Speakers and events for 2016 Global Georgia Initiative are announced
The Willson Center has announced its 2016 Global Georgia speaker series, which this year will also include an international symposium on the shared history of the U.S. South and Cuba and a multi-venue exhibition of photographs from The Do Good Fund collection.
The series begins January 29 with fashion designer and entrepreneur Natalie Chanin, the owner of the Alabama Chanin family of sustainable, community-focused businesses. Chanin’s visit is presented in partnership with the Athens Fashion Collective’s Georgia Sewn exposition, the UGA College of Family and Consumer Science, and the Georgia Museum of Art.
The Israeli novelist Assaf Gavron will speak on February 4. Gavron’s talk is presented as the Department of Comparative Literature’s annual Betty Jean Craige Lecture.
On February 11-12, the Willson Center will host Cuba and the U.S. South: A Shared History, a symposium exploring the ties between Cuba and the Southern United States, stretching back to the antebellum era. The featured Global Georgia speaker on February 11 is Mark Sanders, Chair of African American Studies at Emory University. Other events will include a panel discussion and a lecture by the Cuban artist Alexis Esquivel.
On view throughout February will be Pictures of Us: Photographs from the Do Good Fund Collection, a multi-venue photography exhibition sponsored by The Do Good Fund, the Willson Center, the Georgia Museum of Art, the Georgia Review, the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries, the Lyndon House Arts Center, Ciné, and the Athens-Clarke County Library. On February 18, William R. Ferris will give a keynote talk for the exhibition, part of the Global Georgia Initiative. Ferris, a widely recognized leader in Southern studies, African American music, and folklore, is the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the senior associate director of UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South.
Harvard University’s Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton: A Global History, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, will be the featured speaker on February 25. Beckert’s talk is co-sponsored by the UGA Department of History.
The environmental historian Paul Sutter of the University of Colorado will visit UGA as a special guest in the Global Georgia Initiative on March 24, co-sponsored by the University of Georgia Press. Sutter, who taught for ten years in the UGA Department of History, is the author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South, forthcoming from the UGA Press.