Series wraps up in April with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jefferson Cowie
At a time of wide concern about challenges to democracy, the
series showcases the vital role the arts and humanities play in interpreting
and communicating threats to democracy and offering paths to democratic
engagement. The spring speakers will focus on such issues confronting democracy
as racism, censorship and the meaning of freedom. The lectures are free and
open to the public. Registration is requested.
“We are excited to bring in four distinguished speakers whose work presents four very different perspectives on how the arts and humanities help sustain democracy and civic engagement,” said Evelyn Sterne, associate professor of history and director of the URI Center for the Humanities.
The spring lectures open Thursday, Feb. 13, with
artist Eric Gottesman, the William Wilson Corcoran Visiting Professor of
Community Engagement at George Washington University. Gottesman’s presentation
will focus on “Where Can We Go From Here?” at
5 p.m. in the Carothers Library’s Galanti Lounge. The lecture will also be
livestreamed.
Gottesman’s work explores issues such as nationalism,
migration, structural violence, history and intimate relations, questioning
accepted ideas of power and fostering critical self-reflection and creative
expression. In his talk, he will discuss his collaborative work over the last
25 years, which has brought together photography, art, teaching and civic
action.
A Guggenheim and Fulbright fellow and Creative Capital and
Aaron Siskind Foundation artist, he is the co-founder of For
Freedoms, an artists’ collective that uses art as a catalyst for
civic engagement and direction action, Sterne said.
“We’re really excited about his visit as he will discuss the
ways in which the arts help to promote democracy and civic engagement,” said
Sterne. “He is a distinguished artist and teacher, and his visit should be a
fantastic opportunity for the arts community – at URI and beyond – to think
about the role their work can play in engaging with and sustaining democracy.”
On Thursday, Feb. 27, historian Shannon
King will discuss “The Politics of Safety: The Black Freedom
Struggle,” at 5 p.m. in the Galanti Lounge. Focusing on
research from his 2024 book, “The Politics of Safety: The Black Struggle for
Police Accountability in La Guardia’s New York,” King will explore Black
resistance to racial violence outside the South from the Great Depression to
the 1990s and offer alternative ways to understand and teach African American
history and Black social movements in the U.S.
A professor of history at Fairfield University, King is also
the author of the widely acclaimed book “Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway?” His
work has appeared in the Journal of African American History, Journal of Urban
History, and Reviews in American History. His essays have appeared in
“Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement,” “The Strange Careers of
the Jim Crow North,” and “Escape from New York!”
Librarian and academic Emily Drabinski will provide insight
into another important issue confronting democracy as she discusses attempts to
censor and suppress stories and histories of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC people. Her
talk, “Libraries at the End of the World,” takes
place Wednesday, March 19, at 4 p.m. in the Galanti Lounge.
“A healthy democracy depends on the free flow of ideas,”
said Sterne, “and Drabinski’s talk will discuss how censorship threatens that
exchange of information and how libraries stand at the center of the fight as
they respond to these threats.”
Drabinski, a professor at the Queens College Graduate School
of Library and Information Studies at the City University of New York, is a
past president of the American Library Association and edits the book series
Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies.
The humanities center’s series closes with Pulitzer
Prize-winning historian Jefferson Cowie, whose work on labor, race and American
democracy has been widely celebrated. His talk, “Freedom and Democracy,” will
be Thursday, April 3, at 4 p.m. in the Hope Room of the
Higgins Welcome Center.
Cowie won the Pulitzer in history for his most recent book,
“Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power,” which
explores threats to democracy by examining the history of white resistance to
federal power that has promoted a view of freedom as the freedom to oppress
others.
“Although Cowie’s book is based on the history of one county
in Alabama, his work holds much broader implications for understanding
conflicting notions of freedom,” Sterne said.
A noted academic, he served as the first House Professor and
Dean of William Keeton House at Cornell University and is the James G. Stahlman
Chair in the Department of History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author
of such award-winning books as “Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of
the Working Class,” and “Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy Year Quest for Cheap
Labor.”
Cowie’s presentation will coincide with the URI center’s
annual spring humanities festival, which will include the presentation of the
humanities achievement awards to an undergraduate and graduate student who have
made strong contributions to the field of the humanities and URI, and have
shown promise in a humanities-related career.
