Past Events

bell hooks and the Power of Teaching: A Reflective Panel Discussion

A panel of WashU faculty, administrators, and staff will reflect on the life and legacy of bell hooks, with a particular focus on insights and lessons gleaned from Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom and Teaching Community: a Pedagogy of Hope.

Panelists

• Adrienne Davis, J.D. William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law; Founder & Co-director of the Law & Culture Initiative; Professor of Organizational Behavior and Leadership, Olin Business School
• Anna Gonzalez, PhD, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
• Meg Gregory, PhD, Associate Director for Faculty Programs and Services, Center for Teaching and Learning
• Eliza Williamson, PhD, Lecturer in Latin American Studies and Romance Language & Literatures
• Rafia Zafar, PhD, Professor of English, African and African-American Studies, and American Culture Studies

This event is open to members of the WashU community.

The Future of Black Comics Inside and Outside of the Academy

This reprise of the very first panel discussion at the Black Comic Book Festival in 2011 will explore the ever-expanding field of Black comics scholarship that charts the cultural and historical significance of Black representation in comic books, sequential art, graphic novels, and animation. Featured guests include Rebecca Wanzo (author of The Content of Our Caricature), Qiana Whitted (author of EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest), and JoAnna Davis-McElligatt (author of the forthcoming BOOM! Splat: Comics and Violence). 10th Annual Black Comic Book Festival, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

35th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration

Featuring keynote address by John Baugh (Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Psychology, Anthropology, Education, English, Linguistics, and African and African-American Studies) “Equality Matters: St. Louisan Contributions in the Quest for Racial Harmony”; and performances by Black Anthology, a WUSTL student-run performance arts show celebrating Black culture; and the Washington University Concert Choir featuring Joseph Mosby, Washington University undergraduate student.

Cultivating Empathy and Change: Recognizing the Life and Legacy of Henrietta Lacks, Film and Discussion

Born in rural Roanoke, Virginia, on August 1, 1920, Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman, wife and mother of five. She also became the “Mother of Modern Medicine,” changing the world with her immortal HeLa cells. Henrietta’s HeLa cells, taken without her or her family’s knowledge or consent, would become responsible for some of the greatest scientific advancements of the last century and continue to benefit all of humanity. We will view part of the 1997 documentary film The Way of All Flesh, with reflecting remarks by Darrell Hudson, associate professor at the Brown School. An opportunity for discussion with the audience will also be facilitated.

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland

Jonathan Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, where he is also Director of the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. He will discuss his book Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland, followed by conversation with David H. Perlmutter, dean of the Washington University School of Medicine. 

Can I Be An Entrepreneur?

Join our panelists as they inspire and encourage attendees to turn their passions into successful ideas. At this workshop, students will get the opportunity to hear how our panelists moved their passions forward into entrepreneurial ideas, and how their knowledge and skills can contribute to society while doing what they love.

Race and Human Trafficking: How Racial Inequality Impacts Human Trafficking

A 400+ year history of institutional racism in America has created economic and social inequities that heighten the likelihood that African Americans could become victims of human trafficking. This discussion will provide information about the vulnerabilities to trafficking members of black and brown communities and other minority groups might face in our society.

Mythologizing the West: A Conversation about American Identity, National Heroes, and Their Representations

Amid the worldwide racial justice protests of 2020, demands for institutional change and accountability came swiftly and grew loud. One critique that arose from those demands concerned the ways in which American history is (mis)represented in museums. Nineteenth-century American history is complex, contentious and often contested. The period of American Westward expansion captured the imagination of American genre and landscape painters, including Missouri-based artists George Caleb Bingham and Charles Ferdinand Wimar. These artists mythologized white settler colonialism and contributed to the formation of an American national identity through the landscape. But the “progress” of Westward expansion and the white supremacist ideology which justified it came at a tremendous cost to the Indigenous people as stewards of the land and to their cultures. This talk will investigate how constructions of American identity and national memory are presented within the gallery space. The talk will also explore how 19th-century American landscape paintings inform or contribute to the current conversation about representation and diversity within art museums, as well as the current movement to reexamine America’s history and national heroes.

Transnational Knowledge: A symposium on the production and circulation of scholarship in translation

Featuring “A Critique of Provincial Reason: Located Cosmopolitanisms and the Infrastructures of Theoretical Translation,” at 10:15 am with Ignacio Sánchez Prado (Romance Languages & Literatures, Latin American Studies, Film & Media Studies, Washington University) and “Translation and the Archive” at 2 pm with Ignacio Infante (Comparative Literature and Romance Languages & Literatures). How does knowledge change as it moves from one academic language culture to another? How “placed” are our intellectual concepts? In what ways does the dominance of English-language scholarship shape the production of knowledge around the world? Who is qualified to undertake a scholarly translation? This two-day, online symposium will address these and many other questions related to the location of scholarship in translation. School of Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas.

Is Professionalism a Racist Construct?

The term “professionalism” has at times been used to silence and marginalize people of color, when attributes of appearance, language or interactions that have nothing to do with job knowledge or constructive collegial relationships are labeled as “unprofessional”. In this context, so-called professionalism is coded language, a construct that upholds institutional racist policies and excluding practices.

This presentation will explore dismantling white supremacy and privilege in varied contexts while upholding social justice and advancing effective workplaces in which all contributors can bring their full selves to the job site.

This presentation is part of the Brown School's recognition of Black History Month.

Kling Fellowship Information Session

Calling all sophomores interested in pursuing a humanities research project! You might be a great fit for our Kling Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Drop into our information session and chat with current Kling Fellows and teaching faculty to learn more about this prestigious opportunity. Applications are due Friday, March 11.

If you are interested in attending, please click the button below to register.

John Darnielle (Devil House) in conversation with author and musician G’Ra Asim

Mountain Goats’ singer-songwriter John Darnielle will be in conversation with author and musician G’Ra Asim, assistant professor of English, Washington University.

Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success and a movie adaptation to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell — his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected — back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.

Darnielle’s first novel, Wolf in White Van, was a New York Times best-seller, National Book Award nominee and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction, and widely hailed as one of the best novels of the year. Left Bank Books. 

Dropping the Head-pan for Better Educational Opportunities: The Case of Girls in Northern Ghana at Risk of Dropping out of School for Child Labor

This presentation shares the findings of an exploratory qualitative study that examined the push and pull factors behind the prevalence of girls migrating from the Northern Regions of Ghana to the southern cities, to carry loads using head-pan as porters (Kayayei) at the markets for economic survival.

The program will share preliminary findings of the ANZANSI study/project, which focuses creating educational and economic opportunities to empower the girls and their families economically, to prevent them from dropping out of school and migrating to southern Ghana for jobs as head-porters.

This program is presented in partnership with the International Center for Child Health and Development.

Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist Lecture: Lisa Lapinski

Lisa Lapinski earned a BA from University of California, San Diego (1990) and an MFA from the Art Center College of Design (2000). Lapinski lives and works in Houston, Texas, and is currently an associate professor of art at Rice University, where she teaches undergraduate sculpture. Miss Swiss: Lisa Lapinski, a co-publication between the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin and Inventory Press, Los Angeles, her most comprehensive monograph to date, will be released this year. Published on the occasion of Drunk Hawking, her 2019 survey exhibition at the VAC in Austin, the book will include never before published images of Lapinski’s exhibitions and artworks from 2000 to the present, alongside contributions by Bruce Hainley, Graham Bader, Kyle Dancewicz, Sabrina Tarasoff and MacKenzie Stevens, as well as a conversation between the artist and Viola Schmidtt. Designed by artists Laura Owens and Asha Schechter of Apogee Press, the book will be an inventive collaboration between Owens, Schechter and Lapinski and provide new insights into Lapinski’s influential and idiosyncratic practice.

Gallery Talk: (Un)masking Health

Join faculty curator Ivan Bujan, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University, as he discusses notions of health in relation to exclusionary ideologies of race, gender, sexuality, ability and class. In addition to scrutinizing notions of what a healthy body is — and according to whom — his Teaching Gallery installation, (Un)masking Health: Counter Perspectives, also invites us to reconsider the role that historical and contemporary grassroots movements, including the ongoing AIDS movement and the Movement for Black Lives, have had in connecting issues of health and social justice.

Ivan Bujan is a performance studies scholar working at the intersections of critical gender, race and sexuality studies; queer and trans of color critique; and contemporary visual cultures and performance; and he is deeply invested in creating publicly engaged scholarship on social justice and disparities in health. Bujan’s in-progress book manuscript highlights strategies queer of color artists have utilized to circumvent white supremacy, cis-masculinity, ableism and systemic racism in the cultural history of the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis. The project centers a seldom studied domain of work related to AIDS, utilizing anti-HIV drug regimens and prevention methods as key visual motifs and responding to the contested pharmaceutical politics of the late 1980s onward. Bujan’s research appears in Viral Dramaturgies: HIV and AIDS in Performance in the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), (Un)Desiring Whiteness: (Un)Doing Sexual Racism (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), Masculinities: A Journal of Identity and Culture and Theatre Journal.

Mindful Movement for Healthy Living

To be perfectly still or frozen in time is a notable phenomenon. Motion, or change of position, is a more familiar state. This February we explore ways that motion is also truly remarkable, having an impact on our physical and social worlds, and, on a smaller scale, our personal and work lives. MLA Lecture Series 2022.

Art, Museums and the Fear of a Black Planet

Ten years after the publication of her book Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum, scholar and curator Bridget R. Cooks discusses art, museums and demands for change in the age of Black Lives Matter. She considers the anxieties that Blackness provokes for rethinking art history and museum practices, and explores how artists are already imagining worlds of Black freedom.

Bridget R. Cooks is associate professor in the Department of Art History and the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on African American artists, Black visual culture and museum criticism. Cooks has worked in museum education and has curated several exhibitions, including Grafton Tyler Brown: Exploring California (2018), Pasadena Museum of California Art; Ernie Barnes: A Retrospective at the California African American Museum (2019), CAAM); and the nationally touring exhibition The Black Index.

Lois D. Conley, founder, president and CEO of the Griot Museum of Black History, will serve as moderator.

Israel Institute Visiting Artist Lecture: Maya Muchawsky Parnas

Maya Muchawsky Parnas (b. 1972) is an Israeli visual artist working predominantly with ceramics. She gained her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and her MA in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art in London, UK. Maya lives and works in Jerusalem, the city where she grew up. She is a senior lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and her works have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Israel, Europe and in the United States.

Black Girlhood Studies in Conversation with Dr. Nazera Sadiq Wright

In this conversation, Nazera Sadiq Wright will discuss her book Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century and recent digital humanities project, “DIGITAL GI(RL)S: Mapping Black Girlhood in the 19th Century.” Wright is associate professor of English and African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Black Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century (University of Illinois Press, 2016), which won the 2018 Children’s Literature Association’s Honor Book Award for Outstanding Book of Literary Criticism. Her digital humanities project, “DIGITAL GI(RL)S: Mapping Black Girlhood in the 19th Century” documents the cultural activities of black girls living in Philadelphia in the 19th century. In 2019, she was elected to the American Antiquarian Society. Fellowships through the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Bibliographical Society of America funded archival research for her second book, Early African American Women Writers and Their Libraries. Funded by the Center for Race, Ethnicity & Equity and co-sponsored with African and African American Studies; Institute for Public Health; American Culture Studies; and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

RE: Ebony and Jet

As a complement to Lorna Simpson’s use of Ebony and Jet magazines in her CAM exhibition Lorna Simpson: Heads, this RE: takes interest in the role of these preeminent publications in Black visual culture and media. Moderated by art historian and curator Bridget Cooks (University of California, Irvine), this program will take the format of a public seminar and community celebration. Cooks will provide context and facilitation, which will invite contributions from both invited guests and the general public in response to the question: What do Ebony and Jet mean to you? Participation with a range of voices are welcome, including scholars, artists, historians, journalists and readers of Ebony and Jet. A reception and art-making station will be available following the event. Presented by Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity at Washington University.

Black Anthology 2022: Asifuye Mvua Imemnyeshea

Black Anthology is dedicated to telling stories from across the Black diaspora. In keeping with that tradition, this year’s production explores issues of the diasporic divide, as well as navigating life within systems of oppression. Black Anthology is a student-written, choreographed, directed and designed production with the goal of leaving the audience wrestling with questions of their own. This year, we ask: How am I shaped by the systems (and people) around me? How does one contend with/make sense of tradition in a changing society? 

Tickets are $10. You must be fully vaccinated to attend and the theatre will be sold at reduced capacity. There will be a free live-streamed version on Saturday, February 19 in the evening. For more information on that experience, please sign up here.

Locating Black Racial Science

For much of the 20th century, African-American physicians, scientists and activists embraced aspects of eugenics and racial science to make arguments for racial equality. They mobilized what I call black eugenics, which I define as a hereditarian approach to racial uplift that emphasized social reform, public health and reproductive control as strategies of biological racial improvement. I argue that this engagement and embrace of eugenics was also undergirded by a long history of racial science that relied upon a commitment to beliefs in biological racial differences. African Americans invested in eugenics and racial science sought to disentangle ideas of biological race from racism by using the tools and practices of racial science. They hoped that with rigorous scientific study, they could understand the true nature of biological race and its relationship to their quest for equality. Understanding the true nature of biological race would also contribute to how they imagined the utility of eugenic interventions for improving the biological composition of the race.

History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine (HPSM) Lecture

The Magic in His Hands: Charles Johnson’s Artistic Versatility

Charles Johnson is a wildly prolific and widely acclaimed novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter, cartoonist and more. The Magic in His Hands exhibition presents selections from Johnson’s recently acquired papers that demonstrate his many facets and show how Johnson often transcends their presupposed boundaries.

This exhibition is a companion to the Center for Humanities’ March 3, 2022, Faculty Book Celebration featuring Johnson.

For more information on Charles Johnson and The Magic in His Hands exhibition, please see the Center for Humanities’ article “The magic in his hands: Charles Johnson’s artistic versatility.”

This exhibition was organized by Curator of the Modern Literature Collection Joel Minor for Washington University Libraries.

Policymaking through a Racial Equity Lens

Structural racism in laws and legislation have created gross inequities throughout every system of our society, ultimately encumbering our nation’s potential for greatness. Addressing these disparities requires that we analyze how current policies perpetuate racialized outcomes, and redesign policies to advance equity. Only then can we unlock the power and the promise of policy making as a tool of justice.

This Brown School Curriculum Showcase event is part of our recognition of Black History Month.

Virtual Book Club: Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts

A handsome stranger. A dead billionaire. A citywide treasure hunt. Tuesday Mooney’s life is about to change … forevermore. Tuesday Mooney is a loner, but when Vincent Pryce, Boston’s most eccentric billionaire, dies — leaving behind an epic treasure hunt through the city, with clues inspired by his hero, Edgar Allan Poe — Tuesday’s adventure finally begins.

Book club will begin with a show and tell of Edgar Allan Poe materials followed by a discussion of the book.

Dissecting the Past: Doctors, Donors and Assembling a Collection

MFA Lecture Series: Robyn O'Neil

Robyn O’Neil lives and works in Washington State. Her work was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She has had several traveling solo museum exhibitions in the United States, and is the recipient of numerous grants and awards. Her work is included in noted museums throughout the world. O’Neil has been included in numerous acclaimed group museum exhibitions both domestically and internationally, including the highly anticipated exhibition Dargerism at The American Folk Art Museum, featuring Henry Darger’s influence on contemporary art. She received a grant from the Irish Film Board with director Eoghan Kidney for a film written and art directed by her titled We, The Masses, which was conceived of at Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School. She also hosts the weekly podcast “Me Reading Stuff.”

Ideas, Art and Community: My Zine Collection

The Collect O’Rama table is a space for individuals to share unique personal collections. Director of Development at the ACLU of Missouri Nicole Rainey has been collecting zines since the 1990s and shares a portion of them here in the Collect O’Rama table.

Rainey discovered zines in the mid-1990s by reading about riot grrrl punk in her dad’s Rolling Stone magazines. Zines reached a more prominent place in Rainey’s life as she discovered a community of activists protesting the war in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

To read more information on Nicole Rainey’s zine collection in her own words, visit the Collect O’Rama table located on Level 2 of Olin Library in Risa’s Landing.

Social Movements and Social Change

To be perfectly still or frozen in time is a notable phenomenon. Motion, or change of position, is a more familiar state. This February we explore ways that motion is also truly remarkable, having an impact on our physical and social worlds, and, on a smaller scale, our personal and work lives. MLA Lecture Series 2022.

Raising Queens: The Important Role of Racial Socialization in the Lives of Black Girls

Impacts of the Myanmar Coup: Human Rights Violations and Effects on Mental Health

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been in the news since the February 2021 military coup, due to the human rights violations of the junta in power. The situation is so severe that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called it a “reign of terror.”

Join this conversation with Brown School MSW alums to learn more about the situation on the ground in Myanmar and to consider the mental health impacts on the population of 54 million as a result of the violence.

Spotlight on Women in Medicine and Science

The School of Medicine Office of Faculty Affairs and the Office of Faculty Development of Pediatrics along with other department’s offices of faculty development is hosting the Spotlight on Women in Medicine and Science annual symposium on March 3.

2021 marked the 100th anniversary of the first woman to graduate from WUSM, Faye Cashatt - Class of 1921. We have traditionally held it in the fall during the Women in Medicine month, but that wasn’t possible therefore we have targeted March instead during Women’s History Month.  Due to the pandemic, this will be a virtual event.

Our keynote speaker is Reshma Jagsi. Jagsi is Newman Family Professor and Deputy Chair in the Department of Radiation Oncology and Director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan. She has been funded by the NIH, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the AMA to study issues of bioethics and gender equity in academic medicine.  She leads the national program evaluation for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Fund to Retain Clinician Scientists and has evaluated the outcomes of the ten universities including WashU. In addition, WUSM's Barbara Warner will speak on her work on the effects of the neonatal microbiome on infant health, and Dineo Khabele, Chairperson of OBGYN, will speak on her research on ovarian cancer.

SWIMS will conclude with a panel to discuss the career journeys of our speakers and several women leaders from WUSM.

Film Screening + Artist Talk: Dario Robleto

Dario Robleto is an artist, researcher, writer, “citizen-scientist” and teacher. His research-driven practice results in intricately handcrafted objects that reflect his exploration of music, popular culture, science, war, and American history. Robleto uses unexpected materials such as melted vinyl records, dinosaur bones, meteorites, glass produced by atomic explosions and lost heartbeat recordings from the 19th century, and he transforms these artifacts from the vast inventory of humanity’s collective past into delicately layered objects that are sincere and personal meditations on love, death, eroding memory, and healing.

His work has been exhibited widely and is held in prominent collections including the Harvard Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Robleto has been a lecturer at many universities and institutions including Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; and the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD. In 2013-14 he served as the California College of the Arts Viola Frey Distinguished Visiting Professor, Oakland, CA. His work has been profiled in numerous publications and media including Radiolab, Krista Tippet’s On Being and The New York Times. He has been a visiting scholar and artist-in-residence at institutions such as the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the SETI Institute, the Robert Rauschenberg Residency and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. He served as the fall 2016 Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist in the Sam Fox School.

Artist Talk Chitra Ganesh

Artist Chitra Ganesh discusses her multidisciplinary practice of experimental storytelling, intertwining the past, future and our turbulent present to create speculative worlds that are tethered to culture and history yet unbound by the limitations of contemporary reality.

A Queer Perspective on Successful Aging

This presentation will introduce the experiences of transgender and gender-expansive older adults in the context of successful aging, a paradigmatic concept in the field of gerontology. More specifically, the presentation will highlight the experience of pursuing a gender transition in later life and what this means for new ways of thinking about aging “successfully” in a diverse and inequitable society.

International Writers Series: Anca Roncea

In this virtual reading and discussion, Anca Roncea, translator and comparative literature doctorate student in the track for international writers, will discuss her translation of Tribar from the Romanian by Andra Rotaru (Saturnalia Books, 2022). Roncea will be joined in discussion by Mary Jo Bang, poet, translator and professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. 

Anca Roncea grew up in Romania, speaks Modern Greek, French, and writes in English. Through her work, Anca explores the space where language can create pivots in the midst of displacement, while incorporating the aesthetics of Constantin Brancusi and the female artists of the Dada Movement. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which is the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation MFA program. Anca’s poetry has been published in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Beecher’s Magazine, Omniverse, the Bare Life Review, and Lana Turner. She is currently working on her first book of poetry, which is an experimental translation of Tristan Tzara’s Vingt-Cinq Poèmes focusing on the period of WWI Zurich Dada and the female artists of the Dada Movement.

Lecture: Brian Floca

Children’s book author and illustrator Brian Floca will deliver a public lecture, presented by the MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture program.

Floca is the author and illustrator of the children’s books Locomotive (winner of the 2014 Caldecott Medal), Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (recently revised and expanded), Lightship, and The Racecar Alphabet, among others. His latest book, Keeping the City Going, a tribute to healthcare and other essential workers who stayed on the streets and on the job during the Covid-19 pandemic, was recently published.

Public Tour: Twentieth-Century Abstraction

Student educators lead interactive tours in the permanent collection, exploring 20th-century abstraction in a range of mediums. Join Jay Buchanan (MA/PhD student, Art History and Archaeology) on this hour-long tour.

Ageism: What It Is, How It Hurts and How To Combat It

Nancy Morrow-Howell’s research, advocacy and educational efforts have centered around changing work environments and employment policies to enable people to work longer; restructuring educational institutions so that individuals can educate themselves across the life course; enabling older adults to engage in volunteer and service work; and supporting caregiving to facilitate involvement and reduce negative effects.

Slavery and Discrimination in Education, Voting Rights, and Economic Power

This year, 2022, marks the 100th anniversary of the Mound City Bar Association. In celebration of the anniversary, the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy recently published, “Celebrating the Mound City Bar Centennial; Looking back, Leading Forward,” which includes articles from prominent judges, lawyers, and professors on issues related to the Mound City Bar Association: https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawpolicy/. This is the second of two programs featuring the authors. Cosponsored by the Washington University Public Interest Law & Policy Speaker Series, the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, the Mound City Bar Association, and U.S. Arbitration & Mediation.

Speakers:

Professor David Konig, Washington University School of Law
Hon. David Mason, Judge, 22nd Circuit Court
Professor Kim Norwood, Washington University School of Law
Ronald Norwood, Lewis Rice, LLC
Denise Lieberman, Missouri Voter Protection Coalition
Sandra Moore, Advantage Capital
Dorothy White-Coleman, White Coleman & Associates, LLC
Hon. Lisa White Hardwick, Judge, Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District

Bound for Beauty

Before publishers started mass producing books with standardized bindings, owners took their books to be bound individually according to their tastes and budget.

Intricately cut colors of leather, gold tooling, silver, ivory, and even gemstones would adorn the covers of these highly prized books. The Bound for Beauty exhibition explores the most beautiful books in the University Libraries’ collections—both miniature and average size—and the decorative techniques used to produce such beauty.

This exhibition was organized by the Curator of Rare Books, Cassie Brand, for the Washington University Libraries.

Bound for Beauty is generously sponsored by Donald A. and Laura E. Shindler.

Chinese-Language Tour: Chitra Ganesh

Join student educator Yue Dai, doctoral student in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences, for an online tour of Chitra Ganesh: Dreaming in Multiverse. This exhibition presents a series of the artist’s recent prints and several video animations that draw on Buddhist and Hindu iconography, science fiction, queer theory, comics, Surrealism, Bollywood posters and video games, combining them with her own visual imagery and drawings to present speculative visions of society in the past, present and future.

Virtual Book Club: Dr. Mutter’s Marvels

Imagine undergoing an operation without anesthesia, performed by a surgeon who refuses to sterilize his tools — or even wash his hands. This was the world of medicine when Thomas Dent Mütter began his trailblazing career as a plastic surgeon in Philadelphia during the mid 19th century.

A display of books related to the history of anatomy, pathology and obstetrics from the Bernard Becker Medical Library’s rare book collections will precede the discussion.

Israel Institute Visiting Artist Lecture: Maya Muchawsky Parnas

Maya Muchawsky Parnas, the Israel Institute Visiting Artist and the spring 2022 Wallace Herndon Smith Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in the Sam Fox School, will deliver a public lecture.

Maya Muchawsky Parnas (b. 1972) is an Israeli visual artist working predominantly with ceramics. She gained her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and her MA in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art in London, UK. Maya lives and works in Jerusalem, the city where she grew up. She is a senior lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and her works have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Israel, Europe and in the United States.

Artist Talk: Nicole Miller

Nicole Miller discusses her new site-specific installation, A Sound, a Signal, the Circus, contextualizing it within her recent body of work. She will explore notions of embodiment and creative articulation and also talk about her collaborations with youth of color.

Slow Looking: ‘…in the waiting, in the weighting…’

Join student educator Jay Buchanan, doctoral student in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences, for a half hour of slow looking and conversation focused on the new mixed-media installation ...in the waiting...in the weighting... (2021) by Ebony G. Patterson (MFA-VA ’06).

Slow Looking is an ongoing series of 30-minute conversations about a single work of art.

Advocacy & Allyship: Supporting Transgender Youth

Adolescence is a tender time full of profound self-discovery. Coming into your own is complicated enough and many transgender youths face extra challenges posed by the attitudes/ideologies of peers and adults, the practices and policies of the institutions in which they engage, and political efforts to strip away rights with abhorrent anti-trans legislation.

On Transgender Day of Visibility, join us for a conversation about the needs and experiences of transgender youth. Information will be shared and ideas will be suggested for how each of us can take steps to create a more caring and inclusive society.

Speakers

Lisa Brennan (she/her)
Co-leader, TransParent St Louis
Author of The Auditorium in my Mind/Treasuring My Transgender Child

Jess Jones (they/them)
Owner, Jess Jones Education & Consulting

Sayer Johnson (he/him)
Executive Director, Metro Trans Umbrella Group

Christopher Lewis (he/him)
Co-Director of Pediatric Transgender Health
Director of Differences of Sex Development Clinic
Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine

Moderated by:
Kelly Storck (she/her)
Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Author of Gender Identity Workbook for Kids

Joint Book Launch: ‘The New Sex Wars’ and ‘Porn Work’ with Brenda Cossman and Heather Berg

Join us for a joint book launch spotlighting the new work of Brenda Cossman, professor of law at the University of Toronto, and Heather Berg, assistant professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at Washington University, followed by a conversation moderated by Rebecca Wanzo, chair and professor of women, gender and sexuality studies, Washington University. Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto.

Monsters, Cyborgs and Vases: Specters of the Yellow Woman

Anne Anlin Cheng, professor of English at Princeton University and Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University, will present the Women and the Kemper Lecture and consider a series of art objects as fulcrums through which to explore racialized gender, specifically the “yellow woman” and how it animates European-American narratives about the past and designs for the future.

Anne Anlin Cheng is professor of English and affiliated faculty in the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Committee on Film Studies at Princeton University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who works at the intersection of aesthetics and politics, drawing from literary theory, critical race studies, film theory, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis. She works primarily with 20th-century American literature and visual culture with special focus on Asian-American and African-American literatures. She is the author of The Melancholy of Race: Assimilation, Psychoanalysis, and Hidden Grief (Oxford University Press, 2001), a study of the notion of racial grief at the intersection of culture, history, and law. Her second book, Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface (Oxford University Press, 2013), excavates the story of the unexpected intimacy between modern architectural theory and the invention of a modernist style and the conceptualization of Black skin at the turn of the 20th century.

Fox Fridays Lecture: Hope Ginsburg

Hope Ginsburg will deliver a public lecture, presented in collaboration with the Sam Fox School’s Fox Fridays workshop series and Laumeier Sculpture Park.

Each of Ginsburg’s long-term projects builds community around learning. Her work is by turns collaborative, cooperative, and participatory. Artworks are made with peers, students, scientists, members of the public, and experts with knowledge from outside of the field. Her practice is interdisciplinary, social, and concerned with human and more than human well-being on our catastrophically changing planet.

Ginsburg has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as MoMA PS1, MASS MoCA, Wexner Center for the Arts, USF Contemporary Art Museum, Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, Baltimore Museum of Art, SculptureCenter, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Center Vilnius, and the Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Women & Philanthropy at The Ohio State University. She is the recipient of a Wexner Center for the Arts Artist Residency Award, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, and Art Matters Foundation Grant.

Ginsburg has attended residencies such as the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, Skowhegan, the Wexner Center Film/Video Studio and The Harbor at Beta Local. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artforum, and The Wall Street Journal. Ginsburg holds a Master of Science in Visual Studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art. She is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

Deconstructing Inclusion: Beyond a Seat at the Table

Intentionally and authentically leaning into the practice of inclusion empowers, amplifies, and honors the voices around the table to foster the power of collaboration and innovation for maximum impact.

Join this panel of experts as they share a deeper understanding of inclusion best practices and skills for implementation.

This program is presented in partnership with  Influencing Social Policy, Grand Challenges for Social Work, and the  Network for Social Work Management.

Register online to receive Zoom information on the morning of the event. You can also join us during the live stream.

Open Classroom | Register Now!

Environmental Justice in St. Louis with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment

Join the Gephardt Institute's Graduate Impact Forum for a graduate social and civic conversation. We will host Missouri Coalition for the Environment, who is tackling the issue of environmental justice. This event is open to all graduate students who are interested in civic dialogue and learning more about the local St. Louis environmental issues. Whether you know a little or a lot, we hope you’ll join our conversation!

Start Where You Are: Mapping a Journey Toward Equitable Data Practice

Social sector organizations can increase their impact, both individually and collectively, by strategically engaging with data. At this event, participants will identify specific tools and strategies for utilizing data in collaboration with community partners to advance shared priorities and promote equitable outcomes.

This session will provide multiple opportunities to assess where you are on your journey toward equitable data practice, reflect on where you would like to be, and identify tools for moving you toward your goals. No matter where you are starting, this event is for you!

Presenters will help you identify:

• Your current capacity to utilize data to further your mission and increase your impact
• Your capacity to engage with data in a way that centers equity and builds mutual trust and benefit with clients, community and other stakeholders
• Organizational priorities for future growth in these areas
• Tools and resources to help you along the way

Panelists include:

Carlton Adams: Chief Operations Officer, Operation Food Search
Bridget Blount: Chief Impact Officer, Baltimore’s Promise
Trina Ragain: Chief Innovation Officer, Operation Food Search
Ginger Zielinskie: Chief Strategy Officer, data.org

Join the Social Policy Institute to hear insights from national and local leaders, connect with social sector colleagues, and grapple together with big-picture questions about your current or future data practices.

The Data Science for Social Impact initiative is a partnership between the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis and the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, in collaboration with an advisory committee, the St. Louis Regional Data Alliance, and data.org.

Register to attend virtually

College Behind Bars: WashU’s Prison Education Project

In 2014, a group of faculty began offering WashU liberal arts courses to students incarcerated at Missouri Eastern Correctional Center. Those courses grew into degree programs, which were enriched with reading groups, lectures, chess,and performances, and supported through tutors and research assistants. Since its founding, the Prison Education Project has awarded 35 degrees, launched a re-entry program, expanded to a women’s facility, and supported the design and development of a Learning Management System created by incarcerated programmers, for incarcerated students. Join us for a conversation with Sean Armstrong, dean, University College; Jim Brock, WashU 2021, PEP alumnus and re-entry alumni coordinator; Rob Henke, PEP founding director; and Kennedy Young, WashU 2022, PEP tutor and book club facilitator, who will discuss the program, the joys and challenges of learning and re-entry, and the students who amaze and inspire them. The event will be moderated by Pat Matthews, associate dean for academics, University College. 

This event is presented by University College in partnership with WashU Engage.

Register to attend virtually.

Conspiracy! Evangelicals, Fear, and Nationalism in the 21st Century

American Evangelicals are undergoing a profound shift in how they conceive their political, social and civic action in America. Anthea Butler’s talk will explore evangelicals’ changing beliefs, the embrace among many of conspiracy theories and nationalism, and the implications for the upcoming elections of 2022 and 2024.

Anthea Butler is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought and Chair of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. A historian of African-American and American religion, Butler’s research and writing spans African American religion and history, race, politics, Evangelicalism, gender and sexuality, media and popular culture. You can find more of her writing and public engagement at Antheabutler.com.

Breaking Down Buzzwords: ‘Equity’

Join the Center for Community Health Partnership & Research for the first in a four-part series of Collaborative Café discussions on health equity and research.

“Equity” is a term frequently used but with varying definitions and meaning in different communities or conversations. This session will explore what exactly the buzzword “equity” means.

St. Louis academic, health and community leaders will share their expertise during a panel discussion that outlines the foundations of equity. Panelists will discuss:

• The meaning of the term equity – in particular, health equity and racial equity
• How the understanding and use of the term “equity” has changed over time
• How providers, advocates, and researchers with varied expertise are working to promote equity in St. Louis
• Actions we can all take to promote equity

Panelists are: 

Mark Keeley, President and CEO, St. Louis Arc

Miranda Walker Jones, CEO, Little Bit Foundation

Nancy L. Morrow-Howell, Bettie Bofinger Brown Distinguished Professor of Social Policy, Brown School; Director, Friedman Center for Aging at the Institute for Public Health Washington University in St. Louis

To promote safety and social distancing, space is limited and advance registration is required. Register to attend

Book Discussion: 'Dying of Whiteness'

Please join the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for a discussion of physician Jonathan M. Metzl’s book “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland.” 

Talking to support groups in St. Girardeau for families who have lost someone to gun suicide, Metzl discovers a consistent but puzzling message: the loss of their loved ones is tragic, but the gun is not to blame. This first section of the book argues that changes to gun legislation in Missouri have led to an increase in firearm suicides, particularly among white men. To make the case, Metzl reviews the history of gun laws in Missouri, the difficulties associated with conducting accurate research into firearm deaths, and the recent politics of gun legislation.

The Office of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion has 50 copies of the book available for those who wish to take part in the discussion. If you wish to purchase your own copy, Left Bank Books currently has the book available at a 20% discount as part of its Reading Group Pick program for the month of March.  Please indicate on the registration form if you would like a book and a preferred method of receiving the book, to campus or home address.

Part one: Missouri (Firearms)

Monday, April 11, 2022, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Friday, April 14, 2022,  4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Part Two: Tennessee (Health Care)

Monday, May 2, 2022, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Thursday, May 5, 2022 , 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Part Three: Kansas (Government Programs)

Monday, TBD  1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Thursday, TBD, 2022, 4:00 – 5:00 PM

Please register to attend a discussion/s of your choice taking place in March, April and May.  The discussions will cover three sections dedicated to a specific example from three different states, Missouri, Tennessee and Kansas.

Brauer Lecture Series: 'The Pursuit of Happiness and True Success'

How can you build a life that results in genuine human flourishing? How does happiness change over a lifetime? And how can we get happier as we age?

Arthur C. Brooks provides answers to these questions by exploring advances in behavioral economics and social psychology, ancient wisdom, and art and music. From his book “Gross National Happiness” and his documentary “The Pursuit,” he extracts life lessons that can help people pursue happiness, forge stronger relationships and build more meaningful lives.

Brooks’ 45-minute presentation will be followed by a 45-minute Q&A session. Registration is required. The event will be simulcast in Frick Forum once capacity in Graham Chapel is reached.

This inaugural event kicks off the Brauer Lecture Series, established through a gift from Distinguished Trustee Stephen F. Brauer and his wife, Camilla T. Brauer. The series was created to explore and encourage dialogue on the American free enterprise system and bring highly regarded thought leaders to Washington University to support student growth and development.

AIA St. Louis Scholarship Trust Lecture: Marina Tabassum

Bangladeshi architect and educator Marina Tabassum will deliver the annual AIA St. Louis Scholarship Trust Lecture.

Tabassum founded Dhaka-based Marina Tabassum Architects in 2005. In her work, Tabassum seeks to establish a language of architecture that is contemporary yet reflectively rooted to place, always against an ecological rubric containing climate, context, culture, history. Her Bait Ur Rouf Mosque is distinguished by its lack of popular mosque iconography, its emphasis on space and light, and its capacity to function not only as a place of worship but also as a refuge for a dense neighborhood on Dhaka’s periphery. The portfolio of work notwithstanding, Tabassum’s practice remains consciously contained in size, undertaking a limited number of projects per year.

Tabassum is a visiting professor at Harvard University, Technical University Delft, Technical University Munich, University of Texas, and Bengal Institute. She received an Honorary Doctorate from the Technical University of Munich in 2020, Aga Khan Awards for Architecture in 2016, an Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2020, the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture in 2021, the Soane Medal in Architecture from the United Kingdom in 2021, and the Jameel Prize in 2018. She is a distinguished member of the Royal Society of Arts. Tabassum was named among the top 10 thinkers of the COVID era by Prospect Magazine (UK) in 2020.

Tabassum is a member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture. She heads the Foundation for Architecture and Community Equity (FACE) focusing on environment and climate preparedness. She chairs the Board of Prokritee, a fair trade organization that ensures the livelihood of thousands of woman artisans of Bangladesh.

Eyes on the Prize: Teaching the Civil Rights Movement’s Past and Future

Join civil rights activist, filmmaker and educator Judy Richardson in a conversation with St. Charles High School social studies teacher and coach David Forbes, a St. Louis “teacher of the year.” The two will discuss teaching the history of the civil rights movement and its continued relevance to today’s students. Richardson, who worked on all fourteen hours of Eyes on the Prize, will also give a unique behind-the-scenes look at the making of this historic series. Richardson was a researcher and the series associate producer and education director on the Academy Award-nominated and multi-award-winning PBS series. 

Eyes on the Prize tells the story of the civil rights movement (1954-1985), but only through the voices of those who actually lived this history. Its focus on grass-roots leadership was ground-breaking. She and Forbes will use clips highlighting the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Black Panther Party in Chicago, King’s focus on economic justice, and other segments to show the leadership role of “ordinary people.” They will reveal how the story-telling techniques, solid research, and actual footage from that time make this history come alive for students of every age. Eyes on the Prize continues to be shown on PBS stations nationally and in schools throughout the country because of its relevance to issues we face today. It remains a vital record of the continuing struggle organized by a variety of ordinary Americans to correct the racial and economic inequities of American society.

This discussion is organized by the Julian Edison Department of Special Collections at the Washington University Libraries. The Libraries are honored to care for the collection of St. Louis-born Henry Hampton’s Blackside, Inc., which produced Eyes on the Prize and other important documentary series on African American history, arts, and culture. This event is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which has funded the Libraries’ work to digitize and restore the 183 interviews from the second season of Eyes on the Prize.

Judy Richardson was on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) staff in Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama from 1963-66. She was a founder of Drum & Spear Bookstore, once the country’s largest African American bookstore. She was on the production team for all fourteen hours of the seminal PBS series, Eyes on the Prize, as its series associate producer and education director, then continued to produce documentaries for PBS, the History Channel, and museums. Richardson co-edited Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, a compilation of the testimonies of fifty-three SNCC women, and co-directed two NEH three-week teacher institutes, co-hosted by Duke University and focused on teaching grassroots movements. Judy is a member of the SNCC Legacy Project board and the SNCCDigital website editorial board. She was a visiting professor at Brown University, and has an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College. Currently, she is co-producing two films, including the new orientation film for the National Park Service’s Frederick Douglass House in Washington, D.C.

Free and open to all, registration required.

#SciComm Seminar: Communicating with Policymakers to Maximize Impact

Researchers often ask how they can have impact beyond the walls of their scientific community. This seminar will give a brief overview of the policymaking process, and teach participants how to communicate their work to various policy audiences to maximize its impact.

This event is hosted by the Center for Health & Science Communication, in collaboration with the  Center for Health Economics & Policy.

This seminar is open to all, but registration is required. A Zoom link will be provided the week of the event.

Artificial Intelligence For Everyone

Still think AI is just a buzzword or something only to be messed with by computer scientists? Join this conversation as Professor An shares his own AI learning experiences as a social scientist with no formal training in computer science, showcasing that anyone can learn and apply AI in their daily work and study.

Want to use AI to predict future events? Detect objects in images? Create a chatbot? Write a summary? Recommend a book? Thanks to open-source high-level APIs, state-of-the-art AI models are available at your fingertips for free. Only two questions remain: Can I afford not to learn? If not, how do I start?  

This program is part of the Brown School’s Artificial Intelligence in the Social Sciences series.

Register online to receive Zoom information on the morning of the event. You can also join us during the live stream.

Open Classroom | Register Now!

An Island Retreat: Sin, Secrecy, and the Offshoring of Sexually Abusive Priests

Between 1952 and 1968, a Roman Catholic religious order known as the Servants of the Paraclete sought, bought and finally sold several small islands in the Caribbean for priests unable to stop “sin[ning] repeatedly with little children.” This talk details the Servants of the Paraclete’s mid 20th-century efforts at offshoring sexually abusive priests. It is a historical account that encourages scholars and activists alike to rethink the geography of clerical sexual abuse: Though there is a generally agreed upon history that bishops throughout the United States transferred priests between parishes to evade suspicion and at times prosecution, this provides a previously untold account of how the U.S. Church leveraged developments in moral theology, pastoral psychology and free market capitalism to secure transnational lines of flight for some of its most incorrigible abusers. 

Kathryn Davis - ‘Aurelia, Aurélia: A Memoir’

Novelist Kathryn Davis will discuss her first work of nonfiction, Aurelia, Aurélia: A Memoir, with David Schuman, director of the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis.

Aurelia, Aurélia begins on a boat. The author, 16 years old, is traveling to Europe at an age when one can “try on personae like dresses.” She has the confidence of a teenager cultivating her earliest obsessions — Woolf, Durrell, Bergman — sure of her maturity, sure of the life that awaits her. Soon she finds herself in a Greece far drearier than the Greece of fantasy, “climbing up and down the steep paths every morning with the real old women, looking for kindling.”

Kathryn Davis’ hypnotic new book is a meditation on the way imagination shapes life, and how life, as it moves forward, shapes imagination. At its center is the death of her husband, Eric. The book unfolds as a study of their marriage, its deep joys and stinging frustrations; it is also a book about time, the inexorable events that determine beginnings and endings. The preoccupations that mark Davis’ fiction are recognizable here — fateful voyages, an intense sense of place, the unexpected union of the magical and the real — but the vehicle itself is utterly new.

Kathryn Davis is the author of six novels. She has received the Kafka Prize, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award. She teaches at Washington University, and lives in Vermont and St. Louis, Missouri.

31st Annual Pow Wow

Please join the Buder Center for American Indian Studies for the 31st Annual Washington University Pow Wow taking place on Saturday, April 16, 2022 at the Washington University Field House!

Focusing on Equity in the Research Process

Join the Center for Community Health Partnership & Research for the second event in a four-part series of Collaborative Café discussions on health equity and research. Panelists will discuss the importance of focusing on equity while conducting research.

Research intended to help communities too often becomes harmful through inadequate planning, inappropriate use of data, and lack of community input. This session focuses on making the process of conducting research, from study design to dissemination, equitable for participants and communities. Panelists will discuss:

Why equity should be a primary focus when designing and conducting research

How researchers can use theory and methodology to ensure equity from the very beginning

Tools researchers can use to ensure equity within their research;

Appropriately understanding and using data

Successes and lessons learned from panelists’ own research

To promote safety and social distancing, space is limited and advance registration is required. Register to attend.

Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood

Join us for this public lecture by Mark Oppenheimer, who will speak about his recent book Squirrel Hill, which offers a piercing portrait of the struggles and triumphs of one of America’s renowned Jewish neighborhoods in the wake of unspeakable tragedy that highlights the hopes, fears and tensions all Americans must confront on the road to healing.

Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, is one of the oldest Jewish neighborhoods in the country, known for its tight-knit community and the profusion of multigenerational families. On October 27, 2018, a gunman killed eleven Jews who were worshipping at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill–the most deadly anti-Semitic attack in American history.

Many neighborhoods would be understandably subsumed by despair and recrimination after such an event, but not this one. In his book, Mark Oppenheimer poignantly shifts the focus away from the criminal and his crime, and instead presents the historic, spirited community at the center of this heartbreak. He speaks with residents and nonresidents, Jews and gentiles, survivors and witnesses, teenagers and seniors, activists and historians.
 
Together, these stories provide a kaleidoscopic and nuanced account of collective grief, love, support and revival. But Oppenheimer also details the difficult dialogue and messy confrontations that Squirrel Hill had to face in the process of healing, and that are a necessary part of true growth and understanding in any community. He has reverently captured the vibrancy and caring that still characterize Squirrel Hill, and it is this phenomenal resilience that can provide inspiration to any place burdened with discrimination and hate.

Bound for Beauty: A Book Binding Demonstration

Intricately cut colors of leather, gold tooling and elaborate designs adorn the covers of beautiful books, but have you ever wondered how these books are made? To celebrate the exhibition Bound for Beauty, Washington University Libraries is hosting a book binding demonstration by Noah Smutz, book conservator. Noah will discuss how to bind a book, with models he created to illustrate the steps. He will also demonstrate how to prepare leather for binding and apply gold tooling for decoration. After the demonstration, attendees will be invited to view the exhibition and enjoy the beautiful bindings on display. 

Noah Smutz is a book conservator and the owner of NS Conservation LLC. Smutz has been in the field of conservation since 2011 when he started as a student worker in the University of Kansas Libraries conservation lab. He has since held internships for the Smithsonian Archives and Bodleian Library among others. He graduated with a master’s degree in book conservation from West Dean College in the United Kingdom. Previously he has worked as a book conservator for the Smithsonian Libraries. He has been a member of the American Institute for Conservation since 2010 and a Professional Associate since 2019.

Virtual Book Club: The Sixteen Pleasures

The Sixteen Pleasures takes us to Florence in the aftermath of a flood that has devastated the city’s cultural heritage collections. We follow an American book conservator, Margot Harrington, in her volunteer efforts to help Florence save what treasures it can. During her disaster recovery efforts in a water-logged convent, she uncovers the last copy of 15th century erotica, thought to have been destroyed by the Vatican centuries ago. Convinced by the abbess to save the order’s finances by selling the priceless volume discreetly, Margot finds herself in the heady world of secretive deals and passionate affairs.

A presentation by Danielle Creech, head of preservation, digitization and exhibitions, on real life disaster recovery efforts around the globe will precede the discussion.

Faculty Book Talk: Heidi Kolk and Iver Bernstein

Join us for a panel discussion by essay contributors to “The Material World of Modern Segregation: St. Louis in the Long Era of Ferguson.” The collection (forthcoming in The Common Reader: A Journal of the Essay, 2022) stems from a conference by that name in spring 2017, involving leading scholars on race, segregation and urban space, and experience from in and outside Washington University. The collection of essays is co-edited by Heidi Kolk (Sam Fox School) and Iver Bernstein (History, AFAS and American Culture Studies).

This event is taking place in Umrath Hall, and will also be livestreamed and recorded for virtual viewing. Follow link for details on pre-registration and health screening.

Rethinking Monuments & Memorials

Freedom | Information | Acts

Join us for an open house of the first Studiolab, Freedom | Information | Acts, a full-year interdisciplinary graduate course addressing access to archival materials from the Jack Willis and Henry Hampton collections of civil rights documentary film projects, and to movement history more broadly.

Thinking through access to these materials and stories, the Studiolab students have used an array of archival sources to teach a research methods course at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center through WashU’s Prison Education Project.

Follow the link below for details and to RSVP.

Virtual Book Club: The Pull of the Stars

In 1918 Dublin, in an understaffed maternity ward, the lives of nurse Julia Power, doctor Kathleen Lynn, and volunteer Bridie Sweeney come together. Set against the backdrop of twin catastrophes of the Great Flu Pandemic and World War I, the novel follows these three women over the course of three days in a story of how hope can persevere against all odds. 

A presentation of historical medical texts from the Becker Medical Library will precede the discussion. 

Free and open to all, registration required.

Counter/Narratives: ‘More Than One Thing’

The story of the Pruitt-Igoe housing development is often considered a tragedy. Throughout its existence, local media regularly fixated on its downfall due to lack of resources, proliferating racist images of crime, neglect and disorder. In reality, its history is much more complex. The short film More Than One Thing provides a different viewpoint of this moment in history through the personal narrative of teenager and resident Billy Towns. The film was shot by WashU graduate student Steven Carver in 1968 and 1969 and is told through the eyes of Billy as he narrates over footage of his everyday life, sharing his hopes and dreams with the viewer. The film acknowledges some realistic concerns, but largely serves as an embracing and optimistic portrayal of the young man, providing space for him to speak in his own words.

Presentd by the Ethical Society of St. Louis and Washington University Libraries. The film was first screened at the Ethical Society in 1970 and was preserved and digitized by Washington University Libraries’ Film and Media Archive in 2016. The film is included in the exhibition Counter/Narratives: (Re)presenting Race & Ethnicity, on view at the John M. Olin Library through July 10, 2022.

Free and open to all; registration required.

Juneteenth Pop-Up Display

In commemoration of Juneteenth, we bring together works by four contemporary American artists of African descent—Torkwase Dyson, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Joyce Scott, and Danny Tisdale—for a pop-up display organized around the practices of storytelling and remembrance. While viewing the display, we invite you to reflect on what histories we are taught, whose stories matter, and how we remember. An accompanying reading table contains multiple points of entry for learning about the historical events surrounding emancipation as well as their legacies in the present, offering context for understanding the ongoing struggle for Black liberation and racial justice through the lenses of historical texts, personal narratives, and children’s literature.

Image credit

Torkwase Dyson (American, b. 1973), A Place Called Dark Black (Bird and Lava), 2020. Acrylic and ink on canvas, 96 x 80 x 2". University purchase, Parsons Fund and Bixby Fund, 2021.

Counter/Narratives of Independence: Celebrating Juneteenth

Join the University Libraries, in partnership with the Department of African and African-American Studies and the WashU & Slavery Project, for a special Juneteenth celebration. Come together as a community to learn more about the holiday and enjoy refreshments. The event will begin with an introduction to Juneteenth and its importance in history and today. Following the introduction, activities for all ages will be available, including a dramatic reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?,” children’s story time, interactive stations, and a viewing of current exhibitions.

Free and open to all, registration required.

Gallery Talk: Works on Paper—New on View

Molly Moog, curatorial assistant, discusses a diverse selection of prints, drawings, and paintings on paper from the sixteenth century to the present in the newly reinstalled Works on Paper Gallery at the Kemper Art Museum. The installation features works by Rembrandt van Rijn, James McNeill Whistler, Käthe Kollwitz, Glenn Ligon, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, among others. The talk highlights different print mediums and discuss themes prominent in the gallery, such as the study of the past though a contemporary lens and artists’ visualizations of the unseen or socially invisible.

Proposal-Writing Information Session & Workshop 2022

Information Session

Thursday, August 25, 10 am–11 am
Danforth University Center, Room 276

Proposal Workshop

Friday, August 19, 12 pm CDT: Proposal submission due date

August 25 or 26: First Review 
Final date and time to be determined by the individual groups

Week of August 29: Revisions
Final date and time to be determined by the individual groups

Follow link below for details and registration. Registration by Friday, August 5 appreciated.

Voting, Misinformation, Disinformation and Manipulation

Elections in the United States continue to face threats from false and misleading narratives, conspiracy theories, misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. This event will feature insights from national and local experts on the history of information disorder and its effects on political discourse.

Speakers are Shireen Mitchell (founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women, Inc.) and Jennifer Slavik Lohman (director of the St. Louis Area Voter Protection Coalition). Gena Gunn McClendon, director of Voter Access and Engagement in the Center for Social Development, will moderate the discussion. 

Please visit https://csd.wustl.edu/empower-voting224/ to register and for more information.