You Should

You Should…Read: Free Culture

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Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig book image

"According to the U.S. Constitution, the purpose of the copyright law is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” To achieve this purpose, the Constitution balances two forces against one another. On one side, it harnesses the profit motive, giving creators an “exclusive Right” to sell or license “their respective Writings and Discoveries.” On the other side, it secures this right for “a limited term” so that others might build upon and reinterpret those writings and discoveries.

Over the last century, this balance has gotten out of whack in favor of longer and longer copyright terms and stricter and stricter enforcement of intellectual property rights. In Free Culture: how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity, legal scholar Lawrence Lessig details the history of this unbalancing and shows how the emergence of Internet culture exacerbates it. Lessig argues that the ease with which we can share and remix digital content demands a new balance, one with stronger protections for the public domain. Lessig reminds us that protecting copyright holders and their profits is not the purpose of copyright law, but merely a means of fostering creativity in the body politic. To understand the ways our digital culture changes our thinking about copyright, you should read Free Culture."

-Tom Scheinfeldt
Associate Professor,
Digital, Media & Design Department
Director of Greenhouse Studios

You Should… Read: Aftermath

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Susan Brison’s Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of the Self (Princeton University Press, 2002)

You really should read Susan Brison’s Aftermath: Violence and the Remaking of the Self (Princeton University Press, 2002). In this era of random terrorist violence, in the age of #MeToo and those who systematically doubt reports of rape, Brison’s insightful analysis of the process of rebuilding a life after cataclysmic violence is more timely than ever. The book combines first person narrative with careful consideration of survivor testimonies, and weaves these together with philosophical and psychological theories about the nature of the self and the effects of trauma. It is a rich and powerful book. The issues are fraught but the writing is not– it is lucid, engaging, and powerful.

(This book is also available through JStor)

-Lynne Tirrell
Associate Professor of Philosophy
UCHI Fellow in Residence 2018-2019
Department of Philosophy

You Should…Read: Heavy: An American Memoir

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"You should. . . read Kiese Laymon’s Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner, 2018)

There are so many reasons you should read Kiese Laymon’s intensely personal story, but let’s start with this: writing so alive it jumps off the page and double-dares you to stay up all night with it.  You should take that dare, but you should also take it seriously.  Addressed to his brilliant, complicated, professor mother, Laymon’s memoir recalls in vivid, often excruciating detail his own experience occupying a large black body in Mississippi—the more to abuse, terrorize, demonize, and shame. The path to adulthood, for Laymon, thus becomes a literal exercise in learning to disappear: as he continues his education in Ohio and Indiana, and goes on to become a professor himself in upstate New York, he starves and runs himself to exhaustion in an effort to become unassailable. We can guess before we know that it’s a futile endeavor because we see the evidence strewn everywhere: the tear gas canisters lobbed over the border at people seeking asylum provide merely the latest proof that ours is a nation still soaking in a hate-fueled white supremacy that just can’t break its habit of inflicting harm upon brown, black, AND LGBTQ bodies.  But Laymon’s book offers far more than further evidence of the racism and violence that makes his story a peculiarly American tale. This courageous book is steeped in a politics of love that will help readers develop just the sort of “radical moral imagination” Laymon’s own mother fostered in him and which we will all need if we are to learn how to “talk, listen, organize, imagine, strategize, and fight fight fight” with and for vulnerable children everywhere."

- Kathy Knapp
Associate Professor
Department of English
University of Connecticut

You Should…See: Duke Riley’s Now Those Days Are Gone

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Now Those Days Are Gone Duke Riley 2017 Seashell Mosaic on wood

"This beautifully detailed work of art measures three and half feet tall and fourteen feet long, using thousands of shells to depict the USS Kansas. The Kansas was a Connecticut-Class Battleship built in New Jersey and launched in 1905 to become a part of the, so called, Great White Fleet. This fleet, order by President Theodore Roosevelt, consisted of several other battleships that circumnavigated the globe making various military and diplomatic stops to display U.S. naval power in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. This victory lap around the world sought to celebrate White American racial superiority as the fleet made stops in the recently occupied Caribbean and Pacific Island colonies. The delicate seashell construction contrasts vividly with the brutally destructive power of the battleship with canons, guns, and torpedoes. The warm colored shells in the sky suggest a maritime sunset with radial embellishments in the upper corners. The radiating rays seem to indicate a ubiquitous presence invoking the circumnavigation of the Great White Fleet. Riley’s use of the artwork’s title, now those days are gone, within the piece draw greater attention to multiple inflections of the phrase and it’s relationship to the U.S. imperial power. On the one hand, the phrase invokes a nostalgia for nationalist imperialism, yet the tender construction of the piece reverses this meaning to show it’s fragile nature. The nostalgic interpretation also points to a contemporary decline of U.S. global power and the dangers of reasserting such a position now. Alternatively, the title might indicate that such small battleships, as the Kansas, were immediately eclipsed by the larger, faster, and more deadly Dreadnaught class of battleships. In this interpretation, the days of small battleships are gone, ironically reflected in the tender material of the seashells replaced by behemoth war machines growing ever larger. In the multiple meanings which this artwork puts in play, it also signals a possible future without battleships. One without the racial ideologies and imperial economies which fuel seaborne violence."

- Jason Oliver Chang
Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies
Director, Asian and Asian American Studies Institute
University of Connecticut

You Should…Read: If Beale Street Could Talk

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If Beale Street Could Talk film image

"You should read James Baldwin's 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk and view Barry Jenkins's 2018 film adaptation of Baldwin's novel.

A deeply affecting love story, Baldwin's novel centers on a young couple, Tish and Fonny. When the novel opens, Fonny is in jail accused of a crime he did not commit and Tish reveals she is pregnant. The romance is infused with an all-too-timely critique of systematic racism in the American criminal justice system. As he often did, Baldwin broke conventions and sparked controversy with this novel, choosing to tell the story from the perspective of its young black female protagonist. Poet and activist June Jordan wrote a scathing review of Baldwin's appropriation of the young black female voice.  A daring, complex, and thought-provoking work of sustaining black love, If Beale Street Could Talk demonstrates Baldwin's continued relevance in these times.

Director Barry Jenkins has now adapted Baldwin's novel to the screen, following up his Academy Award-winning Moonlight (recently recommended here by my colleague Professor Melina Pappademos).  You should read the book and watch the film, because although the film is largely faithful to the book, even a filmmaker as skilled as Jenkins leaves a lot on the page.  Those who view the film only will miss some of the work's thematic power (as well as a major element of the story's finale).

You'll also be voting with your entertainment dollars for more such adaptions of Baldwin's work and the work of other African American writers.  We've recently seen a flurry of successful film adaptations of African American literature: the adaption of August Wilson's Fences starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, Steve McQueen's adaptation of Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave, and last year's The Hate U Give based on the Young Adult novel by Angie Carter, just to name a few.   The success of Beale Street -- Regina King has already won a Golden Globe for her performance as Sharon Rivers -- and Raoul Peck's Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro may promise more cinematic representations of Baldwin's work.  And I could easily list several dozen other works in the African American literary canon that would make excellent and timely material for feature-length film treatment.

There are other movies that will get much more attention, but you should see If Beale Street Could Talk.  It's a superhero movie."

- Shawn Salvant
Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies
University of Connecticut

You SHOULD…Watch: The Movies of Feng Xiaogang

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“For more than two decades, the movies of veteran Chinese filmmaker Feng Xiaogang entertained the Chinese-speaking world. He created a new genre of commercially successful Chinese New Year Celebration Films (Hesui Pian). Newsweek called him the Chinese Steven Spielberg, but he does not easily fit into any classification. His movies, unlike Hollywood productions, are based on Chinese social and cultural trends, reflecting fast-changing popular tastes in the People’s Republic of China. Born in Beijing, Feng Xiaogang speaks and acts in a straightforward manner, like a northerner. As a filmmaker, he believes in freedom of artistic expression, tackling sensitive topics and challenging official and cultural norms.

His early comedies and melodramas made him famous. They cover diverse topics to which people can relate. Big Shot’s Funeral (2001) is a satire about commercialization of funeral; Cell Phone (2003) is about extra-marital affair exposed by modern mobile phone technology; If You Are the One (2008) is about a rich bachelor having a difficult time finding a lover. Feng Xiaogang’s later movies cover more serious topics, such as the Chinese Civil War of 1945-49 in Assembly (2007), the devastating Tangshan earthquake of 1976 in Aftershock (2010), and, most recently, interpersonal relations within the People’s Liberation Army dance troupe during the Cultural Revolution in Youth (2017). The secret of his success lies in his ability to be ahead of his time, as well as in his long-term collaboration with such prominent writers as Wang Shuo and Liu Zhenyun, and with actors Ge You and Fan Bingbing, who star in his movies.”

 

-Victor Zatsepine
Associate Professor of History
University of Connecticut

You SHOULD…Read: the On the Origin of Species

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“Why should you read a 19th-century book on the already familiar concept of evolution? The most obvious reason is banal: it is one the most important books ever written, which changed the way we see the world and our place in it. But that aside, why is this a useful book for someone who works in the humanities?

 

The book is a monumental example of epistemic humility. Darwin valued facts and cared deeply about the truth. He appreciated that revolutionary ideas require strong evidence, which is why he worked on his manuscript for 20 long years, testing, discussing, and fact-checking his ideas and amassing a mountain of evidence from a variety of disciplines in his systematic quest for the truth.

 

It is also a magnificent story of intellectual courage and integrity. Darwin knew that many would be offended or disappointed by his findings, including the powerful religious establishment and his beloved wife. He regretted that his ideas would make them feel uncomfortable, but he knew that as a scholar, his paramount duty was to tell the truth as he perceived it.

 

In addition to its scientific value, the book has great literary merit. Darwin was an excellent communicator of ideas, and his elegant style makes his grand narrative vigorous as well as inspiring. This is why the last sentences of the volume are so often quoted:

 

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

 

 

–Dimitris Xygalatas
Department of Anthropology & Cognitive Science Program
Former UCHI Fellow

You SHOULD…Watch: The Great British Baking Show

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GBBO

 

“I read a lot of contemporary fiction, and am a scholar of public opinion and American politics.   So this may sound odd, trivial and far afield, but one of my favorite cultural obsessions is the competitive baking contest, the Great British Baking Show (now in its 9th season — only 5 seasons are available on Netflix so far:   https://www.netflix.com/title/80063224).

Of all the books, movies and television I love, this is one show I’ve become particularly obsessive about.   I am a long-time baker, so it is fascinating from that standpoint of course:   Some of the very best amateur bakers in Britain display their mind-bindingly creative approaches to food, and have astounding technical talents as well.   The judges are brilliant and serious:   Choosing winners and losers is a grave business to these globally-renowned baker-judges, but they do indeed realize it is about food, so they maintain the proper (i.e. witty/dry/British) sense of humor, and a high level of self-awareness.

Putting aside the food, the reason I’m drawn to this program is its profound civility, so desperately missing from American reality television and broadcast competitions.   Perhaps it is the British manners, but I think it is far more than that.   The program is a model of how human beings need to treat each other, with dignity and empathy.   Contestants are a diverse lot with regard to class, age, profession, race and ethnicity.   They develop genuine respect for each other, and indulge in the joys of friendly competition, without the juvenile and often venal attitude promoted in American reality programs (“I’m here to win, not to make friends” is the most common contestant line of every show,  from The Bachelor to Survivor to Top Chef).

Aristotle famously wrote about friendship in Ethics as the real basis for a democratic polity, and you see a mini-civil society built before your eyes on the Great British Baking Show.   There is partnership, civility, and love among contestants and judges alike, all in the context of what is most basic to us:   the visceral joy of sharing great food.   What’s not to like, in these times of a tribalistic, violent and divided America?    We’d be a better nation, and better friends and neighbors, if we’d kick back and watch a kind bunch of people demonstrate cooking-as-community with panache.   As Levi-Strauss noted, cooking is what turns nature into culture, and what a fine culture it is, somehow turned out in hour-long segments, along with many tarts, scones, biscuits and “saucy puds” (well, you’ll have to tune in to understand that…).   Bon appetit!”

-Susan Herbst
President
University of Connecticut

 

Photo Credit: Netflix

You SHOULD…See: Moonlight

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“So intimate is moonlight reflected on still water that this spare, deeply moving film appropriately bears the name. Moonlight won a Golden Globe for Best Picture, an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and was the second lowest-grossing film in history to win an Oscar for Best Picture, its all-black, mostly unknown cast beating out favored La La Land starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. So why is this particular coming-of-age story so worth seeing? In a word: hope. Told in three parts, the film portrays black lives that are at once complex, flawed, loving, and healthy [finally!]. Moonlight  follows from boy to man the life of black and gay Chiron. Front-and-center in the film are hyper masculinity, economic depression, and drugs, yet these situational factors are not depicted as the inherent dysfunction of blackness. Unexpectedly, we admire and care about the 40-something drug dealer whose performative masculinity slips easily from his shoulders to tenderly parent semi-orphaned Chiron. We are both crushed and empathetic when Kevin, Chiron’s childhood playmate, as a teenager and to avoid his own beating by schoolyard bullies repeatedly knocks down and draws blood from his shy unsinkable friend, Chiron. And we feel Chiron’s interiority, the ebb and flow of his self-possession, his tenuous yet durable embrace of himself. As Chiron sorts through his gay black worth, stretching toward fulfillment despite domestic abuse and betrayal, we the viewers also internalize the power of honest connection and self-acceptance. For Moonlight, both black aggression (pariah) and self-erasure (hapless victim) indeed are myths. Chiron returns again and again to his gayness, blackness, and vulnerabilities, choosing to love rather than deny himself. As we watch, the desire to engage the best of our own lives and communities is overwhelming. Moonlight is a must see.”

 

–Melina Pappademos,
Associate Professor, Department of History
and Director, Africana Studies Institute

 

 

You SHOULD…Hear: Songs in the Key of Life

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“You should hear Songs in the Key of Life, by Stevie Wonder. In 1975, Wonder had considered leaving the music industry, moving to Ghana and working with children with disabilities. At only 25 years old, he had already released 17 albums, sold millions, and won dozens of awards, including Grammys for Album of the Year (1974 and 1975).  After some prodding from friends, family, fans (and the biggest record contract for any artist in history), he returned to the studio to record. In the midst of the dominance of the carefree hedonism of disco, the double LP, was released in September 1976 to critical acclaim. Like his previous work, this LP proved to be a beautifully discursive exploration of the human condition. Wonder assembled a group of artists from different genres and filled the album with an aural style and literary brilliance that was organically balanced with social commentary and festive jaunts about mistakes of our youth. “Isn’t She Lovely” is as infectious and fun as songs get. “Sir Duke” is classic Wonder. With more hit singles than any Wonder LP ever, it’s a challenge to justify focus on one song, but Wonder’s highpoint is one of the best love songs ever, “As.”

Songs became Wonder’s best-selling album of all time. It won Grammy Album of the Year among three other Grammys. Auteurs from Prince to George Michael have praised it as the best album ever made. The list of awards and honors is too long to put here. When you hear it, know that it offers us many ways for its consumption. Focus on the sonic, and isolate the various instruments and vocals from Herbie Hancock or Minnie Riperton. Concentrate on the enthusiastic flow of Wonder on some songs, the playful laugh, improvisation, or prattle on another. Appreciate the jazz inflections on R&B vocals. Listen to tales of love, God, struggle and joy. It is a lush, incredible example of exceptional talent and a reminder of how important it is to encourage the creation of wonderous art. ”

– Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar
Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music
Professor of History