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Farm Meals Mentioned in Ypsilanti Farm Diaries
The stories and recollections of Washtenaw County farm women held by the Ypsilanti Historical Society provide a record of daily life in the 19th and 20th centuries. Local author and historian Laura Bien presents research on handwritten diaries that reflect, in their own words, the everyday work farm women performed: gardening, harvesting, butchering, processing, preserving and cooking food for their families, supplementing the family income through the sale of eggs and produce, adapting to technological changes, and organizing work at the homestead.
This event is in partnership with the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor (CHAA), an organization of scholars, cooks, food writers, nutritionists, collectors, students, and others interested in the study of culinary history and gastronomy. Their mission is to promote the study of culinary history through regular programs open to members and guests, through the quarterly newsletter Repast, and through exchanges of information with other such organizations.
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Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Lecture
Walter Everett, Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, presents an analysis of the Beatles' iconic album.
Professor Everett is the author of the two-volume study, The Beatles as Musicians, and of The Foundations of Rock, from Oxford University Press.
He is currently coauthoring two books: one, with Tim Riley, a textbook aimed at undergraduates not majoring in music that contextualizes the Beatles within the cultural events and attitudes that they helped shaped, and another book with Katie Kapurch on sex and gender in rock music.
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The Jane Austen Project: Kathleen Flynn In Conversation with Laura Thomas
Kathleen Flynn and Laura Thomas discuss Flynn's debut novel, The Jane Austen Project. Perfect for fans of Jane Austen, this engrossing novel offers an unusual twist on the legacy of one of the world's most celebrated and beloved authors: two researchers from the future are sent back in time to meet Jane and recover a suspected unpublished novel.
Kathleen A. Flynn is an editor at the New York Times, where she works at "The Upshot." She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their shy fox terrier, Olive.
Laura Hulthen Thomas heads the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan's Residential College, where she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction.
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#46 Ann Arbor Stories: The Battle of Ann Arbor
Four nights of rioting, dozens of injuries to cops and citizens, and more than 70 arrests—it was an event The Detroit Free Press dubbed “The Battle of Ann Arbor”. What sparked this violence and how did the insane scene play out in the summer of 1969?
Music by FAWNN & ZShipps
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West African Art and Music in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, with Victoria Shields
Drawing from the African American Cultural Humanities (AC) curriculum, Educator Victoria Shields leads a workshop for music and art lovers with discussion of the 2018 Washtenaw Read, Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi. Shields examines the social and historical contexts presented in Homegoing using music — including a focus on how West Africa influenced American music — as well as visual art from the Detroit Institute of Art collection.
Shields is a doctoral student in the Eastern Michigan University Urban Education program focusing on curriculum development and programming. She conducts teacher training at state and national conferences and focuses on the development of Humanities and Social Science curriculum with the integration of music, dance and visual art.
This event is part of programming for the 2018 Washtenaw Read.
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#45 Ann Arbor Stories: Highway Snipers
There wasn't a lot of traffic on M-14 on that last day of August 1981. It was 3am. Semi trucks bound for points in Michigan and throughout the Midwest, cars carrying people headed to work, cars taking people home after long nights. It was at this time on this day on this stretch of highway that more than 200 bullets rained down on speeding cars, trucks and semis, causing mass panic and chaos. This is the story of the 1981 highway snipers.
Music by Michna and Ben Benjamin, courtesy of GhoLicense.
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Author Alexandra Zapruder Discusses Her Book About The Kennedy Assassination, "Twenty-Six Seconds"
Discover the moving, untold family story behind Abraham Zapruder’s film footage of the Kennedy assassination and its lasting impact on our world.
Abraham Zapruder didn’t know when he ran home to grab his video camera on November 22, 1963, that this single spontaneous decision would change his family’s life for generations to come. Originally intended as a home movie of President Kennedy’s motorcade, Zapruder’s film of the JFK assassination is now shown in every American history class, included in Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit questions, and referenced in novels and films. It is the most famous example of citizen journalism, a precursor to the iconic images of our time, such as the Challenger explosion, the Rodney King beating, and the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers.
But few know the complicated legacy of the film itself. Now Abraham’s granddaughter, Alexandra Zapruder, is ready to tell the complete story for the first time. In this video, Zapruder discusses her book, Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film; part biography, part family history, and part historical narrative, Zapruder demonstrates how one man’s unwitting moment in the spotlight shifted the way politics, culture, and media intersect, bringing about the larger social questions that define our age.
This event was a partnership with the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor as part of the 2017 Jewish Book Festival.
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A Comics Presentation with Nate Powell
Why are graphic novels so good at capturing history? Find out when Nate Powell stops by AADL for this presentation. Best known for his work on the award-winning March series he co-created with Andrew Aydin and legendary Civil Rights activist Congressman John Lewis, Powell explores many of the unique and immersive storytelling principles used in comics.
Powell’s work also includes You Don’t Say, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, The Silence of Our Friends, and The Year of the Beasts. If you’ve ever wanted to tap into the power of graphic novels to explore history, or just wanted a deeper look into why they move us as readers, you won’t want to miss this!
Special thanks to the Conflict and Peace Initiative at the University of Michigan’s International Institute. This event was part of the Fall 2017 social justice events series: Marching Forward.
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Author M. Joanne Nesbit Discusses Her Book "Legendary Locals of Ann Arbor, Michigan"
Graced by the Huron River with an abundance of parks, Ann Arbor offers residents and visitors entertainment, sports, shopping, dining, and of course, the University of Michigan.
Legendary Locals of Ann Arbor, Michigan celebrates its citizens. Many are creative artists, inspiring educators, dedicated public servants, and determined business owners. With the exception of Lewis the cat, who reigned at Downtown Home and Garden, this book is filled with stories about people who have made and are making Ann Arbor one of the best places to live in the United States.
Co-author Joanne Nesbit discusses some of the great stories they discovered while putting together the book and how local legends were selected. With a career spanning journalism and as a public information officer at Indiana University and the University of Michigan, Nesbit has always been fascinated by local history, stories, and people. She is the author of three other books, and is the founder of Knitwits at the University of Michigan.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers: Martin Bandyke interviews Ann Powers, author of Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music.
In this sweeping history of popular music in the United States, National Public Radio’s acclaimed music critic examines how popular music shapes fundamental American ideas and beliefs, allowing us to communicate difficult emotions and truths about our most fraught social issues, most notably sex and race.
In Good Booty, Ann Powers explores how popular music became America’s primary erotic art form. Powers takes us from nineteenth-century New Orleans through dance-crazed Jazz Age New York to the teen scream years of mid-twentieth century rock-and-roll to the cutting-edge adventures of today’s web-based pop stars. Drawing on her deep knowledge and insights on gender and sexuality, Powers recounts stories of forbidden lovers, wild shimmy-shakers, orgasmic gospel singers, countercultural perverts, soft-rock sensitivos, punk Puritans, and the cyborg known as Britney Spears to illuminate how eroticism—not merely sex, but love, bodily freedom, and liberating joy—became entwined within the rhythms and melodies of American song. This cohesion, she reveals, touches the heart of America's anxieties and hopes about race, feminism, marriage, youth, and freedom.
In a survey that spans more than a century of music, Powers both heralds little known artists such as Florence Mills, a contemporary of Josephine Baker, and gospel queen Dorothy Love Coates, and sheds new light on artists we think we know well, from the Beatles and Jim Morrison to Madonna and Beyoncé. In telling the history of how American popular music and sexuality intersect—a magnum opus over two decades in the making—Powers offers new insights into our nation psyche and our soul.
Martin’s interview with Ann Powers was recorded on September 27, 2017.