SCHLESINGER LIBRARY PRESENTATION

https://youtu.be/WZFtqbxZ13o

Above is a link to a video of a portion of a presentation delivered last month at Harvard University. Below is the text of the event program. The sex discrimination case referenced is Sharon Johnson v. University of Pittsburgh (Civic Action No. 73-120; United States District Court, Western District of Pennsylvania).

 

“THE GREAT MELT” SNOWBALL CEREMONY

June 14, 2017

Schlesinger Library Research Grant presentation

In connection with the projects:

My Aunt: Chemist, Black Belt, Plaintiff (book chapter)

Year of Discovery: Essay as Sculpture or ENTICEMENT TO ACTION

 

Participants

Snowball, circa terrible Boston winter of 2014-15

Ivelisse Estrada, Snowball Bearer

Kevin Grady, cinematography

Joe LaRocca, fife

Ben Miller, writer

 

There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in the Mojave that M.I.T.

PhD Sharon Johnson would sit back and let the University

of Pittsburgh deny her tenure without a fight….

 

Noon

Snowball Homily, steps of Schlesinger Library

12:10

Snowball Procession, across yard, with fife accompaniment

12:20

Snowball Melts in the Bright Light of Facts

12:40

Discussion

ESSAY IN SUMMER 2017 ISSUE OF NEW ENGLAND REVIEW

“A Banquet of Lilacs: An Essay Enacted” is the title of the essay.

To learn more about the journal, follow this link

http://www.nereview.com

IOWA MURAL SPEAKS! EVENT

On April 20^th at Cornell College students and faculty gathered to translate the poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” (William Carlos Williams) into some of the many languages spoken in the urban Midwest, including German, Russian, Portuguese and Spanish. This effort is another in support of my on-going Mural Speaks! project born at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2014.

SHORT STORY IN SPRING 2017 ISSUE OF THE ANTIOCH REVIEW

“Dunasaygrlomiplin” is the title of the story.

To learn more about the journal, follow this link:

http://review.antiochcollege.org/antioch-review-home-page

“CAGE DIES BIRD FLIES” EXCERPTS TO APPEAR IN SPRING 2017 ISSUE OF HAYDEN’S FERRY REVIEW

A spread consisting of eight works from Phase One of “Cage Dies Bird Flies,” my on-going collaboration with painter Dale Williams, will appear in Issue #60 of the Hayden’s Ferry Review. To visit this print journal’s website, follow the link below:

http://haydensferryreview.com

THREE FORTHCOMING NOVEL EXCERPTS

Soon these chapters from it all melts down to this: a novel in timelines will be appearing in the following literary journals:

“Chapter 13”—Hotel Amerika (University of Nebraska), spring 2017

http://www.hotelamerika.net

“Chapter 8”—SLAB (Slippery Rock University), spring 2017

http://www.slablitmag.org

“Chapter 12”—The Off Beat (Michigan State University), spring 2017

http://offbeat.msu.edu

Each timeline (or chapter) in this experimental work was created in response to a drawing the artist Dale Williams left on my desk chair without warning in the Midtown Manhattan office where we both worked to support our art endeavors.

FMB DATABASE/LIBRARY OF REMEMBRANCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

One of the professional blessings of this year has been my deepening collaboration with historian Irmtrud Wojak, Frieda L. Miller Fellow at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2014-15) and managing director of the nonprofit BUXUS STIFTUNG GmbH.

Together with US-based German historian Susanne Berger, we have developed the following mission statement for two archival projects named in honor of jurist and Human Rights advocate Fritz M. Bauer.

“The FMB Database’s central mission is to research, document and share humanity’s extraordinary stories of resistance in order to preserve human dignity and to create a more just and humane world.

We do this because people everywhere and at all times, often under extreme conditions, struggle for their personal dignity. It is our task to remember this fight and, at the same time, to strengthen the respect of civil liberties and human rights. We accomplish this by recounting the extraordinary global history of resistance and the pursuit of human rights, inscribing the memories deeply. In doing so, we reject impunity for human rights violators and champion the ethic of accountability.

We call on human rights activists and organizations to publish their stories on our interactive website. We invite people to share their experiences and to conduct research in creative workshops, and we take the resistance stories to schools. Some of these collected stories we plan to publish as books or monographs.

In this way, we are creating a living archive of shared humanity.”

We hope to launch the FMB Database in 2017 and to augment its reach in 2018 with the FMB Library of print volumes.

To learn more about the FMB Library follow the link below:

http://www.buxus-stiftung.de/images/download/FMB_LIBRARY_OF_REMEMBRANCE_AND_HUMAN_RIGHTS.pdf