Monthly Newsletters 2
 

Happy New Year! The Humanities Institute's staff hopes you had a wonderful holiday season, and we are excited to kick off 2019 with many exciting activities. The January 2019 Newsletter includes information on Thursday's Controversy & Conversation documentary film screening of Ken Burns' The Central Park Five, details on the Humanities Institute's events for the coming weeks including the Roundtable Presentations on "Community Archives" from the 2018 Community Sabbatical Grantees in January and the Health and Humanities Research Seminar with guest speaker, Dr. Lynn Harter in February. The January Newsletter also includes news on the Spring 2019 season's lineup for the Controversy & Conversation documentary screenings and a blog post on the concluding film of last season's series, Cartel Land.

Please read below to find further details on our Spring 2019 events and programs!

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The Central Park Five poster

Controversy & Conversation Film Screening: THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE featuring speaker Andrea Marsh, UT School of Law

Thursday, January 3, 2019
6:30PM - 8:45PM Screening & Discussion
Terrazas Branch, Austin Public Library
1105 E. Cesar Chavez Street, Austin, TX 78702

Free and open to the public.

January's Controversy & Conversation screening of The Central Park Five (2012) will feature a discussion with speaker Andrea Marsh, Clinical Lecturer and the Director of the Richard and Ginni Mithoff Pro Bono Program in the William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law at the University of Texas.

The Central Park Five (2012), from award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, tells the story of the five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem who were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in New York City's Central Park in 1989. Directed and produced by Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns, the film chronicles the Central Park Jogger case, for the first time from the perspective of the five teenagers whose lives were upended by this miscarriage of justice. Set against the backdrop of a city beset by violence and facing deepening rifts between races and classes, The Central Park Five intertwines the stories of these five young men, the victim, police officers and prosecutors, and Matias Reyes, who ultimately confessed to the crime, unraveling the forces behind the wrongful convictions. The film illuminates how law enforcement, social institutions, and media undermined the very rights of the individuals they were designed to safeguard and protect.

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About the Speaker:
In her role leading the Mithoff Program, Ms. Marsh works with students, private lawyers, and nonprofit organizations to develop and execute projects that provide legal services to underserved communities. Ms. Marsh has professional experience in civil rights advocacy, criminal justice policy, and nonprofit fundraising and management. Prior to joining Texas Law, Ms. Marsh founded the Texas Fair Defense Project (TFDP) and served as its Executive Director for ten years. While at the TFDP, Ms. Marsh was a Humanities Institute Community Sabbatical Grantee, and she researched and developed a model for providing holistic criminal defense representation in Texas. Her project responded to the growing national recognition that many individuals accused of criminal offenses either have problems such as untreated mental health issues or face collateral consequences of criminal convictions that that can severely disrupt their employment, housing, family relationships and immigrant status. Ms. Marsh is currently a Humanities Institute Faculty Fellow.

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. They begin at 6:30PM and are followed by a 30-50 minute community conversation. Light refreshments are provided.

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2018CSPics

Dr. Heather Barfield and Dr. Lilia Rosas

Community Archives: A Roundtable and Reception in Honor of the 2018 Community Sabbatical Grantees

Tuesday, January 29, 2019
5:15 - 7:15 PM: Roundtable and Reception
The Legends Room, the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center
2110 San Jacinto Blvd, Austin, TX 78712

Free and open to the public (by reservation).

On January 29, 2019, the 2018 cohort of Community Sabbatical Research Program grantees will be presenting findings from their research projects on Community Archives. The roundtable and reception will feature presentations by:

Heather Barfield, PhD, The VORTEX Repetory Theatre
"Thirty Years of Truth and Thunder: An Archival History of Austin's Premiere Alternative Theatre"

Lilia Rosas, PhD, Red Salmon Arts
"The People's Library of Resistence / Biblioteca del Pueblo de Resistencia"

The Humanities Institute will also be announcing the grantees for the 2019 Community Sabbatical Research Program at the roundtable. The event will take place at the Etter-Harbin Alumni Center (map). Parking passes are available upon request.

Comm Sabb Banner 2

The Community Sabbatical Research Leave Program, created and administered by the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, enables directors and staff members of Central Texas 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations to apply to the University for paid flexible leave in order to pursue a question or problem related to their organizations and their organizations' constituencies. Since its founding in 2005, more than thirty local organizations have received Community Sabbatical support. Grantees are matched with University faculty members with related interests who provide assistance and consultation on the proposed project. Grantees also receive access to the UT library and databases and a research stipend.

The "Community Archives" Roundtable is sponsored by the Ulmer Barron Kidd Centennial Lectureship. The event is free and open to the public (by reservation).

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LynnHarter

Dr. Lynn Harter, Ohio University

Spring 2019 Health and Humanities Research Seminar Series: Guest Presentation by Dr. Lynn Harter

Monday, February 11, 2019
4:00-5:30 PM: Seminar and Dialogue
The President's Room East, the University of Texas Club
2108 Robert Dedman Drive, Austin, TX 78712

The Health and Humanities Research Seminar is a monthly series in partnership with Dell Medical School intended to engage scholars and practitioners across the health and humanities disciplines in research-oriented dialogue. The seminars feature presentations from speakers, followed by a group discussion and casual conversation.

The first seminar of the semester will take place on February 11th at the University of Texas Club and will feature a presentation from Dr. Lynn Harter, Professor and Co-Director of the Barbara Geralds Institute for Storytelling and Social Impact in the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University. Dr. Harter's presentation is entitled "Narratives, Health, and Healing: Exploring the Therapeutic Potential of Storytelling in Health Contexts."

Abstract:
Stories matter. People engage in storytelling to account for expectations gone awry, reconstruct identities in the aftermath of tragedy, and foster social change. This interactive discussion will be guided by questions including: How does storytelling foster resilience among individuals living in vulnerable bodies? How do narrative logics function in therapeutic contexts? Under what conditions can storytelling foster empowerment in healthcare organizing?

About the Guest Speaker:
Dr. Harter is a Professor and Co-Director of the Barbara Geralds Institute for Storytelling and Social Impact in the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University. Her work focuses on the communicative construction of possibility as individuals and groups organize for survival and social change amidst profound vulnerability. She co-produced and directed an Emmy-award winning PBS documentary series titled The Courage of Creativity. She has published over 75 journal articles and book chapters and edited three scholarly books.

Dr. Harter's presentation is sponsored by the Humanities Institute through the Sterling Clark Holloway Centennial Lectureship. Seats for the seminars are limited and require advanced reservation. For more information, please contact seminar organizer, Phillip Barrish, at pbarrish@austin.utexas.edu.

The other talks in the Spring 2019 Health and Humanities Research Seminar Series include:

March 4th: David Ring, MD, PhD (Associate Dean for Comprehensive Care, Professor in the departments of Surgery and Perioperative Care and Psychiatry) - On Resilience.

April 1st: Alison Kafer, PhD (Associate Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies) - "After Crip, Crip Afters: Ambivalence and Temporality in the Work of Disability Artists.”

May 6th: Laurie Green, PhD (Associate Professor in the Department of History) - Social Medicine and the Impassioned Conflict over “Hunger” vs. “Malnutrition” vs. “Starvation”

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Announcing the Spring 2019 Controversy & Conversation Documentary Film Lineup

by Stephanie Holmes, HI Undergraduate Assistant

Since 2015 the University of Texas at Austin’s Humanities Institute has partnered with the Austin Public Library to sponsor monthly Controversy & Conversation documentary film screenings that bring the Austin community together through meaningful dialogue about documentaries depicting controversial topics that affect us all. During the Fall 2018 semester, we tackled drug trafficking and vigilantism, freedom of the press, the militarization of police and police brutality against people of color, immigration and the experience of undocumented people in the U.S., and more.

The HI and Austin Public Library have chosen five distinguished documentaries for the Spring 2019 Controversy & Conversation season, and attendees can look forward to films and conversation about the criminal justice system, the refugee crisis, food waste, sports ethics and corruption within U.S. elections.

We’ll start the Spring series with January’s screening of Ken Burns' The Central Park Five (2012), which examines the flaws of the U.S. criminal justice system and other public institutions by documenting the story of the wrongful conviction of five teenage boys from Harlem in 1989. February’s film, Human Flow (2017), directed by Ai WeiWei, focuses on human migration, particularly that of refugees and those seeking asylum from countries affected by famine and/or war. In March, we’ll continue with Wasted! The Story of Food Waste (2017) from executive producer, Anthony Bourdain. Viewers will learn the environmental impact of food waste, what is already being done to reduce it, and how society can do more going forward. In April’s film, Icarus (2017), director Bryan Fogel investigates the world of international sports and the practice of illegal blood doping. This film explores the relationship between international sports and politics while revealing the complex sacrifices people make to tell the story of an international scandal that could cost the lives of those involved. To conclude the season, we’ll be viewing Kimberly Reed's latest documentary Dark Money (2018), in May. This film brings attention to how U.S. campaigns are funded and elections are compromised by anonymous corporate donors, and explores how current campaign finance practices threaten democracy.

The Controversy & Conversation documentary screenings take place the first Thursday of the month at the Terrazas Branch of the Austin Public Library. They begin at 6:30PM and are followed by a 30-50 minute community conversation. Light refreshments are provided.

Sponsored by: The Humanities Institute and the Austin Public Library

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JakeDizard

Dr. Jake Dizard, UT Strauss Center

A Vicious Cycle of Corruption: Vigilantism, Power, and Morality in Cartel Land

by Ricky Shear, HI Graduate Research Assistant

After our November 1st Controversy & Conversation screening of Matthew Heineman’s Cartel Land (2015), guest speaker Dr. Jake Dizard, Postdoctoral Fellow with the Mexico Security Initiative at UT’s Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, stated one of his major takeaways from the film: power corrupts and attracts. Dizard made this observation based on Cartel Land’s intimate and, at times, disturbing footage of the rise and fall (if not from power then certainly from grace) of the Autodefensas, the Michoacán-based anti-cartel vigilante group led by José Manuel Mireles Valverde. That watching Cartel Land, a film about (at least initially) victimized, fearful, and/or exasperated citizens striving to obtain and use whatever power they can to combat the activities of Mexican drug cartels, inspired Dizard to make this observation speaks to the film’s ability to highlight the moral ambiguities and failures of the vigilante enterprises it documents.

CartelLand

Tim “Nailer” Foley, the leader of Arizona Border Recon, a group of American vigilantes that patrols the U.S.-Mexico border to catch drug traffickers, helps Cartel Land comment on these moral ambiguities and failures by claiming early on in the film that a clear dividing line exists between good and evil. He indicates that he and his group are firmly on the side of good, fighting the forces of evil in the form of Mexican drug cartels. As Dizard’s observation suggests, Cartel Land’s documentation of vigilante and drug cartel activity encourages its viewers to question the notion that good and evil are easily identifiable and discrete and to become skeptical of those who pursue or hold power while proclaiming good intentions.

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The Humanities Institute's Newsletter is edited by Kathryn North, Administrative Program Coordinator. For more information on the Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin visit our website, or to contact us, please write to Kathryn at knnorth@austin.utexas.edu.

 
   
 
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