 | We hope you are enjoying the cool Fall weather. The Humanities Institute's November Newsletter includes details on our upcoming events, including the Controversy & Conversation screening of Reversing Roe on November 7, the Fall 2019 Difficult Dialogues Public Forum on November 13 featuring musician and storyteller Martha Redbone and filmmakers Angelo Baca and UT's Anne Lewis (RTF), and the final lecture in the 2019 Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series on "Narrative and Social Justice" by Dr. Tiya Miles on December 11. We also share blog posts written by HI student staff members on some of our fall presentations on medical humanities and narrative and social justice. Finally, we are pleased to share two funding and sponsorship opportunities: an RFP for collaborative seed grants on "Healthcare Technology, Communication, and Privacy" administered by the Humanities Institute and the Center for Health Communication, and a CFA for the Nonprofit Accelerators Program launched by UT's Human Dimensions of Organizations. We look forward to seeing you at an HI event soon! | Free and open to the public.
Thursday, November 7, 2019
6:30 - 9:00 PM
Terrazas Branch, Austin Public Library
1105 E. Cesar Chavez Street
Austin, TX 78702 Forty-five years after it revolutionized abortion law in America, the landmark 1973 US Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade is once again at a crossroads. In their timely new documentary, Reversing Roe (2018), filmmakers Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg present an illuminating look of the state of abortion and women's rights in America. The film offers candid interviews with key figures from both sides of the divide. Intense and unflinching in its commitment to telling the whole story, Reversing Roe provides a gripping look at what's happening on the ground in 2018. Drawing from a wealth of historical footage, it charts the period leading up to the Roe decision and documents the opposition that has followed ever since. | The screening will begin at 6:30PM, to be followed by a dialogue facilitated by Lauren Thaxton, M.D., MBA, Assistant Professor in the Department of Women’s Health at Dell Medical School. Dr. Thaxton came to Dell Medical School from the University of New Mexico, where she completed both her residency and her fellowship. She received her medical degree from Texas Tech University Health Science Center School of Medicine and holds a master’s degree in biomedical sciences with a focus on clinical research and a Master of Business Administration with a focus on health organization management. Dr. Thaxton’s research is focused on patient-centered care in contraception, abortion and outpatient anesthesia. Her articles have been published in journals such as the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics. She has been invited to present posters and abstracts pertaining to her work at the regional and national level. Controversy & Conversation is a collaboration between the Humanities Institute's Difficult Dialogues Program and the Austin Public Library. Documentary screenings take place the first Thursday of the month at the Terrazas Branch of the Austin Public Library. Screenings begin at 6:30 PM and are followed by a 30-50 minute community conversation. Light refreshments are provided. | | Fall 2019 Difficult Dialogues Public Forum | Wednesday, November 13, 2019
7:00 - 9:00 PM
Santa Rita Suite
The Texas Union
2308 Whitis Avenue, Austin 78712 Free and open to the public. RSVPs are appreciated but not required. This Fall the UT Humanities Institute is partnering with Texas Performing Arts and Native American and Indigenous Studies to host a special dialogue on “Indigeneity, the Land, and Storytelling" featuring musician and storyteller Martha Redbone with filmmakers Angelo Baca and Anne Lewis. The discussion will be moderated by Pauline Strong, Director of the Humanities Institute. Martha Redbone is a multi award-winning musician and storyteller celebrated for her roots music embodying the folk, indigenous, and mountain blues sounds of her childhood in the Appalachian hills of Kentucky. Angelo Baca is a Hopi/Diné documentary filmmaker and a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at New York University. Anne Lewis is Associate Professor of Practice at UT Austin's Department of Radio-Television-Film and an independent documentary-maker associated with Appalshop Films, a media arts and cultural center located in the heart of the Central Appalachian Coalfields. Martha Redbone's residency at UT also includes "A Conversation about American Root Music with Martha Redbone" on November 12 (details HERE) and the Spring 2020 "Martha Redbone Bone Hill: The Concert" (details HERE). Information on Angelo Baca's November 14 talk on "Unsettling Pasts, Hopeful Futures: Native American and Mormon Relationships to Land and People" can be found HERE. The Public Forum is sponsored by Texas Performing Arts, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and the Humanities Institute through the Barron Ulmer Kidd Centennial Lectureship and the Difficult Dialogues Program. It is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. | | Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series on "Narrative & Social Justice" | Wednesday, December 11, 2019
7:00 - 8:30 PM
Avaya Auditorium, POB 2.302
201 E 24th Street, Austin 78712 Free and open to the public. RSVPs are appreciated but not required. | The Humanities Institute will conclude the 2019 Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series on “Narrative and Social Justice" with a talk by Tiya Miles, Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University, on "The Materiality of Slavery: Narrating Enslaved Women's Lives Through Things." The talk and discussion will be held on Wednesday, December 11 at 7 PM in the UT Avaya Auditorium (POB 2.302). Tiya Miles is the author of three prize-winning works in the history of American slavery, including Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom and The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story. Her most recent book, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits, was awarded an American Book Award, the Rawley Prize in Race Relations and Curti Award in Social History from the OAH, the Bradford Biography Prize from SHEAR, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Non-fiction, and a Frederick Douglass Book Prize. Miles’s historical fiction, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. She has shared her travels to "haunted" historic sites of slavery in a published lecture series and written various articles and op-eds (in The New York Times, CNN.com, the Huffington Post) on women’s history, history and memory, black public culture, and black and indigenous interrelated experience. She is a past MacArthur Foundation Fellow and Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellow and a current National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award recipient. She taught on the faculty of the University of Michigan for sixteen years and is currently a Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University. The lecture is free and open to the public. RSVPs are appreciated but not required. The event is sponsored by the Sterling Clark Holloway Centennial Lectureship and co-sponsored by the Program for Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS). | About the Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series
Each year the Humanities Institute sponsors a series of free public lectures delivered by distinguished visitors to the University. The lectures are centered on a biennially selected theme of broad intellectual and social importance — the same theme considered in the Institute's Faculty Fellows Seminar. | by Alissa Williams, HI Undergraduate Assistant Dr. Kirsten Ostherr, the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English, Director of the Medical Futures Lab at Rice University, and an Adjunct Professor at the UT-Houston School of Public Health, gave a talk on “AI and the Medical Humanities: An Emerging Field of Critical Intervention” at the October Health and Humanities Research Seminar. Discussing the past, present, and future role of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine, Dr. Ostherr argued that AI and related “datafication” practices are coming to constitute a new social determinant of health, a term often defined as “conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play [that] affect a wide range of health risks and outcomes.” Dr. Ostherr’s lecture was an enlightening take on the potential positive impacts of AI, but also a warning as to how dangerous its reach can become if it goes unchecked. The seminar began with a chronological mapping of AI’s appropriation into the medical field and ended with a call to action for scholars across all disciplines, as well as the public, to participate in the advancement and regulation of AI as it relates to medicine and health. | About the Health and Humanities Research Seminar Series:
The Humanities Institute hosts a series of monthly Health & Humanities Research Seminars in partnership with Dell Medical School. The seminar series allows researchers to share cutting-edge work at the intersection of Health and the Humanities. The last seminar of the Fall semester in the Health & Humanities Research Seminar series will feature Tracie Harrison, PhD (UT School of Nursing). On November 18, Dr. Harrison will speak on “Aging Mexican Men, Broken Bodies, and Waning Ideals: The Phenomenology of a Masculine Evolution.” To inquire about joining the HH Research Seminars, please contact Kathryn North at knnorth@austin.utexas.edu. | by Stephanie Holmes, HI Undergraduate Assistant The Humanities Institute continued its Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series on Wednesday, October 23 with a visual presentation by Dr. Jason De León, Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and Director of the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP). Dr. De León's presentation, “Soldiers and Kings: A Photoethnography of Human Smuggling Across Mexico,” shared his experience with human smugglers bringing migrants from Central America to the U.S./Mexico border. Cropped faces, blurred motion and monochrome photos helped tell the story of the men Dr. De León came to know personally. “I’m not here to humanize smugglers. They are human,” said Dr. De León, “I’m just trying to show you their humanity, even in its most disturbing forms.” His presentation focused on how human smuggling is currently organized, what can be gained by using a camera, from a photoethnographic approach. | About the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP):
The Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) is a long-term anthropological study of clandestine movement between Latin America and the United States that uses ethnography, archaeology, visual anthropology, and forensic science to understand this social process. In Fall 2020, The Humanities Institute plans to host the Hostile Terrain exhibit, a project facilitated by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP). To receive information about the Distinguished Visiting Lecture Series and the upcoming exhibit, please stay tuned to the Humanities Institute’s website and sign up for our mailing list. | Proposals due Friday, November 22, 2019, 5:00 p.m.
To apply, visit the InfoReady Review competition page. The Humanities Institute (College of Liberal Arts) and the Center for Health Communication (Dell Medical School / Moody College of Communication) announce a competition for small collaborative seed grants on Healthcare Technology, Communication, and Privacy. This opportunity seeks to foster new interdisciplinary research projects that consider the impact of various forms of information and communication technology on health care, health communication, and patient/client privacy. The grants of $3K-$20K will support research teams that bring together University expertise across at least two departments. Funds will be available by January 21, 2020 and must be spent by August 31, 2020. A convening of grantees will be held in Spring 2020, and a brief final report is due on August 31, 2020. Funding for this one-time seed grant competition was provided through the Office of the Vice President for Research. | UT's HDO Program is pleased to announce the launch of the Nonprofit Accelerators Program. HDO recognizes the vital work that nonprofits contribute to society, and wants to celebrate the individuals that make that work happen. Each semester, four people working in the nonprofit sector will be selected to attend one of their four-day certificate programs free-of-charge. These “Nonprofit Accelerators” will be full participants in their selected program and will receive a certificate upon completion of their final course. The deadline for the Spring 2020 program is December 9, 2019. To find out more about the requirements and to apply, please visit: https://hdo.utexas.edu/hdo-nonprofit-accelerators-program/. | The Humanities Institute's Newsletter is edited by Kathryn North, Administrative Program Coordinator. For more information on the University of Texas Humanities Institute, please visit our website. To contact us, please write to Kathryn at knnorth@austin.utexas.edu or call (512) 471-9056. | | |
