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The Consulates General of Canada in Atlanta and Miami, in partnership with the Coasts, Climates, the Humanities, and the Environment Consortium and the University of Georgia Institute of Native American Studies, presented an online event series in Fall 2021 on climate change and environmental justice, in the particular context of Indigenous coastal communities in Canada and the United States Southeast.
Conversation One
Environmental Justice: Coasts, Climate Change and Communities in Canada and the US
October 28, 2021
Dr. Tina Loo (Moderator): University Killam Professor, Department of History, University of British Columbia, Musqueam territory
Natalia Brown: Climate Justice Program Manager, Catalyst Miami
Dr. Kelsey Leonard: Water scientist, legal scholar, policy expert, writer, and enrolled citizen of the Shinnecock Nation; Assistant Professor, Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo
Jeff Currie: Member, Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina; Lumber Riverkeeper, Winyah Rivers Alliance
Conversation Two
Climate Change and Indigenous Arts
November 15, 2021
Dr. LeAnne Howe (Moderator): Eidson Distinguished Professor in American Literature, Department of English, and Director, Institute of Native American Studies, University of Georgia
Beth Roach: U.S. Accelerator Program Lead, Women’s Earth Alliance; Co-founder, Alliance of Native Seedkeepers
Carla Hemlock: Kanienkehaka – Mohawk, Textile and Mixed Media Artist
Jennifer Foerster: Poet of German, Dutch, and Mvskoke descent; member, Mvskoke (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma
Janet Rogers: Poet, Media Producer and owner and editor of Ojistoh Publishing
Marianne Nicolson: Artist activist of the Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw First Nations, part of the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwak’wala speaking peoples) of the Pacific Northwest Coast; Trained in both traditional Kwakwaka’wakw forms and culture and contemporary gallery and museum-based practice.
Director’s Series – Nell Andrew
Oct. 28, 2021
Nell Andrew is associate professor of art history at UGA. This conversation will center on her 2020 book Moving Modernism: The Urge to Abstraction in Painting, Dance, Cinema, which recovers performances, working methods, and circles of aesthetic influence for avant-garde dance pioneers and experimental filmmakers from the turn of the century to the interwar period in Europe—including Loïe Fuller, Valentine de Saint-Point, Sophie Taeuber, Akarova, and Germaine Dulac—to demonstrate the significant role played by the arts of motion in the historical avant-garde’s development of abstraction.
Andrew teaches courses in Modern Art, the historical avant-garde, dance history, and early film. She is also co-director, with Susan Rosenbaum (UGA English), of the Interdisciplinary Modernism/s Workshop, a faculty research cluster sponsored by the Willson Center.
The Director’s Series is a program of public conversations with international figures in the humanities and arts by Nicholas Allen, Baldwin Professor in Humanities and director of the Willson Center.
Director’s Series – Alan Parks
Oct. 7, 2021
Alan Parks is the best-selling author of the Harry McCoy series of Glasgow noir mysteries.
Before beginning his writing career, Parks was creative director at London Records and Warner Music, where he marketed and managed artists including All Saints, New Order, The Streets, Gnarls Barkley, and Cee Lo Green. His love of music, musician lore, and even the industry, comes through in his prize-winning mysteries, which are saturated with the atmosphere of the 1970s music scene, grubby and drug-addled as it often was.
Parks’ debut novel, Bloody January, propelled him onto the international literary crime fiction circuit and won him praise, prizes, and success with readers. The second book in the Harry McCoy series, February’s Son, was a finalist for a MWA Edgar Award. Parks was born in Scotland, earned an M.A. in Moral Philosophy from the University of Glasgow, and still lives and works in the city he so vividly depicts in his Harry McCoy thrillers.
The Director’s Series is a program of public conversations with international figures in the humanities and arts by Nicholas Allen, Baldwin Professor in Humanities and director of the Willson Center.
Director’s Series – Cynthia Barnett
Sept. 9, 2021
Cynthia Barnett, Environmental Journalist in Residence at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications in Gainesville, Florida, is an award-winning environmental journalist who has reported on water and climate change around the world. Her new book, The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans (W. W. Norton, July 2021), is a natural and cultural history of seashells and the animals that make them—revealing what they have to tell us about nature, our changing oceans, and ourselves.
Barnett is also the author of Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, longlisted for the National Book Award and a finalist for the 2016 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award; Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis, which articulates a water ethic for America; and Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. She has written for National Geographic, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and many other publications.
The Director’s Series is a program of public conversations with international figures in the humanities and arts by Nicholas Allen, Baldwin Professor in Humanities and director of the Willson Center.
Where Am I? – Nora Benedict
September 8, 2021
Nora Benedict, assistant professor of Romance languages and a 2021-2022 Willson Center Faculty Fellow, talks about her new book Borges and the Literary Marketplace, out next week from Yale University Press, and about her current research.
Where Am I? was a series of brief video talks by humanities and arts faculty, students, and community members at the University of Georgia who shared their research, creations, conversations and personal reflections.
Willson Center 2021 Global Georgia Initiative public events series
The Global Georgia Initiative public event series brings world class thinkers to Georgia. It presents global problems in local context by addressing pressing contemporary questions, including the economy, society, and the environment, with a focus on how the arts and humanities can intervene.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 Global Georgia series was presented entirely online. Videos of many of the events are below.
Conversations with Creature Comforts & Sierra Nevada Brewing Companies
Jan.-Feb., 2021
Georgia Museum of Art Emma Amos Discussion
Feb. 4, 2021
Carole Emberton
Feb. 23, 2021
UGA Press Campus Read conversation with Mary Frances Early and Phaidra Buchanan
Feb. 25, 2021
Conversation on Athens Hip-Hop Compilation with Producers Montu Miller, Ed Pavlić, & Artists
Feb. 25, 2021
Morton Theatre Corp. Community Conversation
Mar. 2, 2021
Helon Habila
Mar. 4, 2021
Joy Harjo & LeAnne Howe
Mar. 10, 2021
Jee Leong Koh
Mar. 25, 2021
Conversation on Immigration, Music and Visual Art with Liza Stepanova, Kevork Mourad, Badie Khaleghian, and Reinaldo Moya
Apr. 7, 2021
Earth Day Conversation on Photography and the Environment
Apr. 22, 2021
Where Am I? – Cassia Roth
January 11, 2021
Cassia Roth, assistant professor of history and Latin American and Caribbean studies, discusses her book A Miscarriage of Justice: Women’s Reproductive Lives and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Brazil and the ongoing research that has led her to a newly awarded fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the project “Birthing Abolition: Enslaved Women, Reproduction, and the Gradual End of Slavery in Nineteenth-century Brazil.”
Where Am I? was a series of brief video talks by humanities and arts faculty, students, and community members at the University of Georgia who shared their research, creations, conversations and personal reflections.
Where Am I? – Claire Korfas, De’Aira McCrory, & Stephanie Weis
December 4, 2020
Fourth-year UGA Dance majors Claire Korfas, De’Aira McCrory, and Stephanie Weis discuss the challenges and rewards of choreographing their original pieces during a global pandemic.
Where Am I? was a series of brief video talks by humanities and arts faculty, students, and community members at the University of Georgia who shared their research, creations, conversations and personal reflections.
Where Am I? – LeAnne Howe
November 3, 2020
LeAnne Howe is the Eidson Distinguished Professor in American Literature in the UGA department of English.
Where Am I? was a series of brief video talks by humanities and arts faculty, students, and community members at the University of Georgia who shared their research, creations, conversations and personal reflections.
UGA Signature Lecture: Johanna Drucker – “Rethinking Assumptions: The Current Value(s) of Academic Work”
September 15, 2020
Johanna Drucker, Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor in the department of information studies at UCLA, gave an online talk September 15, 2020 on “Rethinking Assumptions: The Current Value(s) of Academic Work.” The lecture and discussion was hosted by the Office of the Provost, the Willson Center, the UGA Libraries, and the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences as part of the UGA Signature Lectures series.
Drucker is internationally known for her work in the history of graphic design, typography, experimental poetry, fine art, and digital humanities.
Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding: Rebecca Rutstein with Mandy Joye and Nicholas Allen – “Expeditions, Experiments and the Ocean: Adventures and Discoveries”
March 28, 2019
The Delta Visiting Chair, established by the Willson Center through the support of the Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists and intellectuals who teach and perform research at UGA.
Rebecca Rutstein is an artist whose work spans painting, sculpture, installation, and public art and explores abstraction inspired by science, data and maps. She took part in a public conversation with the widely known oceanographer Samantha Joye, Athletic Association Professor in Arts and Sciences in the department of marine sciences at UGA. The discussion was moderated by Nicholas Allen, Franklin Professor of English and director of the Willson Center.
This Delta Chair conversation was held at the Georgia Museum of Art on March 28, 2019.
Georgia Humanities Symposium
March 8, 2019
The Willson Center and Georgia Humanities hosted the Georgia Humanities Symposium on Friday, March 8, 2019 in the Georgia Museum of Art on the University of Georgia campus. The symposium’s three panel discussions included participants from around the state and region, including Georgia Humanities, the High Museum of Art, the University of North Carolina, the National Humanities Alliance, and the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes.
The Georgia Humanities Symposium was made possible by the generosity of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through a grant to the Global Georgia Initiative of the Willson Center.
Introductions
Nicholas Allen (Director, Willson Center) and Libby Morris (Interim Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, UGA)
Panel One: Georgia and The Public Humanities
Chair: Stephen Berry (UGA)
Edward Hatfield (New Georgia Encyclopedia)
Ann McCleary (University of West Georgia, West Georgia Textile Heritage Trail)
Amanda Rees (Columbus State)
Avis Williams (Putnam County School System)
Panel Two: Making Connections
Chair: William Warner (CHCI)
Rand Suffolk (High Museum)
Jeanne Bohannon (Kennesaw University)
Robyn Schroeder (UNC)
Brian Orland (UGA)
Panel Three: Next Steps
Chair: Vicki Crawford (Morehouse)
Kelly Caudle (Georgia Humanities)
Jacqueline Jones Royster (Georgia Tech)
Barbara McCaskill (UGA)
Daniel Fisher (NHA)
Closing Remarks
Nicholas Allen (Director, Willson Center)
Ferdinand Phinizy Lecture / Global Georgia Initiative: Stephanie McCurry – “Reconstructing: A Georgia Woman’s Life Amidst the Ruins”
Feb. 22, 2019
Columbia University historian Stephanie McCurry visited the University of Georgia to give the department of history’s Ferdinand Phinizy Lecture, an event in the Willson Center’s Global Georgia Initiative. McCurry’s talk, which took place Feb. 22 in the Seney-Stovall Chapel, was also part of the university’s Signature Lectures series.
McCurry is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower at Columbia. Her areas of research include the United States in the 19th century, the American South, the American Civil War, and the history of women and gender. She is the author of Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (1995) and Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South, (2010), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for history.
Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding: Rebecca Rutstein with Mandy Joye and Nicholas Allen – “Expeditions, Experiments, and the Ocean: Arts and Sciences at Sea”
Nov. 2, 2018
The Delta Visiting Chair, established by the Willson Center through the support of the Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists and intellectuals who teach and perform research at UGA.
Rebecca Rutstein is an artist whose work spans painting, sculpture, installation, and public art and explores abstraction inspired by science, data and maps. She took part in a public conversation with the widely known oceanographer Samantha Joye, Athletic Association Professor in Arts and Sciences in the department of marine sciences at UGA. The discussion was moderated by Nicholas Allen, Franklin Professor of English and director of the Willson Center.
This Delta Chair conversation was a keynote event for the national conference of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), which was held at the University of Georgia Nov. 1-3, 2018.
Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding: Colm Tóibín – “Staying Home, Leaving Home: Ireland and America”
March 16, 2017
The Delta Visiting Chair, established by the Willson Center through the support of the Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists and intellectuals who teach and perform research at UGA.
A prize-winning novelist, short-story writer, dramatist and critic, Colm Tóibín’s works have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is the author of the acclaimed novels “The Master” and “Brooklyn,” a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a contributing editor at the London Review of Books.
Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding: “A Conversation with Colm Tóibín”
March 17, 2017
The Delta Visiting Chair, established by the Willson Center through the support of the Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists and intellectuals who teach and perform research at UGA.
A prize-winning novelist, short-story writer, dramatist and critic, Colm Tóibín’s works have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is the author of the acclaimed novels “The Master” and “Brooklyn,” a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a contributing editor at the London Review of Books.
Tóibín joined Fintan O’Toole, a columnist, literary editor and drama critic for the Irish Times and one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals, for a public conversation in the historic Seney-Stovall Chapel in Athens.
Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture: David Haskell – “The Forest Unseen: Ecology, Ethics, and Contemplation”
January 29, 2016
David Haskell is an author and professor of biology at The University of the South. Among many other awards, Haskell’s book The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature won the 2013 Best Book Award from the National Academies and was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
His visit to UGA was co-sponsored by the Willson Center, the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, and the Integrative Conservation Ph.D. Program. Haskell’s lecture was the keynote for the Third Annual Symposium on Integrative Conservation.
The Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture is named for Eugene Odum (1913-2002), a UGA instructor from 1940 until his retirement in 1984. He has been called the “father of modern ecology” and was the author of the pioneering book Fundamentals of Ecology. Odum was instrumental in the creation of the Institute of Ecology at UGA, the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, and the Sapelo Island Marine Science Institute.
Delta Visiting Chair for Global Understanding: “A Conversation with Alice Walker”
October 15, 2015
The Delta Visiting Chair, established by the Willson Center through the support of the Delta Air Lines Foundation, hosts outstanding global scholars, leading creative thinkers, artists and intellectuals who teach and perform research at UGA.
Alice Walker is the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, for her 1982 novel The Color Purple, which also earned a National Book Award. She has written six other novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry.
Walker joined Valerie Boyd, associate professor in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, for a public conversation in the historic Morton Theatre in downtown Athens. Boyd is the editor of a forthcoming volume of Walker’s journals.
Global Georgia Initiative promo video featuring Ntone Edjabe
February 26, 2013
On February 26, 2013, Cape Town, SA journalist, publisher, and DJ Ntone Edjabe visited the University of Georgia to speak in the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts’ Global Georgia Initiative. Edjabe is the founding editor of Chimurnga, an internationally acclaimed pan-African journal of politics, art, and culture. The same evening, Edjabe performed a DJ set at Athens, Georgia’s legendary 40 Watt Club.
The Global Georgia Initiative brings world-class thinkers to Georgia. It presents global problems in local context by addressing pressing contemporary questions, including the economy, society, and the environment, with a focus on how the arts and humanities can intervene.
Global Georgia Initiative: Valerie Babb – “In the Footfalls of Diaspora: Reflections on the Wanderer”
March 5, 2013
Highlights from the talk at Ciné by Valerie Babb, professor of English and director of the Institute for African American Studies at UGA. The Wanderer was a converted luxury vessel that, in 1858, brought 409 Africans from the region of present-day Angola to the Georgia coast to be sold into slavery. Professor Babb spoke on the human legacy of that voyage, which took place nearly 50 years after the passage of the federal Slave Importation Act, which made the foreign slave trade illegal in the U.S. The talk was part of the Willson Center’s inaugural Global Georgia Initiative.
Global Georgia Initiative – ”Bertis Downs in Conversation: Don’t Get Me Started – on Athens, music lessons, and of course, good schools for all kids”
February 18, 2013
Highlights from Willson Center Director Nicholas Allen’s conversation with longtime R.E.M. advisor Bertis Downs in the UGA Chapel. Downs, a resident of Athens, Georgia for more than 35 years, is active in numerous community issues, especially public education. The discussion was part of the Willson Center’s inaugural Global Georgia Initiative.
Spotlight on the Arts Roundtable – “Creativity in the Research University”
November 7, 2012
Highlights from the panel discussion featuring (from left) Martijn van Wagtendonk (Chair, Art X: Expanded Forms area, Lamar Dodd School of Art), Susan Thomas (Musicology; Women’s Studies), Mark Callahan (Artistic Director, Ideas for Creative Exploration [ICE]), David Zucker Saltz (Head, Department of Theatre and Film Studies), and Nicholas Allen (English; Director, Willson Center). Part of the University of Georgia’s 2012 Spotlight on the Arts festival.
Paul Tough at the UGA Chapel
October 1, 2012
Highlights from the talk by the renowned education journalist and author. Tough’s first book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, was instrumental in making the Harlem Children’s Zone a central topic in the national conversation on poverty and education. His widely acclaimed second book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, was published in September 2012.
Cinema Roundtable – “Animation, Art, and Careers for UGA Students”
September 28, 2012
Highlights from the panel discussion featuring Chris Wells (CG Supervisor for Hydraulx on films including Avatar, Battle Los Angeles, and Take Shelter), Valentina Tapia (Program Development at Adult Swim), Neal Holman (Producer, Art Director, Archer, FX Network), Mike Hussey (Head of Dramatic Media Area, UGA Department of Theatre and Film Studies), Josh Marsh (PhD student, Theatre and Dramatic Media, UGA), and moderated by Richard Neupert (Film Studies Coordinator, UGA Department of Theatre and Film Studies).