Thursday, August 28, 2014

Clips from Our First Class

Greetings Students,

I apologize that the speaker equipment did not work very well in class.The short videos from our class discussion introduce Beloved. I am going to post the videos on your blog.Please view them.

Toni Morrison discusses Beloved.




Below is a short reading of the novel by Sandra Cisneros.

Events, Interests and Announcements


See today’s UK Now story..  With awards ranging between $2,500 and $5,000, the ISA-UK Education Abroad Diversity Scholarship is available to qualified students who contribute to UK's overall interest in diversity.

Wednesday, September 3, 4:00 - 5:00 PM - will feature the Wired Faculty Directors and Wired Faculty - will be held in Blazer Hall Rooms 241/249 (they combine to make a big room)

Wednesday, September 10, 4:00 - 5:00 PM - will feature the Wired Peer Mentors and some of the RAs from Champions Court II - will also be held in Blazer Hall Rooms 241/249 (they combine to make a big room).



Date: 09/05/2014 - 12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: Martin Luther King Center (Student Center)
AAAS presents the Carter G. Woodson Lectures Series
DaMaris Hill, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies, will read an excerpt from her novel Willows in the Spring.
https://www.facebook.com/events/666344043462247/




“We Wear the Mask: Black Superheroes Through the Ages” Sep 6 - Jan 3, 2015
This exhibit at the Lyric Theater and Cultural Center features a comprehensive timeline highlighting the history of black superheroes illustrated with framed posters, original art, comic books and action figures from the private collection of Frank X Walker & his son Taajwar D’Van Howard. 





Date: 09/12/2014 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Location: 238 Classroom Building
Speaker / Presenter: Rashad Shabazz

This talk examines the articulation of carceral power in the kitchenettes and the impact it had on identity formation.  I demonstrate this by highlighting how carceral power was expressed in the geography of kitchenettes.  Kitchenettes were small, tight, cramped spaces that many Black migrants were forced to live in once they arrived to Chicago.  I argue that the expression of police power that was operating in the Black Belt migrated into the homes of Black migrants.  Though not actual prisons, kitchenettes were amenable to the expression of carceral power—particularly containment and restriction—present throughout the Black Belt.  Kitchenettes absorbed the exercise of police power that functioned in the general space of the Black Belt and brought it closer to the skin. https://aaas.as.uky.edu/rashad-shabazz-our-prison-kitchenettes-carceral-power-and-black-masculinity-during-interwar-years


Date: 09/08/2014 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Location: MLK Center
Speaker / Presenter:  Michael Twitty

Michael W. Twitty is a recognized culinary historian and independent scholar focusing on historic African American food and folk culture and culinary traditions of historic Africa and her Diaspora. He is a living history interpreter and historic chef, one of the few recognized international experts of his craft— the re-construction of early Southern cuisine as prepared by enslaved African American cooks for tables high and low—from heirloom seeds and heritage breed animals to fish, game, and foraged plant foods to historic cooking methods to the table. He is webmaster of www.Afroculinaria.com, the first website/blog devoted to the preservation of historic African American foods and foodways. He has conducted over 200 classes and workshops, written curricula and educational programs, giving lectures and performed cooking demonstrations for over 100 groups including the Smithsonian Institution, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Carnegie-Mellon, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Library of Congress, the Association for the Study of Food and Society and Oxford University's Symposium on Food and Cookery. https://aaas.as.uky.edu/michael-twitty-kosher-soul-presentation-0


Date: 09/17/2014 - 4:00pm to 6:00pm
Location: William T. Young Library
Speaker / Presenter:  Ezra Greenspan
Writing African American Biography:
The Case of William Wells Brown, Kentuckian
Sept 17, 2014 at 4pm in the William T. Young Library https://aaas.as.uky.edu/writing-african-american-biography-case-william-wells-brown-kentuckian-1











Date:  09/22/2014 - 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Location: Niles Gallery
Speaker / Presenter: Diana Ferrus
Diana Ferrus is a South African writer, poet and cultural activist of mixed Khoisan and slave ancestry. Diana gained international recognition for her poem "For Sarah Baartman," which played a role in the French government’s decision to return the remains of Sarah Baartman to South Africa. Ferrus is a founder of the Afrikaans Skrywersvereniging (ASV), Bush Poets,(all women poets) and Women in Xchains(grassroots women writers). Her publishing company, Diana Ferrus Publishers, in association with the University of the Western Cape, has published life stories of former South African activists. Her most recent book is "I've Come To Take You Home. https://aaas.as.uky.edu/writing-poetry-has-allowed-me-live-cultural-resistance-south-africa

Sponsored by Gender & Women's Studies, UK Creative Writing Program, African American & Africana Studies, Affrilachian Poets, and the College of Arts & Sciences. 



Please Introduce Yourself

from http://beyblade.wikia.com/wiki/File:Hello_my_name_is_sticker_by_trexweb1.jpg


In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.
It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse--which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female-but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong.
My great-grandmother. I would've liked to have known her, a wild, horse of a woman, so wild she wouldn't marry. Until my great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. Just like that, as if she were a fancy chandelier. That's the way he did it.
And the story goes she never forgave him. She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow. I wonder if she made the best with what she got or was she sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window.
At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister's name Magdalena--which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least- -can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza. I would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Apps for Class

from http://www.menshealth.co.uk/living/gear/upgrade-your-life-with-apps


Greetings, Students.

We will be using mobile and computer apps (applications)  in our physical and digital classroom environment to help us organize research and original ideas.  We will also be using apps to present information. 

Apps are extremely convenient.  They allow you to access information when one wants to from a phone, ipad, and other digital devices.  Apps are also convenient because one can access an app without being tied to a computer. 

Over the course of the semester, we will be using a number of apps.   They are:

Diigo – www.diigo.com 
Ever Note – www.evernote.com
Popplet – www.popplet.com

Please take a moment to explore the apps.  Brainstorm about how you may use them in your academic endeavors.


Sincerely, 
Dr. Hill