Calendar

Mar
5
Tue
The Moth Storyslam: Envy @ Greyline
Mar 5 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

 Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Envy” (Mar. 5) & “Ruse” (Mar 19)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.

 

Mar
16
Sat
RC Players: Small Acts @ East Quad Keene Theater
Mar 16 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

Student monologues and exceprts from creative works.

Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.

Mar
17
Sun
RC Drama: Beware the Ives of March @ East Quad Keene Theater
Mar 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Seven short farces about language and relationships, directed by students from RC Hums 482, and acted by students in RC Hums 281, all by master comic playwright, David Ives.

 

Mar
19
Tue
Lecture: Jill Dougherty: The Truth about Lies in International Relations: Reflections on the Media in Russia and Beyond @ 1010 Weiser Hall
Mar 19 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Jill Dougherty (BA Russian ’70), former foreign affairs correspondent, CNN

Lots of countries lie.

Some call it “winning hearts and minds,” others call it “strategic communications,” still others call it “softening the battlefield.” However it’s described, propaganda is a key component of international relations, a tool employed both by diplomats and warriors. Russia has used propaganda since the 1917 Russian Revolution both to mold the minds of its own citizens and to spread the gospel of Marxism-Leninism around the world. Today’s Russia uses a well-honed media strategy to craft public opinion at home—and to promote the country’s public image abroad.

But the Kremlin also uses propaganda—now turbo-charged by digital advances like artificial intelligence, machine learning and big-data analytics—as a tool of war, a less-costly form of conflict than shedding blood, to undermine and weaken foes.

Jill Dougherty, former CNN Moscow Bureau Chief, examines how Russia uses information, and disinformation, to achieve its strategic objectives.

Jill Dougherty served as CNN correspondent for three decades, reporting from more than 50 countries. She is a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. and a CNN Contributor who provides expert commentary on Russia and the post-Soviet region. Ms. Dougherty joined CNN in 1983, and was appointed Moscow Bureau Chief in 1997. During nearly a decade in that post, she covered the presidencies of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s post-Soviet economic transition, terrorist attacks, the conflict in Chechnya, Georgia’s Rose Revolution and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. After a long career with CNN, Ms. Dougherty pursued academic interests, most recently as a Distinguished Visiting Practitioner at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. An alumna of the University of Michigan, she has a B.A. in Slavic languages and literature, a certificate of language study from Leningrad State University, and a master’s degree from Georgetown University. In addition to writing for CNN.com, her articles on international issues have appeared in the “Washington Post,” “Huffington Post,” and “The Atlantic,” among other publications. Jill Dougherty is also a member of track-two diplomatic initiatives seeking to improve the U.S.-Russia relationship.

The Moth Storyslam: Ruse @ Greyline
Mar 19 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

 Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Envy” (Mar. 5) & “Ruse” (Mar 19)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.

 

Mar
20
Wed
Susan Pattie: The Armenian Legionnaires: Sacrifice and Betrayal in World War I @ 555 Weiser Hall
Mar 20 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Following the devastation resulting from the 1915 Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the survivors of the massacres were dispersed across the Middle East, Europe and North and South America. Not content with watching World War I silently from the sidelines, a large number of Armenian volunteers joined the Légion d’Orient. They were trained in Cyprus and fought courageously in Palestine alongside Allied commander General Allenby, eventually playing a crucial role in defeating the German and Ottoman forces in Palestine at the Battle of Arara in September 1918. The Armenian legionnaires signed up on the understanding that they would be fighting in Syria and Turkey, and, should the Allies be successful, they would be part of an occupying army in their old homelands, laying the foundation for a self-governing Armenian state.

Susan Pattie describes the motivations and dreams of the Armenian Legionnaires and their ultimate betrayal as the French and the British shifted their priorities, leaving their ancestral homelands to the emerging Republic of Turkey. Complete with eyewitness accounts, letters and photographs, this book provides an insight into relations between the Great Powers through the lens of a small, vulnerable people caught in a war that was not their own, but which had already destroyed their known world.

Copies of “The Armenian Legionnaires” will be available for purchase (cash only) at the event.

Susan Pattie, former Director of the Armenian Institute in London is currently leader of the Pilot Project of the Armenian Diaspora Survey, funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Mar
22
Fri
Screening: Beyond Fordlandia: An Environmental Account of Henry Ford’s Adventures in the Amazon @ Classroom 1405, East Quad
Mar 22 @ 4:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Film screening and discussion with writer, director & producer, Marcos Colón

 

Written, directed and produced by Marcos Colón, Beyond Fordlândia (2017, 75 min) presents an environmental account of Henry Ford’s Amazon experience decades after its failure. The story addressed by the film begins in 1927, when the Ford Motor Company attempted to establish rubber plantations on the Tapajós River, a primary tributary of the Amazon. This film addresses the recent transition from failed rubber to successful soybean cultivation for export, and its implication for land usage.

Winner of several awards, including:
>> “Best-Awareness Raising Documentary,” World Wildlife Fund, International Environmental Film Festival [FICMA-Barcelona], November 2017.
>> “Best Feature Documentary,” Cabo Verde International Film Festival, October 2017.
>>”Award of Excellence, Documentary Feature,” Impact DOCS Awards, July 2017.

MARCOS COLÓN is a dissertator in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and a Graduate Student Associate of the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE) of UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. His research focuses on the representation of the Amazon in 20th-Century Brazilian literature from an environmental studies perspective. In particular, he is examining a variety of viewpoints from the post-rubber era Amazon through written texts, oral reports, and films; observing changes in the region, its nature and its people.

“Beyond Fordlandia” will be shown at 4pm. Discussion with filmmaker Marcos Colón will follow.
Refreshments will be served.

Presented by RC faculty member, Jane Lynch, and the Residential College Program in Social Theory and Practice.

RC Players: 39 Steps @ East Quad Keene Theater
Mar 22 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

A farce by Patrick Barlow, presented by RC Players. 39 Steps is a parody of the classic Hitchcock spy thriller, where four actors play every role.

Also Saturday, March 23, at 8 pm.
Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.

Mar
23
Sat
RC Players: 39 Steps @ East Quad Keene Theater
Mar 23 @ 8:00 pm – 9:30 pm

A farce by Patrick Barlow, presented by RC Players. 39 Steps is a parody of the classic Hitchcock spy thriller, where four actors play every role. Keene Theater, East Quadrangle, 701 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Free.

Mar
24
Sun
Free Screening: Chernobyl Heart, and White Horse, plus conversation with filmmaker Maryann De Leo and RC Professor Herb Eagle @ East Quad Keene Theater
Mar 24 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Join us for a free public screening of Chernobyl Heart and White Horse, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Maryann De Leo and Residential College and Slavic Languages and Literatures professor Herb Eagle.

Maryann De Leo is an American director and producer. She has been working in documentary filmmaking for over twenty years. Her work addresses timely issues under the umbrella of social justice, such as gender-based violence (Rape: Cries from the Heartland, 1991 and Terror at Home, 2005), mental illness (Bellevue: Inside Out, 2001), and urban blight (High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell, 1995). De Leo has received numerous awards, including an Academy Award for Chernobyl Heart, 2003.

Chernobyl Heart (39 min.) is an Oscar-winning documentary about the effects of radiation on the children of Belarus, 16 years after the accident at the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. The film begins with the journey into the exclusion zone, driving to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and follows the invisible trail of radiation to the country’s hospitals, cancer centers, orphanages, and mental asylums, where the children live, or are being treated for their disease.

White Horse (17 min.) is a short documentary by filmmakers Maryann DeLeo and Christophe Bisson that features a man (Maxym Surkov) returning to his Ukraine home for the first time in twenty years. Evacuated from the city of Pripyat, Ukraine in 1986 due to the Chernobyl disaster, he has not returned since then. White Horse was nominated for a Golden Bear in the 2008 Berlinale.

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