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MLK Day Event | A Conversation with Veterans for Peace
Should we have a military mainly for defense, or should we use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests? Before Dr. King’s tragic death, he spoke out more and more against government use of military over diplomacy and the use of armed forces in the routine policy of the state. For such actions, Dr. King was criticized heavily and to this day his thoughts on war still make people uncomfortable.
Veterans For Peace will discuss Dr. King's speeches relating to defense versus militarism, showing that they are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago.
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Becoming American | "Muslim Cool: Race Religion and Hip Hop in the United States" with Dr. Su'ad Abdul Khabeer
Su'ad Abdul Khabeer is a scholar-artist-activist who uses anthropology and performance to explore the intersections of race and popular culture.
Su'ad is currently an associate professor of American Culture and Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Princeton University and is a graduate from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and completed the Islamic Studies diploma program of the Institute at Abu Nour University (Damascus).
Her latest work, Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States (NYU Press 2016), is an ethnography on Islam and hip hop that examines how intersecting ideas of Muslimness and Blackness challenge and reproduce the meanings of race in the US.
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Familiar and Exotic: The Long History of Arab Restaurants in the United States
Beginning with the earliest Arab immigrants to the U.S. in the 1880s, restaurants have been a staple of Arab immigrant communities. Originally meant to serve the Arab American population, the restaurants quickly became favorite spots for adventurous eaters. As Arab restaurants began serving more and more non-Arab diners, they transitioned from holes-in-the-wall to elaborately decorated and exotically named dining experiences. Today, there is likely to be at least one Arab restaurant in every small and large city in the U.S., despite the relatively small population of Arab Americans nationally. Matthew Jaber Stiffler, PhD, Research and Content Manager, and Ryah Aqel, Curator of Education & Public Programs, both of the Arab American National Museum, will trace the development of the Arab restaurant over the last 125+ years, with a focus on New York City and metro Detroit.
Ryah Aqel serves as the Curator of Education & Public Programming. She received her B.A. in Political Science & Arab, Armenian, Persian, Turkish and Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. Her M.A. in Near East Studies was received from New York University. Ryah organizes and implements statewide educational activities, as well as developing programs that educate the public on Arab Americans and the Arab world.
Matthew Jaber Stiffler is the Research and Content Manager at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, MI, where he works with museum staff to accurately represent the diverse Arab American community through the museum’s collections, exhibits, and educational programming. Matthew has also helped to develop the museum’s food-based programming, particularly the Yalla Eat! Culinary Walking Tours. Matthew also leads a national research initiative through ACCESS, the largest Arab American non-profit in the country, in an effort to secure better data about the Arab American community. Matthew received his Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan in 2010, where he serves as a lecturer in Arab and Muslim American Studies. Matthew’s research focuses on the confluence between religious and cultural identities of Arab Americans, particularly through community memory, celebrations, and foodways. He is currently a board member and treasurer of the Arab American Studies Association.
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Speak Truth To Power
Join the Michigan Daily for the first in a series of panel discussions. In part one, "Speak Truth To Power: The Role of Journalism," panelists examine concerns of transparency and accountability in local institutions, with a particular focus on the role played by journalists and local news organizations.
A panel of esteemed, professional local journalists discuss these topics:
David Jesse, the higher education reporter for the Detroit Free Press, has covered the state’s two-year and four-year colleges and universities for a decade. His work has focused on higher education finances, access and accessibility and sexual assault on campus. In the past year , he has broken major stories on the cover-up at Michigan State University following the Larry Nassar scandal. He, along with a reporting partner, have spent more than two years penetrating the secrecy around the University of Michigan’s $12 billion endowment. He has won dozens of national and state awards for his work. Prior to joining the Free Press, he worked for papers around the state of Michigan, including the Ann Arbor News.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers for August 2018: Martin Bandyke interviews Robert Gordon, author of Memphis Rent Party: The Blues, Rock & Soul in Music’s Hometown.
From the publisher of Memphis Rent Party - "The fabled city of Memphis has been essential to American music--home of the blues, the birthplace of rock and roll, a soul music capital. We know the greatest hits, but celebrated author Robert Gordon takes us to the people and places history has yet to record. A Memphis native, he whiles away time in a crumbling duplex with blues legend Furry Lewis, stays up late with barrelhouse piano player Mose Vinson, and sips homemade whiskey at Junior Kimbrough's churning house parties. A passionate listener, he hears modern times deep in the grooves of old records by Lead Belly and Robert Johnson.
The interconnected profiles and stories in Memphis Rent Party convey more than a region. Like mint seeping into bourbon, Gordon gets into the wider world. He beholds the beauty of mistakes with producer Jim Dickinson (Replacements, Rolling Stones), charts the stars with Alex Chilton (Box Tops, Big Star), and mulls the tragedy of Jeff Buckley's fatal swim. Gordon's Memphis inspires Cat Power, attracts Townes Van Zandt, and finds James Carr always singing at the dark end of the street.
A rent party is when friends come together to hear music, dance, and help a pal through hard times; it's a celebration in the face of looming tragedy, an optimism when the wolf is at the door. Robert Gordon finds mystery in the mundane, inspiration in the bleakness, and revels in the individualism that connects these diverse encounters."
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A Conversation With Chef and Writer Tunde Wey
Nigerian-born chef and writer Tunde Wey opened a restaurant in Detroit in 2013. A year later, realizing that the influx of capital to the city was not contributing to an inclusive revival but to the profit of those already "fluent in the language of privilege," Tunde left the restaurant and moved to New Orleans.
He now travels around the country holding dinners, using food as a medium to have conversations about race, equity, and cultural values. Recently, the has received national press for Saarti, his lunch counter in New Orleans where white patrons were asked to pay $30 per plate and people of color were charged $12 per plate as a way to call attention to racial wealth disparity. Participants of color could “opt-in” to receive the profit redistribution.
In this video, artist and Stamps School Professor Rebekah Modrak (whose works, such as Rethink Shinola, critically intervene in consumption) moderates a conversation with Tunde about his work as a chef, his decision to use food as provocation, the possibility of transforming consumptive acts through dinners and pop-up restaurants, discriminatory development, racial wealth disparity, and the importance of self-determination in affecting the outcomes of your life and community. While in Ann Arbor, Wey also hosted two private dinners for local residents and advocates concerned with equity and race and offered food truck conversations for four nights.
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Unlikely Conductors - Underground Railroad
We learn in history class that the Underground Railroad was extremely instrumental in aiding slaves escaping captivity and searching for freedom. What we don't learn about is the role that Native Americans, who sometimes were slaves themselves, played in helping those slaves get to freedom.
Join Heather Bruegl, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, and learn about the important role that Native American people played in the Underground Railroad.
Bruegl, inspired by a trip to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, quickly developed a passion for Native American History. Curiosity for her own heritage led her to Wisconsin, where she researched the history of the Native American tribes of that region.
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Getting Below the Surface: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Youth
Deborah Rivas-Drake is Associate Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Michigan. Together with the Contexts of Academic + Social Adjustment (CASA) Lab, Dr. Rivas-Drake examines how adolescents navigate issues related to race and ethnicity in peer and family settings and how these experiences inform their academic and socioemotional development. Her work seeks to illuminate promising practices that help set diverse young people on trajectories of positive contribution to their schools and communities.
This program is part of the "Exploring the Mind" series and is a partnership with The University of Michigan Department of Psychology.
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West African Art and Music in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, with Victoria Shields
Drawing from the African American Cultural Humanities (AC) curriculum, Educator Victoria Shields leads a workshop for music and art lovers with discussion of the 2018 Washtenaw Read, Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi. Shields examines the social and historical contexts presented in Homegoing using music — including a focus on how West Africa influenced American music — as well as visual art from the Detroit Institute of Art collection.
Shields is a doctoral student in the Eastern Michigan University Urban Education program focusing on curriculum development and programming. She conducts teacher training at state and national conferences and focuses on the development of Humanities and Social Science curriculum with the integration of music, dance and visual art.
This event is part of programming for the 2018 Washtenaw Read.
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Re-imagining Mental Health Services for American Indian Communities: Centering Indigenous Perspectives
The indigenous peoples of North America are heirs to the shattering legacy of European colonization. These brutal histories of land dispossession, military conquest, forced settlement, religious repression, and coercive assimilation have robbed American Indian communities of their economies, life ways, and sources of meaning and significance in the world. The predictable consequence has been an epidemic of “mental health” problems such as demoralization, substance abuse, violence, and suicide. This presentation reviews the implicit logics that structure mental health service delivery as well as key ethno-psychological commitments of many American Indian communities in an effort to re-imagine counseling services in a manner that truly centers indigenous perspectives.
Joseph P. Gone is Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. His interdisciplinary scholarship explores the sociocultural foundations of healthy and disordered psychological experience on one hand, and the normative and prescriptive activities of mental health professionals on the other hand. His current projects are dedicated to integrating indigenous healing practices into clinical mental health settings that serve Native American people.
This program is part of the "Exploring the Mind" series and is a partnership with The University of Michigan Department of Psychology.