women unsuitable to be judges, she set up her own pro-bono law practice to focus on injustices in the legal system, acting for political dissidents and on child-abuse cases. Despite being put on a death list by the regime, Dr. Ebadi became the country’s most high-profile human rights activist, founding the Human Rights Defenders Centre and helping to found the One Million Signatures Campaign. This grassroots campaign collected 1 million signatures from women in support of changing discriminatory laws. The campaign has won numerous international prizes (including the 2009 Reach All Women in War Anna Politkovskaya Award), but its members have also been harassed and even jailed.
Shirin Ebadi lived in Tehran, but she has been in exile in the UK since June 2009 due to the increase in persecution of Iranian citizens who are critical of the current regime. In 2004, she was listed by Forbes Magazine as one of the “100 most powerful women in the world.” She is also included in a published list of the “100 most influential women of all time.”
Ebadi will be introduced by Bridgette Carr, clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan.
Come ghosts, ghouls, and goblins for a haunting reading event. Bring something to read or just come to listen. There will be apples, cider, candy corn, and friendship!
The BarkBox doodles are everywhere- on the box, in our newsletter, and on our Facebook page. And while we affectionately call these pup drawings “doodles,” the artist behind them is a full-blown cartoonist.
They’re by Dave Coverly, one of the top cartoonists in the country. (Seriously.) His “Speed Bump” comic strip is syndicated in more than 400 newspapers and websites, including the Washington Post, Torontopr Globe & Mail, Detroit Free Press, Chicago Tribune, and the Indianapolis Star. In 2009 he was given the prestigious Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year—the highest honor awarded by the National Cartoonists Society.
Dave lives with his wife and two daughters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and he took a few moments to chat with us about dogs, cartoons, dogs, BarkBox, and more dogs. (courtesy of BarkPost)
Click on the link to read BarkPost’s interview of Dave Coverly http://bit.ly/2bzZ6Es
Humane Society of Huron Valley Bountiful Bowls Program:
The Humane Society of Huron Valley understands that financial difficulty often means making a list of priorities. Frequently, animals are forced to be low on that list. HSHV’s Bountiful Bowls pet food assistance program helps Washtenaw County and Plymouth residents who are having difficulty meeting the nutritional needs of their dog or cat due to financial burden.
Trying times can be temporary. With a little assistance, a pet owner can often find a way to keep their pet in their home.
Literati welcomes Bill Ayers to Ann Arbor in support of his latest book, Demand the Impossible!: A Radical Manifesto.
Demand the Impossible! is a manifesto for movement-makers. In an era defined by mass incarceration, endless war, economic crisis, catastrophic environmental destruction, and a political system offering more of the same, radical social transformation has never been more urgent. Demand the Impossible! urges us to imagine a world beyond what this rotten system would have us believe is possible. In critiquing the world around us, insurgent educator and activist Bill Ayers uncovers cracks in the system, raising our sights for radical change, and envisioning strategies for building a movement to create a more humane, balanced, and peaceful world.
Bill Ayers is a social justice activist, teacher, Distinguished Professor of Education (retired) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of two memoirs, Fugitive Days and Public Enemy.
Literati is pleased to be the bookseller for Sara Goldrick-Rab’s visit to Ann Arbor. Sara is the author of Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, and this event will take place in Schorling Auditorium at the University of Michigan’s School of Educaiton.
For the last decade, sociologist Sara Goldrick-Rab has been studying what happens when economically vulnerable people try to make their way through public higher education. Of the 3,000 young adults she tracked who began college in 2008, half dropped out, and less than one in five finished a bachelor s degree in four years. Additional grant money helped some, but what is clear here is that when college students costs are not fully covered, they rarely finish college. If they do, it takes them longer than it should, and they graduate with a substantial amount of debt.
In addition to marshaling her data and national data, Goldrick-Rab also adds a human dimension to this story. She focuses in on six students in particular to help make plain the human and financial sometimes to the dollar costs of our convoluted financial aid policies. Their stories really drive the point home. Though Chloe Johnson, an aspiring veterinarian, sold her beloved horse, took out loans, shared an off-campus apartment with a friend, and worked two jobs, she ends up dropping out of college. She had to work so many hours at Kohl s and PetSmart often the night shift to pay for her Expected Family Contribution that she could not stay awake in classes and still did not have enough money for food or gas. When she finally dropped a class to help her performance in other classes, she found out at the end of the semester that her reduced load made her ineligible for financial aid. After leaving school, she still owed thousands of dollars; she had nothing to show for her college years but debt.
Goldrick-Rab closes the book with possible solutions, from changing the timing of FAFSA forms, to more flexibility about how students can use aid money, and she makes a strong case for making the first two years of college free.
“Paying the Price is an urgent and necessary text. Through rigorous research and careful analysis, Sara Goldrick-Rab shows how the American Dream is structurally compromised by the exorbitant costs of higher education and a thoroughly dysfunctional financial aid system. With texture and subtlety, Goldrick-Rab spotlights the journeys of students whose road to educational access and social mobility is obstructed by the current crisis. Equally important, she offers a practical and progressive action plan forcreating a more fair and just system.”–Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody: Casualities of America’s War on the Vulnerable, From Ferguson to Flint and Beyond
Sara Goldrick-Rab is coeditor of Reinventing Financial Aid: Charting a New Course to College Affordability and has written on education issues for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. She is a recipient of the Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association and the Atlantic, Slate, and NPR have covered her work. She founded the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, the nation s first research laboratory aimed at making college affordable, and is a noted influence on the development of both federal and state higher education policies. Dr. Goldrick-Rab is professor of higher education policy and sociology at Temple University.
