You Should

You Should..Watch: “Dark” the TV Mini Series (Siavash Samei, UCHI)

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In this brave new world of self-isolation, I have come to lose track of time. Time, or rather our concepts of the passage of time, are constructs that we animate and breathe life into, out of the necessities of our mortal lives. But to quote a Tralfamadorian from Slaughterhouse-Five: “ All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.” Making sense of time and distorting our limited understandings of it have been at the heart of many great works of literature and art. For me, the latest iteration of this feat of human imagination is the German sci-fi noir series, Dark, created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese. You should watch it, not because it is a binge worthy thriller (it most certainly is), or because it might bring a sense of reassurance in these times of uncertainty (it will not); but because it is a must-experience masterpiece.

 Dark is the, well…dark…story of the residents of a small German town; each dealing with their own personal traumas, double lives, and troubling pasts. We begin in the “present,” in 2019. But the story eventually spreads into subplots and story lines in 1921, 1953, 1986, and 2053; as various characters engage in time travel through a wormhole in a near-by cave. They travel in order to make sense of their lives, and to find answers to and perhaps prevent tragedies that befall them—murders, suicides, disappearances, and infidelities. As the “pasts” of the residents travel into the “present” and the “future,” and as the “presents” of the same characters travel into the “past” and the “future,” we come to appreciate the long-term ripple effects of human decisions and random encounters in each period across time and space.

But, more importantly for me, as the various story lines interweave through interpersonal interactions across the different time periods, we begin to lose any sense of which temporal iteration of which character is “real.” Thus, we come to lose track of a linear and directional concept of time and even question the very idea of the “self.”

Dark elegantly blends various genres into a complex narrative through which the viewer is confronted with the totality of the human experience, and grapples with issues of determinism and free will.

The series builds up in pace and complexity as it progresses. In a way, Dark “isn’t a show you watch. It’s a show you solve.”

The first two seasons of Dark are available on Netflix.

So, solve away!

 

– Siavash Samei
Postdoctoral Fellow, Humanities Institute
University of Connecticut

Who is Siavash Samei? Siavash was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, but moved to the US in his teenage years. He earned his PhD from the UConn Anthropology Department in 2019, after which he joined the UCHI team as a postdoctoral fellow. Siavash is an archaeologist who has conducted field work throughout the Middle East, specifically in Iran and Armenia. His research examines human-animal interactions and the evolution of animal husbandry as a subsistence strategy throughout the Middle Eastern highlands at the time of the Urban Revolution in Mesopotamia (ca. 4000–2200 BCE). Next year Siavash will join the faculty at The College of Wooster as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Archaeology.

You Should..Listen to: The “Feel Free” Audiobook (Fiona Vernal, UConn-History)

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There is only so much Netflix and Hulu one can watch and replaying Contagion and Outbreak are not the best antidote for COVID-19’s many anxieties. I suggest you find refuge in an audio-version of Feel Free, Zadie Smith’s 2018 eclectic and wide-ranging collection of essays. Banish all thought of the staid five-paragraph essays of undergraduate habitude; this collection will whisk you back to what the essay form was meant to do originally—reflect and be relevant. Even if you have not discovered White Teeth or On Beauty, you’ll get a crash course in Smith’s literary evolution from an awe-struck young writer to a mature, reflective artist. Feel Free will surprise and delight, offering ruminations on freedom, multiculturalism, aesthetics, art, dance, fiction, domesticity, middle class dreams of the British sort, optimism, family, individuality, social media, race, and narcissism. In a curious juxtaposition of characters, you’ll discover low-brow and high-brow culture, ways of seeing, ways of being, and the gulf between husbands and wives and parents and children. Where else will you find Martha Graham and John Berger; Philip Roth and Balthasar Denney; Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Vladimir Nabokov and Jay-Z; and the single-monikered Prince, Madonna, and Beyoncé?  In one of the most brilliant pieces, a bathroom becomes a lucid symbol of a father’s thwarted dream, a mother’s exile, and the sacrifices that permit their children to cross social, racial, geographic, and economic boundaries. Since you can’t have this conversation with Zadie Smith in person, listening to Feel Free is the next best option!

– Fiona Vernal
Associate Professor of History
University of Connecticut

Fiona Vernal Behind a PodiumWho is Fiona Vernal? Fiona Vernal is a native of Trelawny, Jamaica and grew up in Trenton, New Jersey. She earned her MA and PhD from Yale. Since 2005 she has taught at the University of Connecticut’s Department of History. Her book, The Farmerfield Mission (Oxford, 2012) explores the relationship between African Christian converts, European missionaries, and the politics of land access, land alienation and the “civilizing” mission of African social and economic improvement in nineteenth century South Africa. She consults with the Connecticut Historical Society on oral history projects including an exhibit documenting and recording the impact of 9/11 on Connecticut victims, families, and first responders.

You Should…Read: Midnight in Chernobyl (Marisa Chrysochoou, UConn-Civil and Environmental Engineering)

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Cover of the book "Midnight in Chernobyl"The role of the humanities and liberal arts education in the 21st century is a topic of intense debate. If the sciences are the foundation for inventing new technologies, the humanities are the foundation for implementing these technologies sustainably and ethically. Adam Higginbotham’s account of the Chernobyl accident is what the New York Times called “an enthralling and terrifying history” of technology gone wild in human hands. There is no better evidence of the role of politics, ethics and psychology in the making of a disaster over a period of decades. The Chernobyl accident was not a human error of the moment, nor a slip in judgment that inevitably happens to scientists and engineers when we fumble with experiments and machines on a daily basis. It was the result of an entire political system that pursued short-term wins, covered inconvenient truths, and promoted allegiance to ideology.

Does this remind you of anything in our current handling of a crisis?

And yet I am sure that there will be many climate-change deniers who read the book and sneer at the incompetence and blindness of their Soviet counterparts of 1986.

Regardless, you will also have supreme fun reading this book that is written as a Stephen King suspense novel.

 

– Marisa Chrysochoou
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Connecticut

Maria Chrysochoou's photoWho is Marisa Chrysochoou? Marisa Chrysochoou is a professor and the head of the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department. She received her Ph.D. in 2006 from the Stevens Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on fate and transport metals in the environment, environment and surface chemistry, and treatment and reuse of industrial waste, contaminated soil, and sediments. She has also been awarded a prestigious Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship.

You Should…See: Shoplifters (Françoise Dussart, UConn-Anthropology)

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Cover photo of the five members of the household in the movie ShopliftersYou Should take the time to watch Shoplifters by Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda who is often compared to Kurosawa, Bergman, and other great humanists of the cinema.

Shoplifters—inspired by a local news story—is the best movie I have seen in 2018–2019. And yes, I watch a lot of movies!

Shoplifters is a subtle Dickensian tale in a contemporary modern crowded Tokyo.

Shoplifters is about five members of a household: Osamu, Nobuyo, Shota, Aki a-k-a Sayaka, and Grandma who adopt a starving little girl Yuri.

Shoplifters is about the kinship bonds we develop with strangers we chose to love.

Shoplifters is about empathy, generosity, compulsive kindness and incredibly moving moments of joy.

Shoplifters is about trauma, fear of poverty and coming-of-age.

Shoplifters is about three generations of Invisible people in a cold and judgmental capitalist world.

Shoplifters is about people nursing secrets and lies which should never be revealed.

Shoplifters reveals a paradox that despite shoplifting, cheating and coning, Osamu, Nobuyo, Shota, Aki and Grandma create a happier life for little Yuri than her violent law-abiding parents.

Shoplifters is a magical film with overwhelming endings.

Oh, and You Should see Shoplifters because it requires reading subtitles…

– Françoise Dussart
Professor of Anthropology & WGSS
University of Connecticut

 

Photo of Françoise Dussart

Who is Françoise Dussart? Françoise is a professor of anthropology and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Uconn. Trained in France and Australia, her specialties in social anthropology include Australian Aboriginal society and culture (as well as other Fourth World Peoples), iconography and visual systems, various expressions of gender, ritual and social organization, health and citizenship. She is currently curating the very first major presentation of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts from Australia in Canada, at the Musée de la Civilisation in Quebec City.

You Should…Listen to: Regina Spektor’s Music (Sarah Willen-Anthropology)

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Regina SpektorYou should listen to Regina Spektor’s music — but only if you’re ready for a brush with genius. Wild genius, that is, skyrocketing musically through the magical, heartbreaking, infuriating, absurd journey that is life. Nothing is lyrically off limits for Spektor — no topic too grand (“Laughing With”), no predicament too small (“Dance Anthem of the 80s”) to stir her imagination. A classically trained pianist  (“Après Moi”), mediocre guitarist (“That Time”), and proud immigrant to the United States — when she and her family emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1990, with support from HIAS, she was just 9 1/2 — Spektor belongs to a cadre of gifted artists (Gary Shteyngart is another) for whom American promise, Jewish otherness, Russian melancholy, and familial closeness meld in a worldview that is wise (“Samson”), joyful (“On the Radio”), and occasionally bizarre (“Pavlov’s Daughter”). Whether she’s loving on New York City (“Don’t Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas)”), mourning an impossible love (“Better”), parodying Second Amendment fetishism (“Uh-Merica”), dreaming up the baby boy whose clothes she’ll someday pin funkily at the beach (“Folding Chair”), or shredding the high priests of exploitation, greed, and unctuous politics (“The Trapper and the Furrier”; “Ballad of a Politician”), Regina Spektor’s America is a place we all should visit, and linger. Oh — and I hear she wrote the theme song for “Orange is the New Black.” Is it worth watching?

 

– Sarah Willen
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Connecticut

 

Who is Sarah Willen? Sarah Willen is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut and Director of the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at the university’s Human Rights Institute. She holds a PhD in Anthropology and an MPH in Global Health, both from Emory University. She is a two-time recipient of the Rudolf Virchow Prize from the Critical Anthropology of Global Health Caucus of the Society for Medical Anthropology. She is also the author of a 2019 book Fighting for Dignity: Migrant Lives at Israel’s Margins published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

 

You Should…Read: Kalanithi’s “When Breath Becomes Air,” and Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” (Sara Harrington-UConn Library)

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Front cover of two books If medicine is an art as much as a science, then a journey of illness through the medical world is part humanistic voyage.  Two books published in the last few years—When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016) and Being Mortal by Atul Gawande (2017)—call upon our deepest and truest humanity, and you should read them in tandem.  In When Breath Becomes Air physician becomes patient; in Being Mortal physician becomes fellow traveler on a paternal medical odyssey.  Each narrative is an exercise in heartache, gut punch, intellectual puzzle, moral quandary, and finally, existential ‘what if?’  My mind returned these texts over and over since I read them, inspiring me to wrestle anew with the medical journeys that I have traveled in the past and will no doubt walk in the future.  I’m a librarian, so people ask me for reading recommendations all the time, and I’m always happy to share my working shortlist.  The impact of When Breath Becomes Air and Being Mortal lingers and lasts, and you should read them for yourself.

– Sara Harrington
Associate University Librarian for Academic Engagement
University of Connecticut

Who is Sara Harrington? Sara Harrington previously worked at the Ohio University Libraries and the Rutgers University Libraries. Sara holds a Ph.D. in Art History, an M.L.S., an M.Ed. in Higher Education, and a post-graduate certificate in the Curation and Management of Digital Assets. Sara works to integrate academic research libraries into university teaching, researching, and learning, building collaborations with stakeholder communities to support student and faculty success. Sara joined the UConn Library in 2018, and is enjoying getting to know New England across the course of all four of its beautiful seasons.

You Should…Read: Jonathan White’s Tides (Alain Frogley-School of Fine Arts Associate Dean)

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Tides Book CoverWhether it’s beach season, the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing, or our daily proximity in Connecticut to vast bodies of water in only partly predictable motion, there are plenty of reasons right now why you should read Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean by Jonathan White (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2017). But the most important is that it’s a wonderful book. White offers an all-too-rare example of a narrative that brings together science, art, and the humanities in a way that is much more than the sum of their parts (and never less). The art is mostly in the writing. Unpretentiously beautiful, it effortlessly weaves together complex science, cultural history, ecology, and even the engineering and economics of generating electric power, with compelling vignettes of the author’s close encounters with his subject, and the lives of those who rely upon it for their survival. Which is, ultimately, all of us; but White is particularly sensitive to the experience of indigenous peoples across the globe, who are frequently both custodians of ancient oceanic knowledge and the first casualties of climate change. He brings to bear decades of experience as a sailor, surfer, and conservationist, to offer a vision that is passionate but never preachy. So read it now, before all too soon you’ll have time only to think about grading papers and shoveling snow.

 

– Alain Frogley, DPhil
Associate Dean, School of Fine Arts & Professor of Music History
University of Connecticut

Alain FrogleyWho is Alain Frogley? Alain Frogley is a native of Great Britain and holds degrees from Oxford University and the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught at Oxford and Lancaster universities and in 1994 was appointed to the faculty of the University of Connecticut. He is a specialist in the music of the late-19th and 20th centuries, particularly that of Britain and America, but he has also worked on the cultural contexts of musical nationalism. His most recent work includes research into the reception of British music in Nazi Germany and racial Anglo-Saxonism in music. In 2005–2006 he was a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies.

You Should…Read: What the Eyes Don’t See (Juli Wade-CLAS Dean)

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What the Eyes Don't See by Mona Hanna-AttishaThis terrific memoir is a story of a public health disaster and the courageous pediatrician who provided the research that eventually forced officials to respond to the truth members of the community had been speaking, unheard. When a decision was made in 2014 to switch the source of water for the impoverished city of Flint, MI to the Flint River without adding appropriate corrosion inhibitors, lead from pipes leached into the water and poisoned the population of about 100,000 people. In addition to documenting the crisis, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, director of the pediatric residency program at Flint’s Hurley Medical Center and a Michigan State University faculty member, poignantly describes the community she serves, her personal passions and connections, and the circumstances that drove her to investigate and publicize the crisis. I also worked at MSU when the disaster unfolded and lived less than 50 miles from Flint. I was appalled and saddened, and proud of the people who worked tirelessly to move forward in a positive way. For those (like me) who love a good detective story, particularly one grounded in science and full of positive human nature, I highly recommend this read. If only it were fiction…

 

– Juli Wade
Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
University of Connecticut

Julie WadeWho is Juli Wade? In December 2018, Juli Wade was named the new Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Prior to this, Professor Wade was the Associate Provost at Michigan State University, where she had joined the psychology department in 1995. She received her Bachelors’ degree in psychology from Cornell University and her doctorate from the University of Texas. Wade’s research focuses on understanding “how structural and biochemical changes within the central nervous system regulate behavior, using lizards and songbirds as model organisms.” Read more about Dean Wade in UConn Today.