Institute for the Humanities Annual Report, 2021-22

INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES Annual Report

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Letter from the Director

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Public Humanities Internship

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Humanities Without Walls Workshop

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Never Free to Rest

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Faculty Fellow Reflection ­

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Faculty Fellows

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Graduate Student Fellow Reflection ­

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Graduate Student Fellows ­

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Summer Faculty Fellow Reflection ­

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Summer Fellows

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Octavia Butler Week ­

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Gallery ­

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Gallery Intern Reflection

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How to Build a Disaster Proof House

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Poetry Blast

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Support

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Affiliates and Staff

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About the Institute for the Humanities

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Cover: Octavia Butler illustration by Jay Dickinson

dear friends,

LETTER

from the director

I write to you at the end of another challenging academic year and in the middle of a tumultuous summer. Surely if we have learned anything from contentious public discourse, it’s that the stories we tell about our experiences, our beliefs, and our values matter. And the humanities are crucial to understanding how stories matter, how stories can convey truth but also distort it, how stories can solicit empathy but also invite acrimony, how stories record disaster and open room for hope.

In March of this year, the Institute for the Humanities explored the power of story in a series of events related to a performance of Parable of the Sower, an opera based on the 1993 novel of the same name by African-American science fiction writer Octavia Butler and presented by the University Musical Society. Butler’s book explores the social consequences of environmental disaster and systemic injustice in a story about a future dystopian America.

The opera version of the story, written by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon, calls on two centuries of Black music to underscore Butler’s insights about gender, race, and hope through music and performance. The institute’s Octavia Butler Week explored the power of Butler’s storytelling in a series of public events including conversations, panel discussions, a painting session, and even a scavenger hunt.

Our celebration of Butler was scheduled to open with a broad-ranging public conversation between composer Toshi Reagon and author, poet, and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs about creativity, adaptation, and the powerful lessons to be drawn from Octavia Butler’s fiction. Alas, this much-anticipated conversation had to be canceled due to illness, but other planned events proceeded as planned. A panel on “Reading Octavia Butler” featured U-M faculty

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who spoke about how Butler’s work has mattered to them and how it continues to be relevant to contemporary thinking about race, social justice, religion, and the environment. Faculty also spoke about teaching Octavia Butler’s works, describing the insights her novels can surface in classroom discussions, and in the conversation that followed, students and other audience members shared their own engagements with Butler’s fiction. In both the presentations and the discussion, Butler’s readers spoke forcefully to the power of stories to not just name and represent injustice, but also to imagine the changes needed to create a more equitable world.

The power of art to imagine the world otherwise was one of the subjects addressed in a virtual panel on “Art and Afrofuturism” that concluded the institute’s formal programming for Octavia Butler Week. Prominent artists and scholars from across the U.S. addressed the artistic, intellectual, and activist reach of Afrofuturism, a cultural aesthetic that addresses the concerns of the African diaspora through technoculture and speculative fiction. Our panelists described their own work in music, literature, film, video, and the visual arts, identifying Butler’s work as both inspiration and model. In addition to these three formal events, our undergraduate interns

creatively organized activities that contributed to the celebration: a Parable Paint Night, in which students created art around the themes of Afrofuturism, activism, and science fiction, and a scavenger hunt that they called “Octavia’s Spaces in Community Places” and that used clues drawn from the novel to direct searches to sites on campus.

The enthusiastic participation in our Octavia Butler Week—and the soldout performances at UMS—suggest the extent to which we continue to think with enduring stories about injustice and about hope. Stories matter.

Please keep up with our events, exhibitions, and activities through our website. And please stop by to see an exhibition, hear a talk, attend a workshop.

We’d love to share our stories with you.

With very best wishes, —Peggy McCracken, director, Mary Fair Croushore Professor of the Humanities

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amazing undergraduate interns 6

A Degree in the Humanities Now What? career panel.

2021-22 Public Humanities Interns.

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plays of the Why Should You Care? podcast

PUBLIC HUMANITIES INTERNSHIP

This year we launched an exciting new initiative, the Public Humanities Internship for U-M undergraduate students. Our goal was two-fold. First, we aimed to create an opportunity in which undergraduate students could engage with the humanities and participate in the intellectual life of the institute. Second, we wanted to support and guide the interns in developing the practical skills necessary to produce and promote their own humanities-centered programming geared toward other undergraduate students.

Eight upper-level undergraduates were selected for the first cohort and began work during fall semester, 2021. Led by Stephanie Harrell, assistant director of undergraduate programming and marketing, the interns’ work included weekly meetings to connect, brainstorm, collaborate, and create programs.

In a deliberately staged process, they worked together to define topics and then strategize about how to best convey the ideas and questions they wanted to highlight. These lively conversations were both fun and enriching, as each student brought to the table their own academic, extracurricular, work, and personal experiences and utilized them to imagine the kind of programming that would appeal to their peers. The interns managed all the logistics for events, including delegating tasks, reserving venues, budgeting, 7

working with our graphic designer on promotional material, booking speakers, creating a publicity plan, staffing the event, and more. Each intern also did a “take-over” of our social media for a week, working with our social media coordinator to share their stories and engage undergraduate students.

At the internship’s conclusion, it was clear we had met our two main goals. Being in residence facilitated regular interactions– and interesting conversations!–between the interns and our staff, fellows, and visitors.

Our undergraduate interns became a part of our team and were able to regularly engage with humanities topics through our themes and programming. And finally, through their hard work and ingenuity, they created more opportunities for all undergraduate students to learn about and experience the institute and the humanities in general.

STUDY DAYS/CATHARTIC CAFE Leads: Agnes Dunne and Anika Love In collaboration with the U-M Museum of Art’s Study Days, interns designed stress-relief activities for fellow students, including a “Cathartic Café,” an open mic where students could take a break from studying to play an instrument, sing a song, and recite their poetry.

OCTAVIA BUTLER WEEK EVENTS Leads: Abigail Haile and Lena von Moltke Three intern-organized projects highlighted the work of renowned African American author Octavia Butler during Octavia Butler Week, including a scavenger hunt referencing messages in Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, a Parable Paint Night, presented in collaboration with the U-M Black Student Union, where students Continued on page 10

Our appreciation and thanks to the Edna Balz Lacy and Hewlett Foundation endowments that enabled this initiative.

The 2022-23 cohort has already been selected, and we can’t wait to meet them in September and see what ideas and energy they bring to the institute.

2021-22 PUBLIC HUMANITIES INTERN PROJECTS WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? PODCAST Leads: Abdul Kizito and Cole Simon This 9-episode podcast series features U-M faculty who use their humanities expertise to address pressing social and cultural concerns. Available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Anchor.

Study Days open mic.

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Why Should You Care? podcast album cover.

public humanities

INTERNS

AGNES DUNNE

ABIGAIL HAILE

EMELY HERNANDEZ

ABDUL KIZITO

ANIKA LOVE

COLE SIMON

ANNA SOUTHON

LENA VON MOLTKE

MAJORS: SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, PSYCHOLOGY

MAJOR: FILM, TELEVISION, AND MEDIA MINOR: ART AND DESIGN

MAJORS: ANTHROPOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY MINOR: FOOD IN THE ENVIRONMENT

MAJOR: POLITICAL SCIENCE

MAJOR: GENERAL STUDIES

MAJOR: PUBLIC POLICY MINORS: ENVIRONMENT, HISTORY OF ART

MAJOR: ANTHROPOLOGY

MAJORS: SOCIAL THEORY AND PRACTICE, GERMAN MINOR: GENDER AND HEALTH

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missions in the Octavia’s Spaces in Community Places scavenger hunt

created art centered around themes of Afrofuturism, climate activism, and science fiction; and Treats for the Trail, a trailmix station, held at the Michigan League, inspired by the themes of food accessibility and sustainability in Butler’s work.

SARAFINA MOVIE NIGHT Leads: Abdul Kizito and Agnes Dunne In honor of South African Human Rights Day, the interns collaborated with the U-M Black Student Union and African Student Association on a screening of the 1992 movie based on Mbongeni Ngema’s 1987 musical of the same name, which tells the story of students and their families involved in the 1976 Soweto Uprising against the implementation of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools.

and careers who are putting their humanities bachelor’s degrees to work.

Panelists: Lucy Cahill (BA History of Art; Minor: French), managing director at Youth Arts Alliance; Emily Mathews (BA English & Women’s Studies), director of communications and marketing, U-M School of Kinesiology; Karelyn Munro (BA English), plain language specialist, patient education resources coordinator, Michigan Medicine; Aidan Sova (BA Communications & Media Studies), solutions consultant and product owner, Google; and Hannah Thoms (BA Anthropology; Minors: History, Museum Studies), associate collections manager, Motown Museum.

A DEGREE IN THE HUMANITIES! NOW WHAT? CAREER EVENT Leads: Emely Hernandez and Anna Southon This popular career panel featured U-M alumni from a wide range of disciplines

Snapshots of Instagram stories from the social media takeovers by our Public Humanities Interns. via @umichhumanities

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HUMANITIES WITHOUT WALLS PRE-DOCTORAL CAREER DIVERSITY SUMMER WORKSHOP Tools and space to imagine one’s professional future In summer 2022, the Institute for the Humanities joined forces with the Humanities Without Walls (HWW) consortium to host the annual Humanities Without Walls Pre-doctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop. The workshop is an intensive two-week interactive experience for PhD students in the humanities designed to help participants explore diverse future careers beyond and including the tenure track. Through a series of workshops, participants learn how to leverage their skills and training towards careers in the public humanities, the private sector, the nonprofit world, arts administration, public media and many other fields.

Established in 2014 with the generous support of the Mellon Foundation, HWW is a large-scale experiment in collaboration as a dynamic scholarly practice, based at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The Career Diversity Workshop is one of HWW’s major initiatives.

This year, 25 students from around the country attended and were in residence in Ann Arbor. With over 50 presenters, the workshop included sessions on “Career Pathways in the Federal Government,” “Humanists in Tech,” “Freelance and Consulting Careers,” and many more, as well as tools, values exercises, and space for individuals to imagine their professional futures.

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plates created and intentionally broken by artist Rashaun Rucker

NEVER FREE TO REST Rashaun Rucker

Rashaun Rucker’s exhibition Never Free to Rest, exhibited in our gallery during the fall 2021 semester, represents the last works in his remarkable ornithology series that explores the rock pigeon as metaphor for the systemic debasement, mistreatment, and conditioning of Black men in America.

As source material for his drawings, Rucker utilizes images of men he knows and photographs of men incarcerated in the U.S. prison industrial complex.

The photographs of those incarcerated are taken from various websites and newsletters and then collaged or altered to create the work.

“The work is intended to be a record of their lives, a marker of the social conditioning and heavy challenges we face as Black men,” Rucker explained. “The exhibition is influenced by the inescapable I Hit More fian I Missed, Rashaun Rucker 12

A Perilous Perch, Rashaun Rucker

thoughts and words of friends lost: those who were incarcerated, those who believed there was no way out—that they had been permanently assigned to the bottom of America’s caste system even though their talents were immense and so often appropriated.”

In addition to four new drawings, the exhibition included inaugural sculptural works designed by the artist and fabricated as part of his Institute for the Humanities residency. The hand-cast plaster I Hit More Than I Miss replicates a half pigeon/half man drawing by Rucker. The resulting blaze orange discs call to mind the clay pigeons typically used for target practice. Rucker explains, “The neighborhood I was raised in felt like a trap because of redlining (a discriminatory practice of denying services to residents of certain areas based on their race or ethnicity), with only a few being able to traverse the obstacles set in place. Additionally, the common colors of orange and black on the bottom were a perpetual reminder of the mass incarceration of those who look like me, many of whom are unjustly imprisoned and completely marginalized once released. Finally, in the sport of trap shooting, a hit is often called a ‘kill’ and a miss is referred to as a ‘bird away.’

The machine that now launches the clay pigeon is still called the ‘trap.’”

The clay discs also offered an opportunity for collaboration with local ceramicist Yiu Keung Lee, who worked closely with Rucker to create the discs. As a performative element of the installation process, Rucker willfully broke three times as many discs as he displayed, the pieces accumulating on the floor like rubble.

Rucker’s extensive engagements with students–a dozen classes comprising over 150 students–allowed for deeply personal exchanges and connection at a time otherwise of disconnect and isolation. The gallery became a meeting place for meaningful conversations about race, identity, and futures.

It was Rucker’s intention, with the support of the institute, that the project be complete and ready to exhibit at other institutions, including Black communities and colleges. Since its debut, Never Free To Rest has been re-exhibited at the Art League in Houston,

The Ascent, Rashaun Rucker

Texas. Through the exhibition, Rucker was connected with gallerist Charlie James, director of Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, and will have his first solo exhibition there in September 2022.

“In the end, Never Free to Rest was as much about the breaking as the making—of broken systems, promises, and dreams,” explains Amanda Krugliak, curator at the Institute for the Humanities Gallery. “At a time when Black artists and their works are in high demand, the project led to hard questions: How can white institutions, curators, galleries, and collectors act responsibly beyond words and good intentions? How do we break the cycle of appropriation and commodification? How do we abolish the longheld practice of ventriloquism?”

Never Free to Rest was made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation as part of our multi-year High Stakes Art Initiative.

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KIN-YEE IAN SHIN

2021-22 HELMUT F. STERN FACULTY FELLOW

reflection

Finding new vistas

What would technology that is unproductive look like? Can dogs speak—and why did human psychologists care? While these were the types of fascinating questions we pondered each week at the Institute for the Humanities, through them we were really confronting fundamental problems of the human condition. What does it mean to be human? How should humans relate to one another across different social hierarchies?

How did these hierarchies come to exist in the first place?

As I reflect on my fellowship, what I will miss most is the camaraderie that our group of twenty faculty and graduate students fostered in pursuing these questions together thoughtfully and energetically. An unexpected perk of the fellowship, too, was our exposure to the exhibitions curated by Amanda Krugliak in the institute’s gallery, which beckoned us every time we entered the South Thayer Building. Shizu Saldamando’s portraits in When This Is All Over/ Cuando Este Termine and James Hosking’s photographs in Beautiful By Night especially moved me as a gay Asian American scholar of migration and cultural exchange.

On a personal level, my fellowship gave me much needed time for focused research and writing for my book project, and to make progress on several others. I began my year at the institute by reframing and honing the central argument of my book manuscript on Chinese art collecting in 14

the United States and the cultural origins of America’s “Pacific Century.” Presenting a revamped introductory chapter to the other fellows at our weekly seminar yielded critical feedback. Additionally, I conducted archival research at the Bentley Historical Library and traveled to libraries at Harvard University, which led to several crucial discoveries of primary sources to complete drafting my manuscript.

Finally, I revised and submitted one journal article, and began work on another. All these activities were not only possible due to my fellowship at the institute, but indeed made richer through it.

In the end, I recognize that my year at the Institute for the Humanities was as much a pleasure as it was a privilege. I am grateful to the staff of the institute for taking such good care of us both intellectually and physically. Even more, I cherish the generosity and time of my brilliant colleagues, many of whom have become dear friends—and, in at least one case, a stalwart tennis partner. I return to the classroom this fall with renewed enthusiasm for the power of the humanities, and a greater appreciation for the important place they hold at the University of Michigan.

—Kin-Yee Ian Shin is assistant professor, history and American culture

faculty

FELLOWS

SAMER ALI

VICTOR MENDOZA

REBEKAH MODRAK

CHRISTOPHER MOLNAR

ELLEN MUEHLBERGER

LISA NAKAMURA

KIN-YEE IAN SHIN

DAVID TEMIN

NORMAN AND JANE KATZ FACULTY FELLOW; ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, MIDDLE EAST STUDIES, “AraboIslamic Humanities in TenthCentury Iraq: Expressive Culture and Nonviolent Resistance”

JOHN RICH FACULTY FELLOW PROFESSOR, HISTORY AND MIDDLE EAST STUDIES, “Appearances: Recognition and Suspended Knowledge in Late Antiquity”

HUNTING FAMILY FACULTY FELLOW ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE & WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES “Extimate Attachments: Race and the Promise of Imperial Citizenship”

HELMUT F. STERN FACULTY FELLOW PROFESSOR, AMERICAN CULTURE “Understanding Digital Racism After COVID-19”

HELMUT F. STERN FACULTY FELLOW PROFESSOR, ART AND DESIGN “UnProductiveSolutions: Humanizing Technology”

HELMUT F. STERN FACULTY FELLOW ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, HISTORY AND AMERICAN CULTURE, “Imperfect Knowledge: Chinese Art and American Power in the Transpacific Progressive Era”

STEELCASE FACULTY FELLOW ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, HISTORY, U-M FLINT, “Playing With Fire: Race, Memory, and Migration After German Reunification”

JOHN RICH FACULTY FELLOW ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, POLITICAL SCIENCE, “Remapping Sovereignty: Indigenous Political Thought and the Politics of Decolonization”

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MARISOL FILA

2021-22 A. BARTLETT GIAMATTI GRADUATE FELLOW

reflection

A deepened commitment to engaged and public scholarship

Being a fellow at the Institute for the Humanities was one of the most rewarding and enriching experiences I have had as a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Former graduate fellows had already highly praised their time in residence at the institute, but I never imagined that it would be such a fulfilling year. Since my first year in the PhD program back in 2015, the Institute for the Humanities has been a space that I have sought to inhabit, connect with, and contribute to.

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I have always found their lectures, exhibits, artists in residence, and overall events in close dialogue with my scholarship and the way I approach my research and work within and beyond academia.

If the Institute for the Humanities was to me an example of interdisciplinarity, my time as a fellow was a reaffirmation of it. I learned so much from each and every one of the seminars, the works in progress of faculty and graduate student fellows, their feedback, critical thoughts, and inspiring suggestions and connections. Coming from a diverse range of humanistic fields, the cohort itself was an example of interdisciplinary. At first, I felt intimidated by thinking about reading and having to give feedback to work from fields that I had been rarely exposed to, but the seminars proved to me that it is through that type of challenge that new perspectives, questions, and ways of seeing and understanding humanities work arise.

Despite the challenges that the pandemic brought to our in-person interactions, I benefited and learned so much from conversations with other fellows, and the generous and insightful feedback that faculty fellows offered me. I strive for creating a scholarship that can be accessible, translatable to multiple audiences, and produces knowledge in collaboration with academic and non-academic actors, and my time at the institute and the learnings from fellows and their work have strengthened and deepened my commitment to an engaged and public scholarship. The environment of the institute, together with the possibility of accompanying the work in progress of artists in residence, of seeing their exhibitions materialized—additionally contributed to my learning and growth as a scholar. I am deeply grateful to all the staff and scholars that inhabit and make possible the institute. I am grateful to all the fellows with whom I spent this year in residence. I am definitely fulfilled by this experience and excited about the future that I can build as an engaged scholar.

—Marisol Fila is a PhD student in Romance languages and literatures

graduate student

FELLOWS

JAMES DENISON

MARISOL FILA

MOLLY KERAN

EMILY LAMOND

ELIZABETH MCNEILL

NICOLE NAVARRO

RAQUEL VIEIRA PARRINE SANT’ANA

HANNAH STIVERSON

SYLVIA ‘DUFFY’ ENGLE GRADUATE FELLOW; HISTORY OF ART “Stieglitz Groups: Race, Place, and the Essentializing Logics of American Modernism”

MARY FAIR CROUSHORE GRADUATE FELLOW; GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE, “Speaking (of ) Animals in the Life Sciences and Literature of 20th-Century Germany”

A. BARTLETT GIAMATTI GRADUATE FELLOW; ROMANCE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES, “Content and Form: The Black Press and Articulations of Blackness in Twenty-First Century Buenos Aires, São Paulo, and Lisbon”

DAVID AND MARY HUNTING GRADUATE FELLOW; HISTORY “Beyond Racial Binaries: Latinos, African Americans, and Political Power in Washington, D.C., 19751995”

JAMES A. WINN GRADUATE FELLOW ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE “Reimagining Rape Stories: Convention and Consciousness in Feminized Genres”

RICHARD & LILLIAN IVES GRADUATE FELLOW; INFORMATION, “In the Fissures of Authoritarian Knowledge: Sexual Difference in Contemporary Latin American Art (1980-2020)”

CONSTANCE AND MARC JACOBSON GRADUATE FELLOW; GREEK AND ROMAN HISTORY, “Disability in the Roman Familia”

JAMES A. WINN GRADUATE FELLOW AMERICAN CULTURE, “Radicalizing the Mainstream: The Icons and Ideologies of Cryptomasculinity and the Far Right”

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IRENE HWANG

2021 SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW

reflection

A rare and invaluable turbo boost to scholarship Even though architecture straddles two realms, that of the fine arts and that of the practical and utilitarian, the outcomes of architectural thinking and making continue to be most celebrated, analyzed, and documented for their aesthetic significance as art objects. Pivotal Constructions of Unseen Events proposes a new approach to understanding the period of 1871-2020 in the history of the United States.

This approach narrates—through writing and visuals—the history of five architectures as pivotal events in American history, recasting architecture’s historical significance not solely as a diagnostic clue to history (an artifact), but rather as an act or set of acts (an event) that transform(s) and shape(s) history in unexpected and significant ways.

Thanks to the opportunity to complete the summer fellowship program at the Institute for the Humanities, Pivotal Constructions has become a major component of my scholarly focus and disciplinary contribution. While five weeks is nothing when compared to the decades of our overall academic careers, the summer fellowship was a rare and invaluable turbo boost to my scholarship, where my interest in establishing Pivotal Constructions as a work of public scholarship would not have been possible otherwise. It was wonderfully invigorating to make this significant advancement in my own

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work, and absolutely inspiring to witness similar experiences unfolding in my fellow fellows.

So often in the course of my own intellectual growth, I’ve been torn between what “I am expected to do” and what “I want to do.” The summer fellowship has been the single-most significant opportunity I have had where those two divergent priorities came together to be mutually beneficial; the place where I had the time, headspace, and support (camaraderie and fellowship) to forge ahead with an untested intellectual endeavor, and to emerge from the process with confidence, significant work product, and solid footing for sustaining a body of research that is both fulfilling and valued.

—Irene Hwang is Lecturer III in architecture

summer faculty

FELLOWS

SUEANN CAULFIELD

JASON FITZGERALD

IRENE HWANG

DIANA LOUIS

JENNIFER METSKER

JONATHAN READY

MOLLY SPENCER

KATHLEEN WROBLEWSKI

SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, HISTORY “Stretching the Boundaries of Legitimacy: The Changing Meaning of Family in Brazil”

SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW LECTURER IV, ART AND DESIGN “Swell”

SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE “Theatre at the End of Humanism”

SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW PROFESSOR, CLASSICAL STUDIES “Immersion, Identification, and the Iliad”

SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW LECTURER III, ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING, “Pivotal Constructions of Unseen Events: How Architecture Shaped American History, 1871-2020”

SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW LECTURER III, PUBLIC POLICY “Six and Rose: A Study of Form in Free Verse Poetry”

SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES AND AMERICAN CULTURE, “Colored Insane: Slavery, Asylums, and Mental Illness in the 19th Century”

SUMMER FACULTY FELLOW LECTURER III, HISTORY, “Migration to the Self: Education, Political Economy, and Religious Authority in Polish Communities, 18801929”

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OCTAVIA BUTLER WEEK Exploring the work and legacy of a visionary writer

Octavia E. Butler was a renowned African American author who received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. With Octavia Butler Week, we aimed to explore the work and legacy of this visionary writer as part of a community-wide collaboration called Parable Path A2Ypsi. Culminating Parable Path A2Ypsi was Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s genre-defying musical adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, presented by the University Musical Society at the Power Center in Ann Arbor.

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Parable of the Sower books given out as prizes during Octavia Butler Week

faculty Bénédicte Boisseron (Afroamerican and African studies, Romance languages and literatures), Jeremy Glover (PhD candidate, English), Aliyah Khan (English and Afroamerican and African studies), Ebony Elizabeth Thomas (School of Education), and Antoine Traisnel (English and comparative literature).

Undergraduate students at Parable Paint Night.

OCTAVIA BUTLER WEEK EVENTS OCTAVIA’S SPACES IN COMMUNITY PLACES SCAVENGER HUNT Our Public Humanities Interns organized this Octavia Butler-themed scavenger hunt as a means of getting other students thinking about and interested in the author and the themes in her work. Using the GooseChase app, they created 20 different missions, including “go to the Power Center for the Performing Arts and strike your best Octavia Butler pose” and “find one recent piece of positive climate news and attach a screenshot of it.”

Participants who earned a certain number of points won a copy of Parable of the Sower and an Octavia Butler Week bookmark.

READING OCTAVIA BUTLER: A PANEL DISCUSSION This standing-room-only discussion of Octavia Butler’s enduring influence as a writer, thinker, and creator featured U-M

PARABLE PAINT NIGHT Our Public Humanities Interns hosted this event in collaboration with the U-M Black Student Union. They prepared a slideshow of themed images to inspire artistic creativity and played background music, to which attendees were invited to add their song recommendations. Using leftover wooden box lids from an art installation in the gallery, they painted and explored the themes of afrofuturism, science fiction, and climate justice present in the novel.

ART & AFROFUTURISM VIRTUAL PANEL Co-presented with the U-M Arts Initiative, this virtual panel explored Afrofuturism in a variety of art forms, including music, literature, film, video, and the visual arts.

The panelists were Naomi Andre (professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Residential College), Tananarive Due (award-winning author who teaches Black horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA), John Jennings (professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California at Riverside), and Susana Morris (scholar of Black feminism, Black digital media, and Afrofuturism), moderated by Christopher Audain (U-M Arts Initiative).

TREATS FOR THE TRAIL Inspired by the themes of food accessibility and sustainability, our Public Humanities Interns organized this trail mix station in the Michigan League. Students and others received a healthy snack, information about Octavia Butler Week, and a copy of Parable of the Sower.

The Octavia Butler Week Art & Afrofuturism Virtual Panel explored Afrofuturism in a variety of art forms, including music, literature, film, video, and the visual arts.

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viewings of James Hosking’s documentary film Beautiful by Night 22

Donna Personna performs at the Beautiful By Night documentary screening.

GALLERY Innovative exhibitions and arts programming

BEAUTIFUL BY NIGHT James Hosking ABOUT THE ARTIST: James Hosking is a Chicago-based photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist. His portraiture explores underseen LGBTQ+ communities and subcultures. In recent work, he prints on fabric and acrylic, as well as collages with archival material, vernacular photos, and found textures. His work was included in the 2020 exhibition Come to Your Census at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and he had a multi-year collaboration with the city’s Tenderloin Museum. His work has been screened internationally and has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, and many other publications. He collaborated with National Book Award-winning writer William T. Vollmann on a portfolio about transgender women for Port magazine. His work has received support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and San Francisco’s Grants for the Arts program.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: James Hosking lived in San Francisco’s Tenderloin 23

neighborhood from 2010 to 2018, during which time he developed the Beautiful

By Night photo series and documentary film. The work is about the veteran drag performers at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, a small bar that has had an outsized influence on San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community for more than twenty years.

It is now the last gay bar in the area. The project captures the performers Donna Personna, Olivia Hart, and Collette LeGrande as they transform at home, backstage, and onstage. It is a candid exploration of aging, identity, and labor.

Fonsi, Shizu Saldamando

RELATED EVENTS: • Special evening viewing with James Hosking in conversation with Curator Amanda Krugliak Beautiful By Night documentary screening including appearances by two of the film’s protagonists: Olivia Hart and Donna Personna.

NEVER FREE TO REST Rashaun Rucker ABOUT THE ARTIST: Rashaun Rucker (b. 1978, Winston-Salem, NC) ) is a product of North Carolina Central University and Marygrove College. He makes photographs, prints, and drawings and has won more than 40 national and state awards for his work.

In 2008 Rucker became the first African American to be named Michigan Press Photographer of the Year. He also won a national Emmy Award in 2008 for documentary photography on the pit bull culture in Detroit. Rucker was a Maynard Fellow at Harvard in 2009 and a Hearst visiting professional in the journalism department at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2013.

In 2014 Rucker was awarded an artist 24

residency at the Red Bull House of Art. In 2016 Rucker was honored as a Modern Man by Black Enterprise magazine. In 2017 Rucker created the original artwork for the critically acclaimed Detroit Free Press documentary 12th and Clairmount.

His work was recently featured in HBO’s celebrated series Random Acts of Flyness and the movie Native Son. In 2019 Rucker was the first Red Bull Arts Detroit grant awardee and was named a Kresge Arts Fellow for his drawing practice. In 2020 Rucker was named a Sustainable Arts Foundation awardee. In 2021 he was awarded a prestigious International Studies and Curatorial Program (ISCP) residency.

Rucker’s diverse work is represented in numerous public and private collections.

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION: See article on page 12 RELATED EVENTS: • Special evening viewing with Rashaun

Rucker in conversation with curator Amanda Krugliak This exhibition was possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation as part of the Institute for the Humanities High Stakes Art Initiative.

WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER / CUANDO ESTO TERMINE Shizu Saldamando ABOUT THE ARTIST: Shizu Saldamando is an Los Angeles based mixed media artist with an emphasis on portraiture. She received her BA from UCLA’s School of Arts an Architecture and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited both locally and internationally and experiments with a broad range of surfaces and materials. Saldamando’s practice employs tattooing, video, painting and drawing on

MADISON FLOOD

GALLERY INTERN

reflection

A new way of perceiving and interpreting information As I hunch over my laptop in a Latvian cafe, stress drapes its weight over me. In two hours, how do I articulate a reflection on the two years of path-altering mentorship and involvement at the Institute for the Humanities? In an attempt to decompress and recollect, I take a ten-minutes-of-blankly-staring-into-basketwoven-lampshades break and realize that “looking up” is a lesson that I have learned from Amanda Krugliak, curator of the Institute for the Humanities Gallery and my mentor, time after time.

I began interning at the gallery in August 2020. I consider this experience to be my formal introduction to the art world, and Amanda gently guided me through this new way of perceiving and interpreting information.

Although I withdrew from classes halfway through the semester, leading to an 18-month break from studying at U-M, my position at the gallery persisted. As I developed my own relationship to and practice within the arts, Amanda adaptably provided me with mentorship.

It began with my enrollment in Amanda’s minicourse during the spring semester of 2020, where she encouraged students to think visually about their academic research and interests. Her practice was my first glimpse of the arts at the University of Michigan, and the final assignment of translating my activist interests into a PowerPoint proposal for an arts installation felt surprisingly natural to me. It was actually fun, a feeling I had hardly associated with my U-M studies. After the minicourse was complete, the turbulence from the pandemic threw me off my intended course of study, opening opportunity for deep reflection and change. During this time, I decided that the alignment that I felt with the humanities was something I would continue to explore.

Upon returning to my studies in January 2022, I was overjoyed to return to the position as gallery intern. Through this internship I have gained exposure to various artists and their practices, a cohesive view of curation, and a gentle evolution of visual thought. And from this I have birthed my own artistic practice, currently based in Riga, Latvia, where I am preparing for my first publication of poetry and collage work. I would not be here without my involvement in the institute. My position as gallery intern has been one of the cornerstones of my time at U-M, and for that I have the utmost gratitude.

—Madison K. Flood, gallery intern

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How to Build a Disaster Proof House installation, Tracey Snelling.

canvas, wood, paper, and cloth. The work functions as homage, as well as documentation of friends and peers within artistic and musical subcultures around the Los Angeles metropolitan area. She is currently represented by Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles.

47,000+ views of our Instagram stories

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: In When This is All Over/Cuando Esto Termine, Shizu Saldamando explored the many layers and intersections of individual and collective identity.

Featuring people from the Latinx art scene, queer clubs, her native Los Angeles, and a family both Mexican-American and Japanese-American, Saldamando’s portraits honor those closest to her in a time defined by isolation and disconnect. The images, mostly in oil and mixed media, include handmade papers, glitter, and gold leaf that trace back to the craft traditions of Saldamando’s multiethnic heritage.

In the Osterman Common Room, Saldamando

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projected amateur footage of life in the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Wyoming, captured

by Naokichi Hashizume in February 1945. This short film documents Japanese-Americans interned in the camp making wreaths of paper roses, a way to honor loss at a time when fresh flowers weren’t available. Saldamando’s mother’s family was forced into the internment camps because of their Japanese descent. While at U-M, Saldamando engaged U-M students in flower-making and conversation, creating the space for human connection through crafting. Saldamando and students shared stories, histories, and their feelings navigating through the challenges of the present day. The flowers were then installed on a section of chain link fence and mounted in the Osterman Common Room, creating their own makeshift memorial to honor their experiences together.

RELATED EVENTS: • Special evening viewing with Shizu Saldamando in conversation with Curator Amanda Krugliak

The Small Details exhibition.

• Numerous workshops where students learn how to make the same paper flowers created in the Japanese Internment Camps during WWII.

HOW TO BUILD A DISASTER PROOF HOUSE Tracey Snelling ABOUT THE ARTIST: Through the use of sculpture, photography, video, and large-scale installation, Tracey Snelling gives her impression of a place, its people, and their experience. Often, the cinematic image stands in for real life as it plays out behind windows in the buildings, sometimes creating a sense of mystery, other times stressing the mundane. Snelling’s work derives from voyeurism, film noir, and geographical and architectural location. Within this idea of location, themes develop that transport observation into the realm of storytelling, with reality and sociological study being the focus.

Snelling’s core skill as an artist is to capture the essence of time and place, engaging with her surroundings and merging its residents, localities, and atmospheric peculiarities into her work. By exploring the immediate environment, studying every detail and extracting specific highlights, Snelling transforms the information into artworks, best described as 3-D non-linear sculptural films.

Combining sculpture, video, light, sound, and

sometimes even water and smell, they capture places and people at a specific time in history.

Tracey Snelling’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Belgium; Palazzo Reale, Milan; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany; El Museo de Arte de Banco de la Republica, Bogota; the Stenersen Museet, Oslo; and the Sundance Film Festival. Her work was exhibited at the 2019 Havana Biennale and Venice Biennale.

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION: See article on page 28.

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fields of study represented by our 2021-22 fellows

RELATED EVENTS: • Special evening viewing with Tracey Snelling in conversation with Curator Amanda Krugliak • Numerous workshops with the artist. See article on page 28 for details.

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HOW TO BUILD A DISASTER PROOF HOUSE Tracey Snelling

Artist Tracey Snelling’s How to Build a Disaster Proof House contemplated the uncertainty, displacement, and disenfranchisement that frames the present day. How do we find a safe place, protected from bad weather and circumstance, in an era of floods, fires, violence, abuse, and pandemics? Snelling found a route for escape by constructing big and small sculptural worlds, private and public. Snelling was at U-M during winter term 2022 as the U-M Stamps School of Art & Design’s Roman Witt Artist in Residence. During her residency, the Institute for the Humanities Gallery and its Osterman Common Room functioned as a “laboratory,” or open studio, where visitors could see the artist’s creative process as the installation evolved.

Vital to the project were workshops with groups across U-M campus and further afield during which participants created small-scale rooms or dwellings, ”a room of one’s own’’ reflective of their personal feelings and ideas about home, safety, and dreams. Snelling and curator Amanda Krugliak conducted the workshops, which included U-M students and the Ann Arbor Art Center. U-M School of Social Work alumna Alexzandria McCrum, a former student in Krugliak’s course “Provocations and Other Acts,” was pivotal in helping facilitate a collaboration with the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County and Freighthouse Day Shelter, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. We also worked with U-M Professor of Art & Design Nick Tobier and his MDesign Cohort 7 class on workshops with the refugee housing project Freedom Village in Hamtramck. In total there were over 200 participants and more than a dozen workshops.

The experience of crafting together articulated the fundamental importance of our relationship to one another. The myriad of rooms were then displayed in the Osterman Common Room, as well as becoming part of an installation on wheels. This “Disaster-Proof mobile unit” was exhibited at the 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival in the Michigan Theater, where Snelling’s short film A Poem is a City, created in collaboration with Arthur Debert, was in competition. A Disaster Proof community installation also appeared at the Ann Arbor Art Center.

A young community member shows off the “room” she made during the Hamtramck workshop.

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THE SMALL DETAILS Amy Sacksteder and Brenda Singletary ABOUT THE ARTISTS: Amy Sacksteder’s work explores personal and collective relationships to landscape and artifact. She works across media, most commonly in painting, collage, drawing, cut paper, installation, and ceramics. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY); Buckham Gallery (Flint, MI); IBIS Contemporary (New Orleans, LA); and Contemporary Art Matters Gallery (Artsy and NY).

Sacksteder has completed artist residencies at SÍM (Reykjavík, Iceland) and Takt (Berlin, Germany), among others. Her work has been featured and reviewed in journals such as The Offing and New American Paintings. In 2021, she was invited to join the Long Island City Studio Collective in New York. She is now represented

by IBIS Contemporary in New Orleans. Sacksteder is a professor in the School of Art + Design at Eastern Michigan University.

Brenda Singletary’s work ranges from figurative and abstract to floral and landscapes. Her original mixed media works are paintings on canvas and paper. She also works in constructed sculptural paintings. Singletary received her BA from Morris Brown College and an MFA-IA from Goddard College. She served two years as a panel judge for the President’s Commission on White House Fellows, and her artwork is a part of the White House art collection. She continues her work with the White House Fellows creating art for their fundraising projects and as an invited speaker in their education program. Singletary’s work

has been shown in various galleries and museums internationally.

Corporations such as AT&T and Kaiser-Permanente include her work in their collection. Her numerous awards and grants include the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus Cultural Awards, The Detroit Fine Arts Cultural Award, Golden Sable Award from the United Negro College Fund, and the Daimler-Chrysler Motion through Expression Art Competition Award. Originally from Detroit, Singletary currently resides in Toledo, Ohio.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: Artists Amy Sacksteder and Brenda Singletary are both visual storytellers, exploring their relationships to place and time through the contemplation of objects and raw materials within the context and the process of painting. Although disparate in their methods and aesthetic choices, there is a surprising connection in their deep commitment to the particulars, in all the small details more than “the big picture”…the idiosyncrasies and incidentals that give meaning, resonance, and renewal to their own visual languages, and artistic practices ongoing. This two-person exhibition opportunity intends to offer support and further exposure specifically for regional contemporary artists.

This exhibition was possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation as part of the Institute for the Humanities High Stakes Art Initiative.

RELATED EVENTS: • Opening reception with Curator Amanda Krugliak in conversation with Amy Sacksteder and Brenda Singletary

Detail of Human Moment, Brenda Singletary

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One of the poems submitted during the Poetry Blast Prompt-a-Poem daily poetry challenge.

2022 POETRY BLAST

UNTITLED Miria

Like a bird I stretch my wings Like a song is made to sing Hands a feet up in the air Flying high all in a pair Clourds and sky confuse me In a magic all to see Light, I feel I see I smell All my senses swell In a moment that has to be All the life is in me.

A Celebration of National Poetry Month With our second annual Poetry Blast, our aim was for everyone in our community to read a poem, write a poem, or listen to a poem during National Poetry Month (April). We shared recordings of U-M poets reading their poems, ran a “prompt a poem” poetry writing challenge, posted more than 50 “pop-up poems’’ on the diag and the exterior of campus buildings, and brought the attention of National Poetry Month and Poetry Blast to the community through advertisements on city buses.

Many thanks to our collaborators at Michigan Quarterly Review, who provided the poems for the pop-up poems; to poet and novelist Laura Kasischke, professor of English, who supplied the prompts for the poetry writing challenge; and to the U-M poets who recorded their poems for us to share.

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Poetry Blast display on Weiser Hall.

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poems displayed on campus

SUPPORT The Institute for the Humanities is a center for innovative, collaborative study in the humanities and arts.

Drawing on Michigan’s remarkable resources, we are a national leader in advocating for the humanities in higher education and serve as a national and international center for scholarly research in the humanities and creative work in the arts. By engaging with the institute through your gifts, you directly support the university and the institute in our mission to: • Engage and address the world as a premier institute that boldly integrates the humanities with the arts.

• Stand at the forefront of public outreach and service through the humanities and arts.

• Maximize scholarly impact by funding time and opportunities for Michigan’s best emerging scholars.

• Encourage and promote cutting-edge research across the humanities and the arts.

Please support the Institute for the Humanities generously as together we make a profound and continuing difference in our university and the world.

The institute is currently focused on raising funds in support of the art gallery and its exhibitions. The institute’s gallery has gained national attention for the high quality of its curated shows mounted annually. The Gallery and Arts Programming Fund, an expendable gift fund (334081), was established in 2019 for this very purpose. The institute

is also seeking to establish endowments to name the gallery and/or one of its three to five annual shows ensuring the institute is able to continue its tradition of superb exhibitions that showcase the synergies between the work of humanities scholars and creative artists. It will also enable expanded outreach to undergraduate students and the general public through programming centered on gallery exhibitions and visiting artists.

HOW TO GIVE One of the easiest ways to support the humanities is through an outright gift to the Institute for the Humanities.

The University of Michigan makes giving such gifts very easy through its secure gift website (https://leadersandbest. umich.edu/find/#!/scu/ lsa), search on the term “humanities” and available funds will be listed.

To discuss establishing an endowment or bequest in detail please contact the director, Peggy McCracken at peggymcc@umich.edu or 734.936.3518.

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AFFILIATES AND STAFF STAFF Grace Geiger, social media coordinator Stephanie Harrell, assistant director, undergraduate engagement & marketing Amanda Krugliak, arts curator/assistant director, creative programming Peggy McCracken, director Gretchen O’Hair, fellows coordinator Karina Pantoja, administrative coordinator Sheri Sytsema-Geiger, administrative manager GALLERY INTERN Madison K. Flood, undergraduate curatorial intern INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Claire Croft, American culture, women’s and gender studies Deirdre de la Cruz, Southeast Asian studies, history Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola, Spanish Paul C. Johnson, history, Afroamerican and African studies Peggy McCracken, ex officio; director, Institute for the Humanities Supriya Nair, English Alexandra Stern, ex officio; associate dean, humanities; American culture, history, women’s studies, obstetrics and gynecology Arthur Verhoogt, papyrology and Greek Yi-Li Wu, women’s studies, history NONDISCRIMINATION POLICY STATEMENT The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/ Section 504/ADA Coordinator, Office of Institutional Equity, 2072

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Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, 734-763-0235, TTY 734-647-1388. For other University of Michigan information call 734-764-1817.

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Jordan B. Acker, Southfield Michael J. Behm, Grand Blanc Mark J. Bernstein, Ann Arbor Paul W. Brown, Ann Arbor Sarah Hubbard, Lansing Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms Mary Sue Coleman, ex officio Ron Weiser, Ann Arbor Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor WWW.LSA.UMICH.EDU/HUMANITIES 202 S. Thayer Street, Suite 1111 Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1608 734.936.3518 CONNECT WITH US!

@UofMHumanities

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boxes created as part of artist Tracey Snelling’s engagements with the community and students

How to Build a Disaster Proof House oscampu.elrbintv 33

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES Research into the human condition—how we live in the world and how we live with each other—is vital to the cultivation of a just and equitable society. At the Institute for the Humanities, we facilitate work that examines humanities traditions broadly across space and time, deepens synergies among the humanities, the arts, and disciplines across the university, and brings the voices of the humanities to public life.

Each year we provide fellowships for Michigan faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars who work on scholarly and artistic projects. We also offer a wide array of public and scholarly events, including public lectures, workshops, discussions and art exhibitions.

Since 1987, when Arthur Miller read from his memoir Timebends at our inauguration, the Institute has granted fellowships to over 500 Michigan faculty, Michigan graduate students, and visiting faculty and artist.

The Institute for the Humanities: • Encourages fellows to talk and debate, informally and formally—all in an effort to reach beyond the assumptions of a given discipline • Promotes innovative teaching in the humanities, encouraging fellows to add perspectives from other disciplines to the courses they teach • Brings nationally known scholars, artists, and performers to Michigan to participate in programs, conferences, and fellowships • Offers programs reaching out to university and public audiences. Brings together those who create—artists, musicians, actors, writers—with those who analyze these art forms.

The University of Michigan is located on the territory of the Anishinaabe people. In 1817, the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadami Nations made the largest single land transfer to the University of Michigan, ceded in the Treaty of Fort Meigs, so that their children could be educated. We acknowledge the history of native displacement that allowed the University of Michigan to be founded. Today we reaffirm contemporary and ancestral Anishinaabek ties to the land and their profound contributions to this institution.