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.
Start your National Letter Writing Month off right with a letter and card writing party! We’ll have stationery, pens, envelopes, stamps, and stickers—you bring your address book! We’ll get you on track with ideas to keep the letter writing going all month long.
Featuring 3 RC alumni. This alumni panel will showcase and celebrate the university’s rich history of contributions made by International Studies alumni, while providing valuable insight for current students as they start to develop their own career paths. The panel will include a student Q&A portion; a networking reception with light appetizers will follow.
5-6:30 p.m., 555 Weiser Hall, 500 Church. Free.
When
Monday March 18, 2019: 7:00pm to 8:45pm
Where
Westgate Branch: West Side Room
Description
Come with questions, a work in progress, or an empty notebook. All writers are welcome in this casual, supportive environment. Authors Bethany Neal and Alex Kourvo will be on hand to answer questions and give encouragement. Bethany and Alex will also provide private, one-on-one critiques if you choose to have them read your work. Sharing your writing with other attendees is not required and is completely voluntary.
This is an excellent opportunity to meet your fellow Ann Arbor writers as well as get feedback from published authors. This is a monthly meet-up that welcomes all writers to ask questions, connect with other writers, or simply have a dedicated time and place to work on their projects. Do you have a completed manuscript? Consider submitting it to the library’s new imprint, Fifth Avenue Press.
During our 2018-19 Year of Humanities and Environments, we’ve organized faculty panels to explore contributions of humanistic inquiry around specific environmental subjects. Today: “Criminal Justice and the Built Environment” with: Claire Zimmerman (Architecture, History of Art), Heather Thompson (History, Residential College), and David Thatcher (Architecture, Public Policy).
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.
U-M Near Eastern Studies and history professor Ellen Muehlberger is joined by a U-M Sweetland Center for Writing faculty member to discuss writing.
7 p.m., Literati, 124 E. Washington. Free. 585-5567.
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.
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.
