Monday Memo, February 28, 2022

Dear A&S Colleagues,

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has once again designated UofL as both a “Research 1” doctoral university with very high research activity and a community-engaged institution for its work with community partners to exchange knowledge for public benefit. UofL is one of just 79 U.S. institutions to hold both distinctions, and the College of Arts & Sciences plays an outsized role in that accomplishment. As just one example, I invite you to marvel at the sheer number and quality of A&S-sponsored events commemorating Black History Month chronicled below.

As always, please send me items for the next edition of the Monday Memo. Anything that I’ve inadvertently omitted, I’ll be happy to acknowledge in the next edition. As some have noticed, the Monday Memo doesn’t come out every Monday, and in fact I’m thinking of rechristening it as the “A&S Almanac.” Feel free to let me know what you think of that name or to suggest other possibilities.

With Ukraine in the headlines and its people in our hearts, I want to draw particular attention to the Axton Reading Series, which on March 10 will host the internationally renowned poet Ilya Kaminsky, who was born in the Ukrainian city of Odessa in 1977 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1993. See below for more details about Kaminsky’s life, work, and visit to UofL.

Finally, I want to offer a warm welcome to my newest colleague, Dana Stefaniak, who joins the Dean’s Office today as Communications and Advancement Coordinator. Dana has more than 20 years’ experience in communications, marketing, public relations, business management, and fundraising. She held leadership roles in Lexington Habitat for Humanity and Easter Seals Cardinal Hill before founding her own consulting business in 2019. Dana’s many skills and effervescent personality will be a tremendous asset to our college and the stories we want to tell. I hope you will swing by her office in 233C soon to say hello.

Sincerely,
Julie Wrinn, Chief of Staff

Kudos

Kudos to our A&S departments and programs for their rich array of activities commemorating Black History Month, including:

  • On February 16–20, the African American Theatre Program and Department of Theatre Arts performed “Afromemory,” by Washington, D.C.-based playwright Teshonne Powell. The Department of Theatre Arts chair, Nefertiti Burton, directed the show and said the play was “written within the context of Afrofuturism,” in a society that “has erased the notion of race, the notion of difference, of culture and ancestry.” Read more: https://wfpl.org/uofl-theatre-arts-latest-play-is-set-in-the-future-when-talking-about-race-is-illegal/
  • On February 18, the Louisville Political Review (https://loupolitical.org/), a nonpartisan student publication sponsored by the Department of Political Science, hosted a panel discussion, “Racial Disparities in the American Education System,” featuring LaToya Whitlock, founder of the Decode Project, Mya Todd, junior, UofL political science major/PAS minor, and Jay Jones, Jr., principal, Fayette County, to discuss segregation, racism and its damaging effects on Black students.
  • On February 20, the A&S Yearlings Club’s virtual forum, “Voter suppression: Myth or Fact?” featured Dewey Clayton, professor of political science; Raymond Burse, Esq., first vice president, NAACP Louisville Chapter; Corey Shapiro, legal director, ACLU-Kentucky; and moderator Sherri Wallace, interim associate dean, A&S Office for Diversity, Engagement, Culture and Climate.
  • On February 21, the Writing Center celebrated International Mother Language Day by inviting the UofL community to visit Ekstrom Library and write notes of welcome to recent immigrants and refugees. The library also debuted a new display of children’s books in the indigenous language of Chatino that were written and self-published by UofL field linguist Hilaria Cruz, an assistant professor of comparative humanities. There are some 7,000 indigenous languages worldwide, and a great many are endangered. Chatino is language spoken in Cruz’s hometown in southern Mexico and by Chatinos who have migrated to the U.S., especially to Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. Read more: https://www.uoflnews.com/section/arts-and-humanities/uofl-professor-shares-endangered-language-books-worldwide
  • On February 25, Dr. Thomas Wayne Edison of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, partnered with the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture and the Office of Hispanic, Latinx and Indigenous Initiatives on “The ‘Other’ African American: Cuba.” This innovative celebration of African heritage beyond the borders of the U.S took place in Ekstrom Library’s Teaching and Learning Lab and featured educational presentations, music, dance, and poetry that reflect Cuba’s communities of African heritage, along with a Cuban-style lunch.
  • On February 28, Joan D’Antoni of the Department of English hosted UofL’s African American Read-In, which gathered participants in Ekstrom Library to read aloud from their favorite author’s work.

Congratulations to everyone involved in last week’s 49th annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900 (LCLC), which welcomed more than 220 registered participants. Dozens of interdisciplinary sessions with faculty and students from UofL and other universities took place online or in person. Forty-nine years is a long time to sustain a thematic conference like LCLC, and conference director Matthew Bieberman and coordinators Brandon Harwood and Janna Tajibaeva succeeded beautifully in curating sessions that were true to the character of the event, while nurturing its evolution into something relevant and inspiring for our current decade. What will they dream up for the momentous 50th conference next year?

Kudos to Jonathan Haws, professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology, who has been awarded nearly $200,000 from the National Science Foundation for a three-year project, “Long Term Accommodation to Climate Change.” Funding will support excavation and analyses at Lapa do Picareiro, a cave in Portugal, to study Neanderthal adaptations to extreme climate variation.

Congratulations to Mary P. Sheridan, professor of English and Director of the Commonwealth Center for the Humanities and Society, for being awarded the University of Bristol (UK)’s Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professorship for spring 2023. Department Chair Glynis Ridley reminds us that “Bristol is a highly regarded UK university, and this will be some excellent UofL/A&S flag waving.”

Reminders

Call for submissions: The Cardinal Edge (TCE) is UofL’s first peer-reviewed multidisciplinary undergraduate research journal. TCE aims to highlight the unique research culture and endeavors at UofL. We are currently seeking submissions of research abstracts, brief research reports, and full-length research reports for our fall 2022 issue. Visit the website and click on “Submit Article” on the right panel to submit your paper. For more information, visit: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/tce/

If you plan on having a layout in the 2022 Orientation Guide, please email orient@louisville.edu by March 1 with the layout. The form for the 2022 Orientation Guide Layout can be found here. Remember, this form is only to be used by UofL Campus Departments. As a reminder, our Communications team can design your layout for an additional $25.

Events

On Wed., March 2, at 6 pm in BAB 218, the Department of Sociology will host Dr. Victor Ray, Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology and African American Studies at the University of Iowa and a nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institute, speaking on “Racialized Burdens: Applying Racialized Organization Theory to the Administrative State,” as part of the Department of Sociology’s 2022 John H. Rieger Speaker Series. Free and open to the University community, but registration is required. Register via Zoom at: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEudO2vqj4jEtNLHbxHY60Jk3JP7sGG6pDb. To attend in-person, email Nancy Price at nancy.price@louisville.edu, to register. For more information, visit https://louisville.edu/sociology/about-us/jon-h-rieger-speaker-series or contact Dr. Karen Christopher at 852-8022.

Also on Wed., March 2, at 7 pm, is the next Astronomy on Tap talk from the Department of Physics & Astronomy, with Dr. Benne Holwerda speaking on “Hubble Observations of a Gentle Giant Spiral Galaxy,” the largest disk galaxy known, UGC2885 “Rubin’s Galaxy” (image here: https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2020/01/4615-Image). Results on the globular cluster population of this massive disk galaxy will be presented, which Dr. Holwerda proposes to rename “Rubin’s Galaxy,” in honor of the late Vera Rubin, who discovered UGC2885 in the 1980s, and as part of Hubble’s 30th anniversary and commemorating the community that discovered dark matter 40 years ago. Monnik Beer Co., 1036 E. Burnett, Louisville 40217

The French Film Festival wraps up this week with:

TITANE
Julia Ducournau / 2021 / 108 min
Thursday, Mar. 3 @ 5 pm [*] & 7:30 pm
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYm2RETn_oQ

*The 5:30 screening includes an introduction and discussion with Tom Carson, film critic for publications including the Village Voice and GQ. Floyd Theater, Student Activities Center, 2100 S. Floyd Street, free admission. Contact: Matthieu Dalle ● m.dalle@louisville.edu ● (502) 852-6115

On March 10, 7:30–9:30 pm, in the Chao Auditorium (Ekstrom Library) the Axton Reading Series welcomes poet Ilya Kaminsky. Kaminsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1977 and arrived in the United States in 1993 when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He lost most of his hearing at the age of four. He is the author of the widely acclaimed Deaf Republic (Graywolf 2019) and Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press 2004), and is co-editor of the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (HarperCollins 2010). Deaf Republic was a New York Times Notable Book for 2019 and named a Best Book of 2019 by dozens of other publications, including the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and Vanity Fair. His work has won many awards including The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, a Lannan Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship, and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Kaminsky’s poems have been translated into over twenty languages, and in 2019 he was selected by the BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.” (https://louisville.edu/english/calendar/llya-kaminsky)

Health Care Ethics Series: T. Benicio Gonzales, M.S.W., Director, Center for Health Equity at the Louisville Metro Dept. of Public Health and Wellness. “Advancing Health Equity in Louisville.” March 23, 12–1 pm.