News
The second annual 4th of July celebration at the Obama Institute picked up on Frederick Douglass’s famous oration, ”What to the American Slave Is the 4th of July?”
Obama Institute Speaker and board member Prof. Alfred Hornung made this connection in his introductory remarks. He welcomed Obama Fellow Prof. Celeste-Marie Bernier (University of Edinburgh) who held an engaging lecture titled “Suffering, Struggle, Survival: The Activism, Artistry, and Authorship of Frederick Douglass and Family (1818–2018).”
After lunch, the poster exhibit once again presented institute research to the public. Faculty members, graduate students, and students of the Obama Institute answered questions about their current research projects.
In the evening, Prof. Gerd Hurm (Trier University) held his timely lecture “On Documentary ‘Fakes’: Edward Steichen and Key Is- sues in 20th Century American Photographic Discourse.”
A joint summer fête of the department bookended this year’s 4th of July. Board members, students, and faculty continued discussions about the topics touched off by the day’s activities.
Events, Lectures, News
Prof. Celeste-Marie Bernier (University of Edinburgh)
July 4, 2018, 10 a.m.–12 p.m. (c.t.), Philosophicum I, P 5
While there have been many Frederick Douglasses – Douglass the abolitionist, Douglass the statesman, Douglass the autobiographer, Douglass the orator, Douglass the reformer, Douglass the essayist, and Douglass the politician – as we commemorate his two-hundredth anniversary, it is now time begin to trace the many lives of Douglass as a family man. In this talk I will trace the activism, artistry and authorship of Frederick Douglass not in isolation but alongside the sufferings and struggles for survival of his daughters and sons: Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Remond and Annie Douglass. As activists, educators, campaigners, civil rights protesters, newspaper editors, orators, essayists, and historians in their own right, his children each played a vital role in the freedom struggles of their father. They were no less afraid to sacrifice everything they had as they each fought for Black civic, cultural, political, and social liberties by every means necessary. No isolated endeavor undertaken by an exemplary icon, the fight for freedom was a family business to which all the Douglasses dedicated their lives as their rallying cry lives on to inspire today’s activism:
“Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!”
For more information see the poster.
Events, General, Lectures, News
Sally Chivers (Trent University)
June 26, 2018, 4-6 p.m., 00 025 SR 03 (BKM)
This talk comes from a larger research project that asks how gender and culture matter in creating age-friendly environments. Understanding that austerity thought warps age advice, making it anything but friendly, I will explore the WHO Age-Friendly framework as a form of 21st century advice literature. The research situates the focus on “active aging” within neoliberal processes and discourses of responsibilization. I will illustrate how humanities perspectives meaningfully challenge that model and o er promising paths to critical work on equity and diversity within the Age-Friendly movement.
Sally Chivers is Full Professor of English and Gender & Women’s Studies at Trent University, Canada, where she teaches about illness, disability, and aging in literature, film and popular culture. She is the author of The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema (2011) and From Old Woman to Older Women: Contemporary Culture and Women’s Narratives (2003), and the co-editor of Care Home Stories: Aging, Disability and Long-Term Residential Care (2017) and The Problem Body: Projecting Disability and Film (2010). Her ongoing research focuses on the gerontological humanities, care systems, and media studies of age, gender and disability based on the belief that there are new and better stories to tell about aging, disability and care.
You can download the poster for this talk here.
Events, Lectures, News
Prof. Alan Lessoff (Illinois State University)
June 21, 2018, 4–6 p.m. (c.t.), SB II, 01-531 (Colonel-Kleinmann-Weg 2)
Urban history has long had a strong transnational character, on account of the functions that cities historically have served as nexuses in networks of exchange, information, and human movement. This session considers how the new transnational history, by placing the city at the heart of contemporary globalization, has reinvigorated the transnational and comparative dimensions of U.S. urban history.
For more information see the poster.
Events, Lectures, News
Prof. Celeste-Marie Bernier (University of Edinburgh)
June 28, 2018, 4–6 p.m. (c.t.), SB II, 01-531 (Colonel-Kleinmann-Weg 2)
This talk will introduce audiences to the drawings, paintings, prints, sculpture, mixed-media installations and performance art created by Black British artists living and working across the Black Diaspora. Black artists betray a lifelong determination to come to grips with hidden histories, untold narratives, and missing memories by developing experimental art practices.
For more information see the poster.
Events, Lectures, News
Prof. Laura Stevens (U Tulsa)
June 25, 2018, 12 p.m.–2 p.m. (c.t.), Philosophicum I, P 5
This lecture will provide an introduction to the Mohawk People, who called themselves “Kanienkehaka,” or “People of the Flint.“ The Easternmost tribe of the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee confederacy, the Mohawks were powerful and pivotal figures in the complex and violent landscape of colonial America. After considering some of their history and customs, this lecture will focus on a visit of 3 Mohawk and 1 Mahican ambassadors to London in 1710. An important public event that shaped English attitudes to Native Americans for years to come, this visit also generated a variety of literature and encouraged English missionary efforts to the Mohawk Nation. We will conclude by considering the importance of Mohawk diplomacy, mobility, and adaptability to what Native author Gerald Vizenor has called “Native survivance“ in the twenty-first century.
