2008-2009
Sandow Birk: "Capturing Dystopia"
Celebrated artist Sandow Birk will speaks on his work and influences in conjunction with Depravities of War, an exhibit showing at the American University Museum, September 2–October 26, 2008.
Raised on the beaches of California and currently living and working in Los Angeles, artist and filmmaker Sandow Birk is a graduate of the Otis/Parson’s Art Institute. A winner of the J. Paul Getty Fellowship for Visual Arts, a Fulbright Scholarship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Birk’s work has been exhibited internationally and has been featured in recent years at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, (SUNY/New Paltz, NY), the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Laguna Art Museum (Laguna Beach, CA). He has been featured in Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, the London Guardian, ArtNews, the Wall Street Journal, Details, Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and on National Public Radio.
Allan Lichtman, "Seven Days until Tomorrow"
October 28, 2008,
Presidential historian and American University Professor Allan Lichtman shares his insights and predictions as the 2008 presidential campaign comes to a close. He will also sign copies of his new book White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, as well as his recently updatedThe Keep to the White House: 2008 Edition.
Allan Lichtman is a Professor of History at American University. His most recent books are The Keys to the White House: 2008 Edition and White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement. He has provided commentary for all major U.S. broadcasting networks and cable companies, the Voice of America, and many foreign broadcast companies, including BBC and CBC. He has also served as an expert witness in more than 75 voting rights and redistricting cases. In 1993, Lichtman was named the American University Scholar-Teacher of the Year.
Dunya Mikhail & Bruce Weigl, "The Syntax of Wars"
March 18, 2009, 8:00 p.m.
Writers Dunya Mikhail and Bruce Weigl, both poets and essayists, read from their work and participate in an audience Q&A on rendering the experience of war through writing. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Literature's Visiting Writers Series.
Dunya Mikhail worked as literary editor for the Baghdad Observer until, facing increasing threats and harassment from the Iraqi authorities for her writings, she fled to the United States in the late 1990s. She is the author of four collections of poetry in Arabic and one in English, The War Works Hard. In 2001, she was awarded the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom in Writing.
Bruce Weigl enlisted in the U.S. Army as an 18-year-old in 1967 and received the Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam. He is the author of 13 collections of poems, including After the Others, Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems, The Unraveling Strangeness, and Declension in the Village of Chung Luong. He is also the author of a memoir, The Circle of Hahn.
2007-2008
Dr. Akasha Gloria Hull: Fiction and Black Feminism
October 3, 2007
Scholar, poet, and feminist activist Dr. Akasha Gloria Hull is the author of Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African-American Women, Healing Heart, Poems 1973-1988, Kitchen Table, and Color, Sex and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Of Soul Talk, Noble Prize winner Toni Morrison says, “Soul Talk is a worthy tribute to Toni Cade Bambara and to the lives and work of African-American women writers.”
She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, National Institute of Women, the Ford Foundation, and the American Association of University Women.
Combining her interests in women’s studies and literature, Akasha Hull’s research has been credited for bringing overdue attention to African-American women writers of the early twentieth century. Her works as an editor include All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies (with Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith), Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson.
Dr. Hull is Professor Emerita of women’s studies and literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she served as chair of the women’s studies department from 1989-1991.
Poetry Reading by Edward Hirsch
March 19, 2008
Edward Hirsch is the author of seven books of poetry—including For the Sleepwalkers, Wild Gratitude, The Night Parade, Knopf, Earthly Measures, Lay Back the Darkness, and the forthcoming Special Orders—as well the acclaimed How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, among other non-fiction texts.
Hirsch has written articles, columns, and reviews on literature and poetry for The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Nation, New Republic, New York Times Book Review, and Paris Review.
Edward Hirsch’s awards include the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lavan Younger Poets Award from The Academy of American Poets, and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award. Since 2000, he has served as the President for the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
2006-2007: Making History/Shaping History
Lonnie Bunch,"The Power of Remembering: The Continuing Importance of Black History Month"
American University alumnus Lonnie Bunch (CAS/BA ‘74, CAS/MA ‘76) is the founding director of the newly chartered National Museum of African American History and Culture to be opened on the national mall. Touted as “a distinguished historian and a skilled leader,” Mr. Bunch has previously served as the president of the Chicago Historical Society, the National Museum of American History’s associate director for curatorial affairs, the curator of history and program manager for the California Afro-American Museum in Los Angeles, and an education specialist at the National Air and Space Museum.
Mr. Bunch’s The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden was published in 2000 by the Smithsonian Institution Press. In 2002, he was named by President George W. Bush to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House. Mr. Bunch was also named American University’s 2005 Alumni Achievement Award winner.
Natasha Trethewey: "A Remnant South: A Reading and Discussion"
Born in Gulfport, Mississippi, Natasha Trethewey is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University and was the 2005-2006 Lehman Brady Joint Chair Professor of Documentary and American Studies at Duke University and the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). Her books of poetry include Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), Bellocq's Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000), selected by former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize.
Native Guard examines the lives of the Louisiana Native Guard — the first official regiment of black soldiers in the Union Army during the Civil War. Of the book, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington writes in the Washington Post, “The title poem is a 10-sonnet sequence in which the last line of each sonnet becomes a variant of the subsequent sonnet's opening line, creating a lovely, wreathlike effect. The graceful form conceals a gritty subject, … a first-person narrative of an unnamed ex-slave who has joined the Union army to serve in an all-black regiment. The lines have a stately, chiming perfection. The circular form mirrors the bizarre circularity of circumstance that finds the narrator — once a slave — now guarding Confederates who have been captured and imprisoned inside the Union fort at Ship Island, Miss.”
Her poem “Storyville Diary,” from Bellocq’s Ophelia, won the prestigious Grolier Prize from the Grolier Bookstore in Cambridge, MA, and the Margaret Walker Award for Poetry from Poets & Writers Magazine and QBR: The Black Book Review. Her other honors include the Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.
She was a member of the storied writers’ group the Dark Room Collective.
Spring 2006: American Identity
Charles Holt: A performance of Black Boy
Charles Holt has most recently portrayed Hyena in Disney's Broadway production of The Lion King and has also appeared on Broadway in Smokey Joe's Cafe. As well as being a seasoned actor, Holt is a singer and motivational speaker. His performance of Black Boy has toured throughout the United States. Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, Mr. Holt is a graduate of Rhodes College in Memphis. His television and film credits include Law and Order, Anne B. Real, Generation X, All My Children, and Autumn in New York.
Initially perceived as simply a critique of racial injustice, Richard Wright's fictionalized autobiography Black Boy, a classic in the tradition of Black writers bearing witness to oppression, details his own struggles with poverty and identity in Jim Crow America. As James Baldwin said of the novel, "Wright's unrelenting, bleak landscape was not merely that of the Deep South, or of Chicago, but that of the world, of the human heart."
Lillian Jiménez, Film Screening and Discussion:
"Antonia Pantoja: Forging a Path for Puerto Rican Civil Rights in the U.S."
For nearly thirty years, Lillian Jiménez has worked as a media arts center manager, independent producer, media activist, exhibitor, funder and educator. She founded and for a decade directed Seeing Through AIDS, a pioneering media literacy project training thousands of health care providers to incorporate media into their AIDS counseling, prevention, and support work. She has conducted media literacy workshops on Latino stereotypes, self-representation, color/race, and the construction of whiteness. Jiménez is the founding chair of the National Association of Independent Latino Producers (NALIP), a membership organization for Latino producers, and serves on the board of The Funding Exchange and The North Star Fund.
She is currently the Executive Director of the Latino Educational Media Center and serves as Producer/Director for Abriendo Camino:Antonia Pantoja, an hour-long documentary on visionary leader Dr. Antonia Pantoja, who fought for language and education rights, advocated for cultural pluralism, and in 1996 was the first Puerto Rican woman to receive the Medal of Freedom. She also produced a number of short documentaries, including What Could You Do With A Nickel?, which won a local Emmy for editing. In collaboration with the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, she is working on a series of oral histories that chronicles the Puerto Rican community's institution-building phase (1940-1960) in New York.
Dr. Peter Selz: "Art of Engagement"
Art historian Peter Selz’s most recent book, Art of Engagement, takes a comprehensive look at the key role of California's art and artists in politics and culture since 1945. A Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and former curator at MoMA, Selz is the Founding Director of the University of California's Berkeley Art Museum. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, and has also been awarded the Order of Merit (First Class) from the Federal Republic of Germany. Dr. Selz is author of thirty-eight books and hundreds of published articles. His best-known works include Nathan Olivera, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, The Rosenbergs, and Beyond the Mainstream.
Fall 2005: Woman as Object, Subject, and Creator
Dr. Lisa Farrington: "Black Feminist Artists"
Dr. Farrington's most recent book, Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists (Oxford), is the first comprehensive history of African-American women artists from slavery to the present day. It has been called a "magnificent achievement" by the SF Chronicle and "the book that teachers and students have been waiting for" by American University's Norma Broude. Dr. Farrington's previous work includes Faith Ringgold and Art on Fire: The Politics of Race and Sex in the Paintings of Faith Ringgold.
Dr. Farrington received an Honors Degree from New York's School of Art & Design, a BFA magna cum laude from Howard University, an MA from American University, and an M Phil and PhD from The Graduate Center in New York. She has worked at Parsons School of Design/The New School since 1993, where she currently serves as senior art historian. Dr. Farrington is a Mellon, Magnet, and Ford Foundation Fellow, and a consultant for the College Board's AP Art History Program. She is widely published on issues of race and gender in the visual arts.
Ann Beattie: "Tribute to Dr. Frank Turaj"
Ann Beattie is the Edgar Allan Poe Chair of the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Her most recent works are the short story collection Follies and the forthoming Lincoln Perry's Charlottesville, a collaboration with her husband, the painter Lincoln Perry.
Ms. Beattie is the author of seven novels, including Chilly Scenes of Winter, Another You, and Picturing Will, and seven previous short story collections, among them Secrets and Surprises, What Was Mine, Park City: New & Selected Stories, and Perfect Recall. Ms. Beattie was raised in suburban DC and received her BA from American University. Her many honors include the Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the PEN/Malamud award for Excellence in Short Fiction.
Dr. Peter Dans: "Hollywood & Women Doctors"
Dr. Peter Dans is the author or co-author of more than 100 scientific articles, books, and other contributions to medical and popular literature. His lecture will tour Hollywood's portrayals of women doctors, using film clips beginning with 1933's Mary Stevens M.D. through 2002's Blood Work.
Since 1990, Dr. Dans has written movie reviews as "The Physician at the Movies" for Pharos, the publication of the Alpha Omega Alpha honor medical society. His book Doctors in the Movies: Boil the Water and Just Say Aah! treats the portrayal of doctors in movies from the 1930s through the 1990s. His most recent work is a children's book, Perry's Baltimore Adventure: A Bird's-Eye View of Charm City. Dr. Dans is a physician specializing in infectious diseases, geriatrics, quality assurance, and ethics.
2004
Allan J. Lichtman, AU Dept of History
"Keys to the White House"
Dr. Lightman's books include, among others, Prejudice and Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928; Your Family History; Ecological Inference; and The Keys to the White House. He is the editor of the Lexington Books series, Studies in Modern American History. He received the 1992-1993 Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award, the University's highest faculty honor, and has provided political commentary to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, BBC, as well as other international networks. He is a columnist for the Montgomery Gazette and has served as an expert witness in more than 60 voting rights and redistricting cases.
Paul R. Ehrlich, President, Center for Conservation Biology, and Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford
"One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future"
Professor Ehrlich's research group covers several areas. It continues to study the dynamics and genetics of natural populations of checkerspot butterflies (Euphydryas). This research has applications to such problems as the control of insect pests and optimum designs for nature reserves. A central focus of his group is investigating ways that human-disturbed landscapes can be made more hospitable to biodiversity. This work in "countryside biogeography" is under the direction of Dr. Gretchen Daily, founder of the field. The Ehrlich group's policy research on the population-resource-environment crisis takes a broad overview of the world situation, but also works intensively in such areas of immediate legislative interests as endangered species and the preservation of genetic resources. A special interest of Ehrlich's is cultural evolution, especially with respect to environmental ethics. more...
Richard D. Breitman, AU Dept of History
"U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis"
Dr. Breitman is author of five books, including German Socialism and Weimar Democracy; Breaking the Silence; American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933-1945 (with Alan Kraut); The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and The Final Solution; and Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew. He works with the U.S. Holocaust Museum as editor-in-chief of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is an expert witness on cases involving Nazi war crimes.
