Literati is pleased to welcome Jason Corey and Stephen Rush for an evening of music in celebration of their recent publications.
Jason Corey is an Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Music at the University of Michigan He is a recipient of the Paul D. Fleck Fellowship at The Banff Centre in Banff, Canada, where he has worked as an Audio Research Associate. He has presented his research at conferences in Europe, Canada, and the United States. His research and education have been supported by the Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation (New York), Bang & Olufsen A/S (Denmark), McGill University Stern Fellowship for Doctoral Studies in Music, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Pioneer Electronic Corporation (Japan), and TC Electronic A/S (Denmark). Professor Corey has been a member of the Audio Engineering Society since 1995, and is also a member of the Acoustical Society of America, the International Computer Music Association, College Music Society, and the Society for Music Perception and Cognition.
Stephen Rush is Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, where he founded the Digital Music Ensemble, which he has directed for 25 years. He has had over 200 premieres in five continents and released over 30 CDs, as well as a book on Jazz theology, Better Get It In Your Soul. His new book is Free Jazz, Harmolodics, and Ornette Coleman. Rush has premiered and recorded his classical and jazz compositions worldwide and performed with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Steve Swell, Eugene Chadbourne, Pauline Oliveros, his band “Yuganaut”, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, and the late Peter Kowald. His music has been performed by Leonard Slatkin, Neeme Jaarvi (Detroit Symphony Orchestra) and recorded by members of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.
All writers welcome to share and discuss their poetry and short fiction. Sign up for new participants begins at 6:45 p.m.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. More information about the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, including a full calendar of visiting writers, can be found here.
Laura Kasischke was raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, 2012, for Space, in Chains. She has published nine novels, one short story collection, and eight books of poetry, most recently The Infinitesimals. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several Pushcart Prizes and numerous poetry awards and her writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Harper’s and The New Republic. She has a son and step-daughter and lives with her family and husband in Chelsea, Michigan. She is Allan Seager Colleagiate Professor of English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan.
Literati is pleased to welcome Geneviève Zubrzycki in support of her latest work, Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec.
The province of Quebec used to be called the priest-ridden province by its Protestant neighbors in Canada. During the 1960s, Quebec became radically secular, directly leading to its evolution as a welfare state with lay social services. What happened to cause this abrupt change? Genevieve Zubrzycki gives us an elegant and penetrating history, showing that a key incident sets up the transformation. Saint John the Baptist is the patron saint of French Canadians, and, until 1969, was subject of annual celebrations with a parade in Montreal. That year, the statue of St. John was toppled by protestors, breaking off the head from the body. Here, then is the proximate cause: the beheading of a saint, a symbolic death to be sure, which caused the parades to disappear and other modes of national celebration to take their place. The beheading of the saint was part and parcel of the so-called Quiet Revolution, a period of far-reaching social, economic, political, and cultural transformations. Quebec society and the identity of its French-speaking members drastically reinvented themselves with the rejection of Catholicism. Zubrzycki is already acknowledged as a leading authority on nationalism and religion; this book will significantly enlarge her stature by showing the extent to which a core feature of the Quiet Revolution was an aesthetic revolt. A new generation rejected the symbols of French Canada, redefining national identity in the process (and as a process) and providing momentum for institutional reforms. We learn that symbols have causal force, generating chains of significations which can transform a Catholic-dominated conservative society into a leftist, forward-looking, secular society.
Geneviève Zubrzycki is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia at the University of Michigan. Born and raised in Quebec City, she was educated at McGill University and the Université de Montréal before obtaining her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her work examines politics and religion, nationalism, as well as national mythology and the politics of commemorations. Her publications include the award-winning The Crosses of Auschwitz: Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland (University of Chicago Press, 2006); Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion and Secularism in Quebec (University of Chicago Press, 2016); and National Matters: Nationalism, Culture and Materiality (forthcoming, Stanford University Press.). She is now completing a third monograph on the current revival of Jewish communities in Poland and non-Jewish Poles’ interest in all things Jewish. She has published articles on the topic in Comparative Studies in History and Society and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Her scholarship was awarded prizes from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Polish Studies Association, and from the American Sociological Association’s sections on Sociology of Culture, Political Sociology, Sociology of Religion, and Collective Behavior and Social Movements.
BRYCE HAYES POPE is a writer from New York. This past summer, she was a Donor Relations intern at PEN America and a volunteer at MoMA. She once showed Donna Tartt where the bathroom was. She enjoys reading (duh), yoga, Seinfeld, and not cooking.
SIERRA BROWN hails from Florida. She walks quickly and drinks too much coffee. When not writing poetry, Sierra plays with Madam the cat and hopes for a world without capitalism. You will find Sierra’s poems in Blue Mesa Review and Salamander.
The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. We encourage you to bring your friends – a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.
Reading by the widely published Detroit poet Casey Rocheteau, author of the new collection The Dozen and winner of the inaugural Detroit Write-a-House residency in 2014. The program begins with open mike readings.
Literati is thrilled to bring Ambassador Omar Saif Ghobash to Ann Arbor in support of his book, Letters to a Young Muslim. This event will take place in the Rackham Amphitheater and is free and open to the public. Join us!
In a series of personal letters to his sons, Omar Saif Ghobash offers a short and highly readable manifesto that tackles our current global crisis with the training of an experienced diplomat and the personal responsibility of a father. Today’s young Muslims will be tomorrow’s leaders, and yet too many are vulnerable to extremist propaganda that seems omnipresent in our technological age. The burning question, Ghobash argues, is how moderate Muslims can unite to find a voice that is true to Islam while actively and productively engaging in the modern world. What does it mean to be a good Muslim?
What is the concept of a good life? And is it acceptable to stand up and openly condemn those who take the Islamic faith and twist it to suit their own misguided political agendas? In taking a hard look at these seemingly simple questions, Ghobash encourages his sons to face issues others insist are not relevant, not applicable, or may even be Islamophobic. These letters serve as a clear-eyed inspiration for the next generation of Muslims to understand how to be faithful to their religion and still navigate through the complexities of today’s world. They also reveal an intimate glimpse into a world many are unfamiliar with and offer to provide an understanding of the everyday struggles Muslims face around the globe.
Omar Saif Ghobash is the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Russia. In addition to his post in Moscow, Ambassador Ghobash sponsors the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and founded the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in collaboration with the Booker Prize in London. Ambassador Ghobash studied law at Oxford and mathematics at the University of London.
Literati welcomes Bill Ayers to Ann Arbor as part of a national tour to celebrate the release 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.
“For Bill Ayers, it is the freedom of our collective imagination that links the contemporary world—ensconced as it is in pervasive militarism, racist violence, and environmental devastation—to the flourishing of our planet. This is a manifesto that should be read by everyone who wants to believe that “another world is possible.”—Angela Y. Davis, author of Abolition Democracy and Freedom is a Constant Struggle
“With huge numbers of us recognizing the need for transformative change, this ambitious and exuberant book perfectly matches its historical moment. Ayers fearlessly confronts the intersecting crises of our age—endless war, surging inequality, unchecked white supremacy and perilous planetary warming—while mapping emancipatory new possibilities. From the first page, his courage is contagious.”—Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine
“Demand the Impossible is more than a book, more than a manifesto. It is a torch. Bill Ayers’ vision for a humane future is incendiary—fire that incinerates old logics and illuminates new paths. If we do not end the violence of militarism, materialism, caging, dispossession, debt, want, ignorance, and global warming, our very survival is impossible. Read aloud.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams
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.
All invited to read and discuss their poetry or short stories. Bring about 6 copies of your work to share. Hosted by local poets and former college English teachers Joe Kelty and Ed Morin.
Literati is thrilled to be the bookseller for this celebration of the University of Michigan’s 200th birthday, as the LSA bicentennial welcomes Colson Whitehead, the author, most recently, ofThe Underground Railroad.
From #1 New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad is a magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.
Colson Whitehead is the New York Times bestselling author of The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.
This LSA Bicentennial Theme Semester event is presented with support from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the University of Michigan Bicentennial Office. Additional support provided by: Department of History, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Department of American Culture, Helen Zell Writers’ Program, Institute for the Humanities, Joseph A. Labadie Collection, LSA Honors Program, Native American Studies, Residential College.
