January 1, 2013 to January 31, 2013
Location: https://www.lsa.umich.edu/sweetland

In keeping with this year’s MLK Symposium theme of “(R)Evolution of the Dream,” during the month of January the Sweetland Center for Writing will host a virtual “write-in” on its website where we invite you to narrate your sense of how Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream has been (r)evolutionary for you.

Tell us about a moment where you experienced citizenship or civic engagement. What do these ideas mean to you today?

Or, post an original image that exemplifies King’s dream for you, and use your caption to explain the connection.

Visit https://www.lsa.umich.edu/sweetland during the month of January to “write in” for the dream!

NOTE: This event runs from January 1 to January 31.

January 9, 2013 to January 31, 2013
Location: Duderstadt Center Gallery, 2281 Bonisteel Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 .

January 9-31, 2013, Monday-Friday 12pm-6pm, Sunday 12pm-5pm

Within the fabric of American identity is woven a story that has long been invisible—the lives and experiences of people who share African American and Native American ancestry.

African and Native peoples came together in the Americas. Over centuries, African Americans and Native Americans created shared histories, communities, families, and ways of life. Prejudice, laws, and twists of history have often divided them from others, yet African-Native American people were united in the struggle against slavery and dispossession, and then for self-determination and freedom.

For African-Native Americans, their double heritage is truly indivisible.

A website to support teaching with the exhibit is available at:
https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/indivisible-faculty-resources/home

IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas is presented as part of LSA’s Winter 2013 Understanding Race Theme Semester and is co-sponsored by the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, U-M Museum of Natural History, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Native American Studies Program Center for Engineering Diversity and Outreach, and Department of English.

The exhibition IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas is a collaboration between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service (SITES).

January 14, 2013 1:00 pm to February 1, 2013 1:00 pm
Location: DASS Gallery, Room G648, 1st floor of Haven Hall
Speaker: Beverly Buchanan Art Exhibition

The Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DASS) presents an exhibition of the work of Beverly Buchanan, an artist who explores Southern vernacular architecture. Building dreamlike miniature models based on such important structures as the shotgun and plantation house, Buchanan explores the history of Black memory and experience in the U.S.
DASS Gallery will be open on Monday and Friday from 1pm – 5pm.

January 29, 2013 10:00 am to 12:30 pm
Location: Michigan Union Ballroom
Speaker: Sandra Danziger, U-M professor of social work; Jane Zehnder-Merrell, project director, Kids Count in Michigan; J. Lee Kreader, director, Research Connections, National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University; Renée Wilson-Simmons, director, National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University

According to the United States Census Bureau, 13.8 percent of Michigan residents lived below the poverty line in 2011. For children, however, the figure is much higher. In Michigan, 548,000 children, or 24.4 percent of all children in the state live in households earning less than $18,123 per year (for a family of four). This discussion, featuring researchers and advocates from the University of Michigan, Columbia University, and the Michigan League for Public Policy, will address what is being done to address child poverty, what new approaches should be considered, and the consequences of simply continuing the same policies.

NOTE: This event will include an informational fair including student and community groups working to alleviate poverty.

Sandra Danziger is professor of social work and research professor of public policy. Her primary research interests are the effects of public programs and policies on the well-being of disadvantaged families, poverty policy and social service programs, demographic trends in child and family well-being, gender issues across the life course, program evaluation, and qualitative research methods. Her current research examines welfare program approaches to addressing barriers to employment among single mothers.

Since 1994, Jane Zehnder-Merrell has managed the Kids Count in Michigan project that produces an annual data book on child well-being and conducts an ongoing public information campaign around children’s issues. This collaborative project between the Michigan League for Public Policy and Michigan’s Children participates in a broad national effort supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to monitor and improve the well-being of children.

Dr. Lee Kreader serves as Deputy Director of the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Dr. Kreader is active in many of NCCP’s research efforts, primarily in collaborative projects focused on child care and early education policy. He is director of the Child Care and Early Education Research Connections project, jointly operated by NCCP in partnership with the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research here at the Institute for Social Research, through a cooperative agreement with the Child Care Bureau and the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For Research Connections, Dr. Kreader has synthesized research on child care subsidy use and infant and toddler child care.

Renée Wilson-Simmons, DrPH, serves as Director of the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Before joining NCCP in 2012, Dr. Wilson-Simmons served as the senior associate for adolescent health and development the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, where she managed foundation initiatives and related grants and activities focused on reproductive health. She also served as associate director of the Evidence-Based Practice Group, which identifies, develops, and scales up evidence-based interventions for children and families involved with public social service systems.

January 29, 2013 2:00 pm 7:00 pm
Location: Matthaei Botanical Gardens, 1800 N. Dixboro Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48105
Speaker: Vaughn Sills

Hear artist and author Vaughn Sills discuss “The Roots of Trust” at Matthaei Botanical Gardens January 29 at 2 & 7 pm. Sills, an associate professor of photography at Simmons College in Boston, is the photographer and author of Places of the Spirit – Traditional African American Gardens, the photography exhibit at Matthaei showing Jan. 18 through March 10. Sills will discuss the importance of establishing trust with the creators of the gardens in her photographs. This lecture is part of the photo exhibit at Matthaei being shown in conjunction with the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts winter 2013 “Understanding Race” Theme Semester.

Lecture times scheduled for 2 and 7 pm at Matthaei. Limited seating available; reserve your place today online at mbgna.umich.edu.

Sponsored by University of Michigan College of Engineering and University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum.

January 29, 2013 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
Location: 1636 International Institute/SSWB, 1080 S. University
Speaker: Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Studies; and Director of Studies, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales-Paris.

Although racial discrimination is an established fact in most contemporary societies, it remains frequently an object of denial both from authorities and individuals. The lecture will address this paradox through two case studies. The first one examines the way in which, in recent years, the French state finally recognized the existence of racial discrimination only to surreptitiously elude it again. The interpretation of this shift will be based on Freud’s distinction between disavowal and negation. The second one explores the debate, among criminologists and sociologists, about the reality of racial discrimination in law enforcement. The analysis of the scientific claim that differential treatment of the public by the police is not what one thinks it is will suggest the necessity to reframe the problem on new grounds. These cases therefore have a wider significance for both an anthropology of denial and a sociology of discrimination

Bio:

Didier Fassin is James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study of Princeton and Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Laureate of the Advanced Grant “Ideas” of the European Research Council, he is currently conducting an ethnography of the state, exploring how institutions such as police, justice and prison treat immigrants and minorities in France. His recent publications include: De la Question Sociale à la Question Raciale ? (with Eric Fassin, La Découverte, 2006) and Contemporary States of Emergency (with Mariella Pandolfi, Zone Books, 2010), as editor; When Bodies Remember. Experiences and Politics ofAIDS in South Africa (University of California Press, 2007), Humanitarian Reason. A Moral History of the Present(University of California Press, 2011) and Enforcing Order. An Ethnography of Urban Policing (Polity Press, forthcoming), as author.