Elm City Press Fest
Greene Block + Studios
18 Main Street, Waterville< Maine
Elm City Small Press Fest is a community event that focuses on independent publishing in the Maine region. The event highlights contemporary print and publishing culture while activating conversations around creative labor and commerce as viable artistic practices. The goal of the fest is to inform attendees of contemporary creative publishing while stimulating and promoting creative economies in the area.
Sponsored by Greene Block + Studios, Center for the Arts and Humanities, Colby College Libraries, and the Lunder Institute.
Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
A conversation with Zo Orchingwa ’14
6:00 p.m., Parker-Reed, Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center
The Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights are cosponsoring the second event in our Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights Alumni Series.
Professor of Philosophy Jill Gordon will host a conversation with Zo Orchingwa ’14 about Ameelio, his nonprofit app that transforms America’s correctional system by connecting incarcerated people with support networks, reducing recidivism and prison populations.
All Light, Everywhere (2021)
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
The film follows the biases inherent to the way humans physically see the world, focusing primarily on the usage of police body cameras and other forms of police surveillance, but also tracing studies of solar eclipses as well as the parallel development of automatic weapons with the motion picture camera.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Two Cent Talks Series
An Evening of Original Hip Hop featuring Maine’s Graphic Melee and Word’s of Phrase, accompanied by Liza May
5:00 p.m., Greene Block + Studios
Gender, Feminism, and Abolition
Victoria Law
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A workshop with journalist Victoria Law, who is an American anarchist activist, prison abolitionist, writer, freelance editor, and photographer.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Un Prophète (2009)
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A Prophet (French: Un Prophète) is a 2009 French prison crime film directed by Jacques Audiard with a screenplay by Audiard, with Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, and Nicolas Peufaillit, from a story by Dafri. The film stars Tahar Rahim in the title role as an imprisoned petty criminal of Algerian origins who rises in the inmate hierarchy, becoming an assassin and drug trafficker as he initiates himself into the Corsican and then Muslim subcultures.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Ph.D.
7:00 p.m., Zoom Webinar
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for coastal cities, and co-creator and co-host of the Spotify/Gimlet podcast How to Save a Planet. With Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, she co-edited the climate anthology All We Can Save, and co-founded The All We Can Save Project. Recently, she co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. Previously, she was executive director of the Waitt Institute, developed policy at the EPA and NOAA, served as a leader of the March for Science, and taught as an adjunct professor at New York University. Dr. Johnson earned a BA from Harvard University in environmental science and public policy, and a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine biology. She publishes widely, including in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Time, and she blogs on Scientific American. She is on the 2021 Time 100 Next List and was named one of Elle’s 27 Women Leading on Climate. Outside Magazine called her “the most influential marine biologist of our time.” Her mission is to build community around solutions to our climate crisis. Find her @ayanaeliza.
Cosponsored by Environmental Studies, the Center for the Arts and the Humanities, the Goldfarb Center for Public Policy, and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Solitary Confinement
Lisa Guenther and jackie sumell
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation between philosopher Lisa Guenther (Queens University) and artist jackie sumell.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Medical Humanities and Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Nexus for
Data Ethics and Racial Equity
Kirsten Ostherr
6:00 p.m., Page Commons
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in a wide range of healthcare settings, often without patients’ (or even doctors’) awareness, and with little transparency or ethics oversight. This recent addition to the technological armamentarium of medicine has given rise to concerns about algorithmic bias and has prompted debates about the changing role of human clinicians in the evolving ecosystems of digital health. Yet, some researchers have argued that AI will augment the capacities of physicians and increase their availability to provide empathy and other uniquely human forms of care to their patients. This talk will explore several concrete examples of AI use in healthcare, with a focus on social determinants of health and racial equity. Prof. Ostherr will explore the questions: What would it take for AI to be “ethical,” in a society that is still shaped by racial discrimination and disparate access to care? What methods can medical and health humanities provide to help create a more humane and just healthcare future? And, how might we reimagine health technology with ethics and equality truly at the center of the design process?
Cosponsored by the Medicine and Race Public Humanistic Inquiry Lab, the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology, the Science, Technology and Society Program, and the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Fall Shabbaton with Elana Arian
6:30 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
The Fall Shabbaton is an annual event that brings together the Maine Jewish community and friends from farther afield for a weekend of Torah study, soulful music, Shabbat meals, and invigorating connection. What started out as a Friday-night dinner and concert has evolved into a full Shabbat of learning and singing, with intergenerational programs for college students, children and teens, synagogue members from across the state. Past guests have included Nefesh Mountain, Deborah Sacks Mintz, Neshama Carlebach and the Glory to God gospel singers, and Joey Weisenberg, as well as Talmud scholar Ruth Calderon. The Shabbaton has grown into a partner program to the Maine Conference for Jewish Life, sustaining our community with Jewish learning and music as we enter the winter months.
Cosponsored with the Center for Small Town Jewish Life.
Safe (2015) with Steve Wurtzler, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
Safe is a 1995 British-American psychological drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore. Set in 1987, it follows a suburban housewife in Los Angeles whose monotonous life is abruptly changed when she becomes sick with a mysterious illness caused by the environment around her. The film topped the “best film of the 1990s” poll by The Village Voice, and was described by critics as “the scariest film of the year”, “a mesmerizing horror movie”, and “a work of feminist counter-cinema”. 20 years after the film’s release, Haynes said its themes—disease and immunity in a post-industrial landscape and how recovery is a burden often put on victims of illness—were even more relevant than they were when the film was released.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Visualizing Incarceration
Sean Kelley, Brett Story, and Rowan Renee
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation with curator Sean Kelley (Eastern State Penitentiary), filmmaker and author Brett Story (Prison in 12 Landscapes; Prison Nation), and artist Rowan Renee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Freedom and Captivity on the Border: A conversation with Amber Ramirez ’14
7:00 p.m., Chace Community Forum
The Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights are cosponsoring the first event in our Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights Alumni Series. Assistant Professor of Spanish Nicolás Ramos Flores will host a conversation with Amber Ramirez ‘14, who will be speaking about life on the El Paso/Juárez border, her translation work since graduation, and her legal advocacy for detainees and asylum seekers.
Please note, this event is open only to the Colby Community.
Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Keynote Event on Wabanaki Place Names
Penobscot Tribal Historian James Francis, Moderated by Darren Ranco
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
During the event, James Francis will discuss his important work on returning Wabanaki place names to locations in Maine. There will be ample time for discussion, in a Q&A moderated by Penobscot scholar Darren Ranco. This event is part of the Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day Event Series 2021, in partnership with the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Sponsored by the American Studies Program’s Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Environmental Studies Program, History Department, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Theater and Dance Department, Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Reparations as Black Antagonism
Cameron Rowland
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance and talk by artist Cameron Rowland. Cameron Rowland is an American artist. Rowland graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in 2011, and after being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship returned there to address the student body. He spoke about his 2018 work Depreciation that critically examined the economics of slavery.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence
Laurence Ralph, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University
7:00 p.m., Ostrove Auditorium
Laurence Ralph is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His research and writing explore how police abuse, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of the drug trade naturalize disease, disability, and premature death for urban residents of color, who are often seen as expendable by “polite” society. Theoretically, his research lies at the nexus of critical medical and political anthropology, African American studies, and emerging scholarship on disability. Combining these literatures, he shows show violence and injury play a central role in the daily lives of Black urban populations. His most recent book, Torture Letters, is about torture as an open secret in Chicago. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander John Burge. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. The Torture Letters chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad.
Cosponsored with the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Snowpiercer (2013) with Seth Kim, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A post-apocalyptic ice age forces humanity’s last survivors aboard a globe-spanning supertrain. One man (Chris Evans) will risk everything to lead a revolt for control of the engine and the future of the world. A film that’s “just as interested in examining topics like climate change, class, and cultural disparity as it is in revealing just how the film’s core team navigates a never-stopping hell train to take on the bad guys” – ArsTechnica.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
What Does Abolition Sound Like?
Paul Rucker and Robin Kelley
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A performance workshop with artist-musician Paul Rucker creating music in response to prompts by Robin D. G. Kelley (History, UCLA, author of Freedom Dreams).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
What Does Abolition Feel Like?
Anna Martine Whitehead
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance artist Anna Martine Whitehead discusses her artistic practice, focused on how she centers Black liberation, queer livingness, and creative alternatives to policing and prisons in her work. An artist talk will be followed by a conversation between Whitehead and performer and poet, Gabrielle Civil. Introduced by Gwyneth Shanks (Theater and Dance).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
September 21, 2021
Two Cent Talk Series: Phuc Tran and Kristen Case
5:00-6:30 p.m., Arts Collaborative, 62 Main Street
Phuc Tran has been a high school Latin teacher for more than twenty years while also simultaneously establishing himself as a highly sought-after tattooer in the Northeast. Tran graduated from Bard College in 1995 with a BA in Classics and received the Callanan Classics Prize. He taught Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in New York at the Collegiate School and was an instructor at Brooklyn College’s Summer Latin Institute. Most recently, he taught Latin, Greek, and German at the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine.
Kristen Case teaches courses in American literature, environmental writing, and the intersection of 20th- and 21st-century American literature and philosophy. She has published essays on Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William James, and is the author of the book American Poetry and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). She is co-editor of the volumes Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge UP, 2016) and 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions, 2019).
Sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
September 20, 2021
Abolition for the 21st Century
Orisanmi Burton, Dylan Rodriguez and Jackie Wang
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Join us for Abolition for the 21st Century’ with Orisanmi Burton (Anthropology, American University, Abolition 101 video), Dylan Rodriguez (American Studies, UC-Riverside, founding member of Critical Resistance and author of Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime) and Jackie Wang (USC).
To register for the event, please click here.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Jacinta (2020) w/ director Jessica Earshaw and subject Jacinta Hunt
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A deeply intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma, JACINTA follows a young woman in and out of prison as she attempts to break free from an inherited cycle of addiction, incarceration, and crime.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Part of Freedom & Captivity, a statewide initiative to explore an abolitionist future for Maine.
Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
A conversation with Zo Orchingwa ’14
6:00 p.m., Parker-Reed, Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center
The Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights are cosponsoring the second event in our Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights Alumni Series.
Professor of Philosophy Jill Gordon will host a conversation with Zo Orchingwa ’14 about Ameelio, his nonprofit app that transforms America’s correctional system by connecting incarcerated people with support networks, reducing recidivism and prison populations.
All Light, Everywhere (2021)
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
The film follows the biases inherent to the way humans physically see the world, focusing primarily on the usage of police body cameras and other forms of police surveillance, but also tracing studies of solar eclipses as well as the parallel development of automatic weapons with the motion picture camera.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Two Cent Talks Series
An Evening of Original Hip Hop featuring Maine’s Graphic Melee and Word’s of Phrase, accompanied by Liza May
5:00 p.m., Greene Block + Studios
Gender, Feminism, and Abolition
Victoria Law
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A workshop with journalist Victoria Law, who is an American anarchist activist, prison abolitionist, writer, freelance editor, and photographer.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Un Prophète (2009)
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A Prophet (French: Un Prophète) is a 2009 French prison crime film directed by Jacques Audiard with a screenplay by Audiard, with Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, and Nicolas Peufaillit, from a story by Dafri. The film stars Tahar Rahim in the title role as an imprisoned petty criminal of Algerian origins who rises in the inmate hierarchy, becoming an assassin and drug trafficker as he initiates himself into the Corsican and then Muslim subcultures.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Ph.D.
7:00 p.m., Zoom Webinar
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for coastal cities, and co-creator and co-host of the Spotify/Gimlet podcast How to Save a Planet. With Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, she co-edited the climate anthology All We Can Save, and co-founded The All We Can Save Project. Recently, she co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. Previously, she was executive director of the Waitt Institute, developed policy at the EPA and NOAA, served as a leader of the March for Science, and taught as an adjunct professor at New York University. Dr. Johnson earned a BA from Harvard University in environmental science and public policy, and a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine biology. She publishes widely, including in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Time, and she blogs on Scientific American. She is on the 2021 Time 100 Next List and was named one of Elle’s 27 Women Leading on Climate. Outside Magazine called her “the most influential marine biologist of our time.” Her mission is to build community around solutions to our climate crisis. Find her @ayanaeliza.
Cosponsored by Environmental Studies, the Center for the Arts and the Humanities, the Goldfarb Center for Public Policy, and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Solitary Confinement
Lisa Guenther and jackie sumell
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation between philosopher Lisa Guenther (Queens University) and artist jackie sumell.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Medical Humanities and Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Nexus for
Data Ethics and Racial Equity
Kirsten Ostherr
6:00 p.m., Page Commons
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in a wide range of healthcare settings, often without patients’ (or even doctors’) awareness, and with little transparency or ethics oversight. This recent addition to the technological armamentarium of medicine has given rise to concerns about algorithmic bias and has prompted debates about the changing role of human clinicians in the evolving ecosystems of digital health. Yet, some researchers have argued that AI will augment the capacities of physicians and increase their availability to provide empathy and other uniquely human forms of care to their patients. This talk will explore several concrete examples of AI use in healthcare, with a focus on social determinants of health and racial equity. Prof. Ostherr will explore the questions: What would it take for AI to be “ethical,” in a society that is still shaped by racial discrimination and disparate access to care? What methods can medical and health humanities provide to help create a more humane and just healthcare future? And, how might we reimagine health technology with ethics and equality truly at the center of the design process?
Cosponsored by the Medicine and Race Public Humanistic Inquiry Lab, the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology, the Science, Technology and Society Program, and the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Fall Shabbaton with Elana Arian
6:30 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
The Fall Shabbaton is an annual event that brings together the Maine Jewish community and friends from farther afield for a weekend of Torah study, soulful music, Shabbat meals, and invigorating connection. What started out as a Friday-night dinner and concert has evolved into a full Shabbat of learning and singing, with intergenerational programs for college students, children and teens, synagogue members from across the state. Past guests have included Nefesh Mountain, Deborah Sacks Mintz, Neshama Carlebach and the Glory to God gospel singers, and Joey Weisenberg, as well as Talmud scholar Ruth Calderon. The Shabbaton has grown into a partner program to the Maine Conference for Jewish Life, sustaining our community with Jewish learning and music as we enter the winter months.
Cosponsored with the Center for Small Town Jewish Life.
Safe (2015) with Steve Wurtzler, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
Safe is a 1995 British-American psychological drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore. Set in 1987, it follows a suburban housewife in Los Angeles whose monotonous life is abruptly changed when she becomes sick with a mysterious illness caused by the environment around her. The film topped the “best film of the 1990s” poll by The Village Voice, and was described by critics as “the scariest film of the year”, “a mesmerizing horror movie”, and “a work of feminist counter-cinema”. 20 years after the film’s release, Haynes said its themes—disease and immunity in a post-industrial landscape and how recovery is a burden often put on victims of illness—were even more relevant than they were when the film was released.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Visualizing Incarceration
Sean Kelley, Brett Story, and Rowan Renee
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation with curator Sean Kelley (Eastern State Penitentiary), filmmaker and author Brett Story (Prison in 12 Landscapes; Prison Nation), and artist Rowan Renee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Freedom and Captivity on the Border: A conversation with Amber Ramirez ’14
7:00 p.m., Chace Community Forum
The Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights are cosponsoring the first event in our Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights Alumni Series. Assistant Professor of Spanish Nicolás Ramos Flores will host a conversation with Amber Ramirez ‘14, who will be speaking about life on the El Paso/Juárez border, her translation work since graduation, and her legal advocacy for detainees and asylum seekers.
Please note, this event is open only to the Colby Community.
Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Keynote Event on Wabanaki Place Names
Penobscot Tribal Historian James Francis, Moderated by Darren Ranco
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
During the event, James Francis will discuss his important work on returning Wabanaki place names to locations in Maine. There will be ample time for discussion, in a Q&A moderated by Penobscot scholar Darren Ranco. This event is part of the Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day Event Series 2021, in partnership with the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Sponsored by the American Studies Program’s Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Environmental Studies Program, History Department, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Theater and Dance Department, Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Reparations as Black Antagonism
Cameron Rowland
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance and talk by artist Cameron Rowland. Cameron Rowland is an American artist. Rowland graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in 2011, and after being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship returned there to address the student body. He spoke about his 2018 work Depreciation that critically examined the economics of slavery.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence
Laurence Ralph, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University
7:00 p.m., Ostrove Auditorium
Laurence Ralph is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His research and writing explore how police abuse, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of the drug trade naturalize disease, disability, and premature death for urban residents of color, who are often seen as expendable by “polite” society. Theoretically, his research lies at the nexus of critical medical and political anthropology, African American studies, and emerging scholarship on disability. Combining these literatures, he shows show violence and injury play a central role in the daily lives of Black urban populations. His most recent book, Torture Letters, is about torture as an open secret in Chicago. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander John Burge. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. The Torture Letters chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad.
Cosponsored with the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Snowpiercer (2013) with Seth Kim, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A post-apocalyptic ice age forces humanity’s last survivors aboard a globe-spanning supertrain. One man (Chris Evans) will risk everything to lead a revolt for control of the engine and the future of the world. A film that’s “just as interested in examining topics like climate change, class, and cultural disparity as it is in revealing just how the film’s core team navigates a never-stopping hell train to take on the bad guys” – ArsTechnica.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
What Does Abolition Sound Like?
Paul Rucker and Robin Kelley
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A performance workshop with artist-musician Paul Rucker creating music in response to prompts by Robin D. G. Kelley (History, UCLA, author of Freedom Dreams).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
What Does Abolition Feel Like?
Anna Martine Whitehead
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance artist Anna Martine Whitehead discusses her artistic practice, focused on how she centers Black liberation, queer livingness, and creative alternatives to policing and prisons in her work. An artist talk will be followed by a conversation between Whitehead and performer and poet, Gabrielle Civil. Introduced by Gwyneth Shanks (Theater and Dance).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
September 21, 2021
Two Cent Talk Series: Phuc Tran and Kristen Case
5:00-6:30 p.m., Arts Collaborative, 62 Main Street
Phuc Tran has been a high school Latin teacher for more than twenty years while also simultaneously establishing himself as a highly sought-after tattooer in the Northeast. Tran graduated from Bard College in 1995 with a BA in Classics and received the Callanan Classics Prize. He taught Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in New York at the Collegiate School and was an instructor at Brooklyn College’s Summer Latin Institute. Most recently, he taught Latin, Greek, and German at the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine.
Kristen Case teaches courses in American literature, environmental writing, and the intersection of 20th- and 21st-century American literature and philosophy. She has published essays on Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William James, and is the author of the book American Poetry and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). She is co-editor of the volumes Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge UP, 2016) and 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions, 2019).
Sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
September 20, 2021
Abolition for the 21st Century
Orisanmi Burton, Dylan Rodriguez and Jackie Wang
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Join us for Abolition for the 21st Century’ with Orisanmi Burton (Anthropology, American University, Abolition 101 video), Dylan Rodriguez (American Studies, UC-Riverside, founding member of Critical Resistance and author of Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime) and Jackie Wang (USC).
To register for the event, please click here.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Jacinta (2020) w/ director Jessica Earshaw and subject Jacinta Hunt
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A deeply intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma, JACINTA follows a young woman in and out of prison as she attempts to break free from an inherited cycle of addiction, incarceration, and crime.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Part of Freedom & Captivity, a statewide initiative to explore an abolitionist future for Maine.
Two Cent Talks Series
An Evening of Original Hip Hop featuring Maine’s Graphic Melee and Word’s of Phrase, accompanied by Liza May
5:00 p.m., Greene Block + Studios
Gender, Feminism, and Abolition
Victoria Law
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A workshop with journalist Victoria Law, who is an American anarchist activist, prison abolitionist, writer, freelance editor, and photographer.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Un Prophète (2009)
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A Prophet (French: Un Prophète) is a 2009 French prison crime film directed by Jacques Audiard with a screenplay by Audiard, with Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, and Nicolas Peufaillit, from a story by Dafri. The film stars Tahar Rahim in the title role as an imprisoned petty criminal of Algerian origins who rises in the inmate hierarchy, becoming an assassin and drug trafficker as he initiates himself into the Corsican and then Muslim subcultures.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Ph.D.
7:00 p.m., Zoom Webinar
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for coastal cities, and co-creator and co-host of the Spotify/Gimlet podcast How to Save a Planet. With Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, she co-edited the climate anthology All We Can Save, and co-founded The All We Can Save Project. Recently, she co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. Previously, she was executive director of the Waitt Institute, developed policy at the EPA and NOAA, served as a leader of the March for Science, and taught as an adjunct professor at New York University. Dr. Johnson earned a BA from Harvard University in environmental science and public policy, and a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine biology. She publishes widely, including in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Time, and she blogs on Scientific American. She is on the 2021 Time 100 Next List and was named one of Elle’s 27 Women Leading on Climate. Outside Magazine called her “the most influential marine biologist of our time.” Her mission is to build community around solutions to our climate crisis. Find her @ayanaeliza.
Cosponsored by Environmental Studies, the Center for the Arts and the Humanities, the Goldfarb Center for Public Policy, and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Solitary Confinement
Lisa Guenther and jackie sumell
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation between philosopher Lisa Guenther (Queens University) and artist jackie sumell.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Medical Humanities and Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Nexus for
Data Ethics and Racial Equity
Kirsten Ostherr
6:00 p.m., Page Commons
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in a wide range of healthcare settings, often without patients’ (or even doctors’) awareness, and with little transparency or ethics oversight. This recent addition to the technological armamentarium of medicine has given rise to concerns about algorithmic bias and has prompted debates about the changing role of human clinicians in the evolving ecosystems of digital health. Yet, some researchers have argued that AI will augment the capacities of physicians and increase their availability to provide empathy and other uniquely human forms of care to their patients. This talk will explore several concrete examples of AI use in healthcare, with a focus on social determinants of health and racial equity. Prof. Ostherr will explore the questions: What would it take for AI to be “ethical,” in a society that is still shaped by racial discrimination and disparate access to care? What methods can medical and health humanities provide to help create a more humane and just healthcare future? And, how might we reimagine health technology with ethics and equality truly at the center of the design process?
Cosponsored by the Medicine and Race Public Humanistic Inquiry Lab, the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology, the Science, Technology and Society Program, and the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Fall Shabbaton with Elana Arian
6:30 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
The Fall Shabbaton is an annual event that brings together the Maine Jewish community and friends from farther afield for a weekend of Torah study, soulful music, Shabbat meals, and invigorating connection. What started out as a Friday-night dinner and concert has evolved into a full Shabbat of learning and singing, with intergenerational programs for college students, children and teens, synagogue members from across the state. Past guests have included Nefesh Mountain, Deborah Sacks Mintz, Neshama Carlebach and the Glory to God gospel singers, and Joey Weisenberg, as well as Talmud scholar Ruth Calderon. The Shabbaton has grown into a partner program to the Maine Conference for Jewish Life, sustaining our community with Jewish learning and music as we enter the winter months.
Cosponsored with the Center for Small Town Jewish Life.
Safe (2015) with Steve Wurtzler, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
Safe is a 1995 British-American psychological drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore. Set in 1987, it follows a suburban housewife in Los Angeles whose monotonous life is abruptly changed when she becomes sick with a mysterious illness caused by the environment around her. The film topped the “best film of the 1990s” poll by The Village Voice, and was described by critics as “the scariest film of the year”, “a mesmerizing horror movie”, and “a work of feminist counter-cinema”. 20 years after the film’s release, Haynes said its themes—disease and immunity in a post-industrial landscape and how recovery is a burden often put on victims of illness—were even more relevant than they were when the film was released.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Visualizing Incarceration
Sean Kelley, Brett Story, and Rowan Renee
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation with curator Sean Kelley (Eastern State Penitentiary), filmmaker and author Brett Story (Prison in 12 Landscapes; Prison Nation), and artist Rowan Renee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Freedom and Captivity on the Border: A conversation with Amber Ramirez ’14
7:00 p.m., Chace Community Forum
The Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights are cosponsoring the first event in our Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights Alumni Series. Assistant Professor of Spanish Nicolás Ramos Flores will host a conversation with Amber Ramirez ‘14, who will be speaking about life on the El Paso/Juárez border, her translation work since graduation, and her legal advocacy for detainees and asylum seekers.
Please note, this event is open only to the Colby Community.
Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Keynote Event on Wabanaki Place Names
Penobscot Tribal Historian James Francis, Moderated by Darren Ranco
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
During the event, James Francis will discuss his important work on returning Wabanaki place names to locations in Maine. There will be ample time for discussion, in a Q&A moderated by Penobscot scholar Darren Ranco. This event is part of the Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day Event Series 2021, in partnership with the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Sponsored by the American Studies Program’s Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Environmental Studies Program, History Department, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Theater and Dance Department, Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Reparations as Black Antagonism
Cameron Rowland
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance and talk by artist Cameron Rowland. Cameron Rowland is an American artist. Rowland graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in 2011, and after being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship returned there to address the student body. He spoke about his 2018 work Depreciation that critically examined the economics of slavery.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence
Laurence Ralph, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University
7:00 p.m., Ostrove Auditorium
Laurence Ralph is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His research and writing explore how police abuse, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of the drug trade naturalize disease, disability, and premature death for urban residents of color, who are often seen as expendable by “polite” society. Theoretically, his research lies at the nexus of critical medical and political anthropology, African American studies, and emerging scholarship on disability. Combining these literatures, he shows show violence and injury play a central role in the daily lives of Black urban populations. His most recent book, Torture Letters, is about torture as an open secret in Chicago. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander John Burge. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. The Torture Letters chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad.
Cosponsored with the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Snowpiercer (2013) with Seth Kim, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A post-apocalyptic ice age forces humanity’s last survivors aboard a globe-spanning supertrain. One man (Chris Evans) will risk everything to lead a revolt for control of the engine and the future of the world. A film that’s “just as interested in examining topics like climate change, class, and cultural disparity as it is in revealing just how the film’s core team navigates a never-stopping hell train to take on the bad guys” – ArsTechnica.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
What Does Abolition Sound Like?
Paul Rucker and Robin Kelley
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A performance workshop with artist-musician Paul Rucker creating music in response to prompts by Robin D. G. Kelley (History, UCLA, author of Freedom Dreams).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
What Does Abolition Feel Like?
Anna Martine Whitehead
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance artist Anna Martine Whitehead discusses her artistic practice, focused on how she centers Black liberation, queer livingness, and creative alternatives to policing and prisons in her work. An artist talk will be followed by a conversation between Whitehead and performer and poet, Gabrielle Civil. Introduced by Gwyneth Shanks (Theater and Dance).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
September 21, 2021
Two Cent Talk Series: Phuc Tran and Kristen Case
5:00-6:30 p.m., Arts Collaborative, 62 Main Street
Phuc Tran has been a high school Latin teacher for more than twenty years while also simultaneously establishing himself as a highly sought-after tattooer in the Northeast. Tran graduated from Bard College in 1995 with a BA in Classics and received the Callanan Classics Prize. He taught Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in New York at the Collegiate School and was an instructor at Brooklyn College’s Summer Latin Institute. Most recently, he taught Latin, Greek, and German at the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine.
Kristen Case teaches courses in American literature, environmental writing, and the intersection of 20th- and 21st-century American literature and philosophy. She has published essays on Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William James, and is the author of the book American Poetry and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). She is co-editor of the volumes Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge UP, 2016) and 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions, 2019).
Sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
September 20, 2021
Abolition for the 21st Century
Orisanmi Burton, Dylan Rodriguez and Jackie Wang
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Join us for Abolition for the 21st Century’ with Orisanmi Burton (Anthropology, American University, Abolition 101 video), Dylan Rodriguez (American Studies, UC-Riverside, founding member of Critical Resistance and author of Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime) and Jackie Wang (USC).
To register for the event, please click here.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Jacinta (2020) w/ director Jessica Earshaw and subject Jacinta Hunt
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A deeply intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma, JACINTA follows a young woman in and out of prison as she attempts to break free from an inherited cycle of addiction, incarceration, and crime.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Part of Freedom & Captivity, a statewide initiative to explore an abolitionist future for Maine.
Gender, Feminism, and Abolition
Victoria Law
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A workshop with journalist Victoria Law, who is an American anarchist activist, prison abolitionist, writer, freelance editor, and photographer.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Un Prophète (2009)
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A Prophet (French: Un Prophète) is a 2009 French prison crime film directed by Jacques Audiard with a screenplay by Audiard, with Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, and Nicolas Peufaillit, from a story by Dafri. The film stars Tahar Rahim in the title role as an imprisoned petty criminal of Algerian origins who rises in the inmate hierarchy, becoming an assassin and drug trafficker as he initiates himself into the Corsican and then Muslim subcultures.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Ph.D.
7:00 p.m., Zoom Webinar
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for coastal cities, and co-creator and co-host of the Spotify/Gimlet podcast How to Save a Planet. With Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, she co-edited the climate anthology All We Can Save, and co-founded The All We Can Save Project. Recently, she co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. Previously, she was executive director of the Waitt Institute, developed policy at the EPA and NOAA, served as a leader of the March for Science, and taught as an adjunct professor at New York University. Dr. Johnson earned a BA from Harvard University in environmental science and public policy, and a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine biology. She publishes widely, including in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Time, and she blogs on Scientific American. She is on the 2021 Time 100 Next List and was named one of Elle’s 27 Women Leading on Climate. Outside Magazine called her “the most influential marine biologist of our time.” Her mission is to build community around solutions to our climate crisis. Find her @ayanaeliza.
Cosponsored by Environmental Studies, the Center for the Arts and the Humanities, the Goldfarb Center for Public Policy, and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Solitary Confinement
Lisa Guenther and jackie sumell
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation between philosopher Lisa Guenther (Queens University) and artist jackie sumell.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Medical Humanities and Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Nexus for
Data Ethics and Racial Equity
Kirsten Ostherr
6:00 p.m., Page Commons
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in a wide range of healthcare settings, often without patients’ (or even doctors’) awareness, and with little transparency or ethics oversight. This recent addition to the technological armamentarium of medicine has given rise to concerns about algorithmic bias and has prompted debates about the changing role of human clinicians in the evolving ecosystems of digital health. Yet, some researchers have argued that AI will augment the capacities of physicians and increase their availability to provide empathy and other uniquely human forms of care to their patients. This talk will explore several concrete examples of AI use in healthcare, with a focus on social determinants of health and racial equity. Prof. Ostherr will explore the questions: What would it take for AI to be “ethical,” in a society that is still shaped by racial discrimination and disparate access to care? What methods can medical and health humanities provide to help create a more humane and just healthcare future? And, how might we reimagine health technology with ethics and equality truly at the center of the design process?
Cosponsored by the Medicine and Race Public Humanistic Inquiry Lab, the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology, the Science, Technology and Society Program, and the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Fall Shabbaton with Elana Arian
6:30 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
The Fall Shabbaton is an annual event that brings together the Maine Jewish community and friends from farther afield for a weekend of Torah study, soulful music, Shabbat meals, and invigorating connection. What started out as a Friday-night dinner and concert has evolved into a full Shabbat of learning and singing, with intergenerational programs for college students, children and teens, synagogue members from across the state. Past guests have included Nefesh Mountain, Deborah Sacks Mintz, Neshama Carlebach and the Glory to God gospel singers, and Joey Weisenberg, as well as Talmud scholar Ruth Calderon. The Shabbaton has grown into a partner program to the Maine Conference for Jewish Life, sustaining our community with Jewish learning and music as we enter the winter months.
Cosponsored with the Center for Small Town Jewish Life.
Safe (2015) with Steve Wurtzler, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
Safe is a 1995 British-American psychological drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore. Set in 1987, it follows a suburban housewife in Los Angeles whose monotonous life is abruptly changed when she becomes sick with a mysterious illness caused by the environment around her. The film topped the “best film of the 1990s” poll by The Village Voice, and was described by critics as “the scariest film of the year”, “a mesmerizing horror movie”, and “a work of feminist counter-cinema”. 20 years after the film’s release, Haynes said its themes—disease and immunity in a post-industrial landscape and how recovery is a burden often put on victims of illness—were even more relevant than they were when the film was released.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Visualizing Incarceration
Sean Kelley, Brett Story, and Rowan Renee
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation with curator Sean Kelley (Eastern State Penitentiary), filmmaker and author Brett Story (Prison in 12 Landscapes; Prison Nation), and artist Rowan Renee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Freedom and Captivity on the Border: A conversation with Amber Ramirez ’14
7:00 p.m., Chace Community Forum
The Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights are cosponsoring the first event in our Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights Alumni Series. Assistant Professor of Spanish Nicolás Ramos Flores will host a conversation with Amber Ramirez ‘14, who will be speaking about life on the El Paso/Juárez border, her translation work since graduation, and her legal advocacy for detainees and asylum seekers.
Please note, this event is open only to the Colby Community.
Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Keynote Event on Wabanaki Place Names
Penobscot Tribal Historian James Francis, Moderated by Darren Ranco
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
During the event, James Francis will discuss his important work on returning Wabanaki place names to locations in Maine. There will be ample time for discussion, in a Q&A moderated by Penobscot scholar Darren Ranco. This event is part of the Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day Event Series 2021, in partnership with the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Sponsored by the American Studies Program’s Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Environmental Studies Program, History Department, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Theater and Dance Department, Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Reparations as Black Antagonism
Cameron Rowland
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance and talk by artist Cameron Rowland. Cameron Rowland is an American artist. Rowland graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in 2011, and after being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship returned there to address the student body. He spoke about his 2018 work Depreciation that critically examined the economics of slavery.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence
Laurence Ralph, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University
7:00 p.m., Ostrove Auditorium
Laurence Ralph is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His research and writing explore how police abuse, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of the drug trade naturalize disease, disability, and premature death for urban residents of color, who are often seen as expendable by “polite” society. Theoretically, his research lies at the nexus of critical medical and political anthropology, African American studies, and emerging scholarship on disability. Combining these literatures, he shows show violence and injury play a central role in the daily lives of Black urban populations. His most recent book, Torture Letters, is about torture as an open secret in Chicago. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander John Burge. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. The Torture Letters chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad.
Cosponsored with the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Snowpiercer (2013) with Seth Kim, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A post-apocalyptic ice age forces humanity’s last survivors aboard a globe-spanning supertrain. One man (Chris Evans) will risk everything to lead a revolt for control of the engine and the future of the world. A film that’s “just as interested in examining topics like climate change, class, and cultural disparity as it is in revealing just how the film’s core team navigates a never-stopping hell train to take on the bad guys” – ArsTechnica.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
What Does Abolition Sound Like?
Paul Rucker and Robin Kelley
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A performance workshop with artist-musician Paul Rucker creating music in response to prompts by Robin D. G. Kelley (History, UCLA, author of Freedom Dreams).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
What Does Abolition Feel Like?
Anna Martine Whitehead
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance artist Anna Martine Whitehead discusses her artistic practice, focused on how she centers Black liberation, queer livingness, and creative alternatives to policing and prisons in her work. An artist talk will be followed by a conversation between Whitehead and performer and poet, Gabrielle Civil. Introduced by Gwyneth Shanks (Theater and Dance).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
September 21, 2021
Two Cent Talk Series: Phuc Tran and Kristen Case
5:00-6:30 p.m., Arts Collaborative, 62 Main Street
Phuc Tran has been a high school Latin teacher for more than twenty years while also simultaneously establishing himself as a highly sought-after tattooer in the Northeast. Tran graduated from Bard College in 1995 with a BA in Classics and received the Callanan Classics Prize. He taught Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in New York at the Collegiate School and was an instructor at Brooklyn College’s Summer Latin Institute. Most recently, he taught Latin, Greek, and German at the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine.
Kristen Case teaches courses in American literature, environmental writing, and the intersection of 20th- and 21st-century American literature and philosophy. She has published essays on Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William James, and is the author of the book American Poetry and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). She is co-editor of the volumes Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge UP, 2016) and 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions, 2019).
Sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
September 20, 2021
Abolition for the 21st Century
Orisanmi Burton, Dylan Rodriguez and Jackie Wang
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Join us for Abolition for the 21st Century’ with Orisanmi Burton (Anthropology, American University, Abolition 101 video), Dylan Rodriguez (American Studies, UC-Riverside, founding member of Critical Resistance and author of Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime) and Jackie Wang (USC).
To register for the event, please click here.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Jacinta (2020) w/ director Jessica Earshaw and subject Jacinta Hunt
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A deeply intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma, JACINTA follows a young woman in and out of prison as she attempts to break free from an inherited cycle of addiction, incarceration, and crime.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Part of Freedom & Captivity, a statewide initiative to explore an abolitionist future for Maine.
Un Prophète (2009)
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A Prophet (French: Un Prophète) is a 2009 French prison crime film directed by Jacques Audiard with a screenplay by Audiard, with Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, and Nicolas Peufaillit, from a story by Dafri. The film stars Tahar Rahim in the title role as an imprisoned petty criminal of Algerian origins who rises in the inmate hierarchy, becoming an assassin and drug trafficker as he initiates himself into the Corsican and then Muslim subcultures.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Ph.D.
7:00 p.m., Zoom Webinar
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for coastal cities, and co-creator and co-host of the Spotify/Gimlet podcast How to Save a Planet. With Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, she co-edited the climate anthology All We Can Save, and co-founded The All We Can Save Project. Recently, she co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. Previously, she was executive director of the Waitt Institute, developed policy at the EPA and NOAA, served as a leader of the March for Science, and taught as an adjunct professor at New York University. Dr. Johnson earned a BA from Harvard University in environmental science and public policy, and a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine biology. She publishes widely, including in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Time, and she blogs on Scientific American. She is on the 2021 Time 100 Next List and was named one of Elle’s 27 Women Leading on Climate. Outside Magazine called her “the most influential marine biologist of our time.” Her mission is to build community around solutions to our climate crisis. Find her @ayanaeliza.
Cosponsored by Environmental Studies, the Center for the Arts and the Humanities, the Goldfarb Center for Public Policy, and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Solitary Confinement
Lisa Guenther and jackie sumell
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation between philosopher Lisa Guenther (Queens University) and artist jackie sumell.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Medical Humanities and Artificial Intelligence: A Critical Nexus for
Data Ethics and Racial Equity
Kirsten Ostherr
6:00 p.m., Page Commons
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in a wide range of healthcare settings, often without patients’ (or even doctors’) awareness, and with little transparency or ethics oversight. This recent addition to the technological armamentarium of medicine has given rise to concerns about algorithmic bias and has prompted debates about the changing role of human clinicians in the evolving ecosystems of digital health. Yet, some researchers have argued that AI will augment the capacities of physicians and increase their availability to provide empathy and other uniquely human forms of care to their patients. This talk will explore several concrete examples of AI use in healthcare, with a focus on social determinants of health and racial equity. Prof. Ostherr will explore the questions: What would it take for AI to be “ethical,” in a society that is still shaped by racial discrimination and disparate access to care? What methods can medical and health humanities provide to help create a more humane and just healthcare future? And, how might we reimagine health technology with ethics and equality truly at the center of the design process?
Cosponsored by the Medicine and Race Public Humanistic Inquiry Lab, the Departments of Anthropology and Sociology, the Science, Technology and Society Program, and the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Fall Shabbaton with Elana Arian
6:30 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
The Fall Shabbaton is an annual event that brings together the Maine Jewish community and friends from farther afield for a weekend of Torah study, soulful music, Shabbat meals, and invigorating connection. What started out as a Friday-night dinner and concert has evolved into a full Shabbat of learning and singing, with intergenerational programs for college students, children and teens, synagogue members from across the state. Past guests have included Nefesh Mountain, Deborah Sacks Mintz, Neshama Carlebach and the Glory to God gospel singers, and Joey Weisenberg, as well as Talmud scholar Ruth Calderon. The Shabbaton has grown into a partner program to the Maine Conference for Jewish Life, sustaining our community with Jewish learning and music as we enter the winter months.
Cosponsored with the Center for Small Town Jewish Life.
Safe (2015) with Steve Wurtzler, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
Safe is a 1995 British-American psychological drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes and starring Julianne Moore. Set in 1987, it follows a suburban housewife in Los Angeles whose monotonous life is abruptly changed when she becomes sick with a mysterious illness caused by the environment around her. The film topped the “best film of the 1990s” poll by The Village Voice, and was described by critics as “the scariest film of the year”, “a mesmerizing horror movie”, and “a work of feminist counter-cinema”. 20 years after the film’s release, Haynes said its themes—disease and immunity in a post-industrial landscape and how recovery is a burden often put on victims of illness—were even more relevant than they were when the film was released.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Visualizing Incarceration
Sean Kelley, Brett Story, and Rowan Renee
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A conversation with curator Sean Kelley (Eastern State Penitentiary), filmmaker and author Brett Story (Prison in 12 Landscapes; Prison Nation), and artist Rowan Renee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Freedom and Captivity on the Border: A conversation with Amber Ramirez ’14
7:00 p.m., Chace Community Forum
The Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights are cosponsoring the first event in our Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights Alumni Series. Assistant Professor of Spanish Nicolás Ramos Flores will host a conversation with Amber Ramirez ‘14, who will be speaking about life on the El Paso/Juárez border, her translation work since graduation, and her legal advocacy for detainees and asylum seekers.
Please note, this event is open only to the Colby Community.
Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Keynote Event on Wabanaki Place Names
Penobscot Tribal Historian James Francis, Moderated by Darren Ranco
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
During the event, James Francis will discuss his important work on returning Wabanaki place names to locations in Maine. There will be ample time for discussion, in a Q&A moderated by Penobscot scholar Darren Ranco. This event is part of the Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day Event Series 2021, in partnership with the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Sponsored by the American Studies Program’s Critical Indigenous Studies Initiative, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Environmental Studies Program, History Department, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Theater and Dance Department, Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the University of Maine’s Native American Programs.
Reparations as Black Antagonism
Cameron Rowland
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance and talk by artist Cameron Rowland. Cameron Rowland is an American artist. Rowland graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in 2011, and after being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship returned there to address the student body. He spoke about his 2018 work Depreciation that critically examined the economics of slavery.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence
Laurence Ralph, Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University
7:00 p.m., Ostrove Auditorium
Laurence Ralph is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His research and writing explore how police abuse, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of the drug trade naturalize disease, disability, and premature death for urban residents of color, who are often seen as expendable by “polite” society. Theoretically, his research lies at the nexus of critical medical and political anthropology, African American studies, and emerging scholarship on disability. Combining these literatures, he shows show violence and injury play a central role in the daily lives of Black urban populations. His most recent book, Torture Letters, is about torture as an open secret in Chicago. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander John Burge. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. The Torture Letters chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad.
Cosponsored with the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Snowpiercer (2013) with Seth Kim, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A post-apocalyptic ice age forces humanity’s last survivors aboard a globe-spanning supertrain. One man (Chris Evans) will risk everything to lead a revolt for control of the engine and the future of the world. A film that’s “just as interested in examining topics like climate change, class, and cultural disparity as it is in revealing just how the film’s core team navigates a never-stopping hell train to take on the bad guys” – ArsTechnica.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
What Does Abolition Sound Like?
Paul Rucker and Robin Kelley
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A performance workshop with artist-musician Paul Rucker creating music in response to prompts by Robin D. G. Kelley (History, UCLA, author of Freedom Dreams).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
What Does Abolition Feel Like?
Anna Martine Whitehead
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance artist Anna Martine Whitehead discusses her artistic practice, focused on how she centers Black liberation, queer livingness, and creative alternatives to policing and prisons in her work. An artist talk will be followed by a conversation between Whitehead and performer and poet, Gabrielle Civil. Introduced by Gwyneth Shanks (Theater and Dance).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
September 21, 2021
Two Cent Talk Series: Phuc Tran and Kristen Case
5:00-6:30 p.m., Arts Collaborative, 62 Main Street
Phuc Tran has been a high school Latin teacher for more than twenty years while also simultaneously establishing himself as a highly sought-after tattooer in the Northeast. Tran graduated from Bard College in 1995 with a BA in Classics and received the Callanan Classics Prize. He taught Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in New York at the Collegiate School and was an instructor at Brooklyn College’s Summer Latin Institute. Most recently, he taught Latin, Greek, and German at the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine.
Kristen Case teaches courses in American literature, environmental writing, and the intersection of 20th- and 21st-century American literature and philosophy. She has published essays on Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William James, and is the author of the book American Poetry and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). She is co-editor of the volumes Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge UP, 2016) and 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions, 2019).
Sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
September 20, 2021
Abolition for the 21st Century
Orisanmi Burton, Dylan Rodriguez and Jackie Wang
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Join us for Abolition for the 21st Century’ with Orisanmi Burton (Anthropology, American University, Abolition 101 video), Dylan Rodriguez (American Studies, UC-Riverside, founding member of Critical Resistance and author of Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime) and Jackie Wang (USC).
To register for the event, please click here.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Jacinta (2020) w/ director Jessica Earshaw and subject Jacinta Hunt
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A deeply intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma, JACINTA follows a young woman in and out of prison as she attempts to break free from an inherited cycle of addiction, incarceration, and crime.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Part of Freedom & Captivity, a statewide initiative to explore an abolitionist future for Maine.
Snowpiercer (2013) with Seth Kim, Colby Cinema Studies
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A post-apocalyptic ice age forces humanity’s last survivors aboard a globe-spanning supertrain. One man (Chris Evans) will risk everything to lead a revolt for control of the engine and the future of the world. A film that’s “just as interested in examining topics like climate change, class, and cultural disparity as it is in revealing just how the film’s core team navigates a never-stopping hell train to take on the bad guys” – ArsTechnica.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
What Does Abolition Sound Like?
Paul Rucker and Robin Kelley
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
A performance workshop with artist-musician Paul Rucker creating music in response to prompts by Robin D. G. Kelley (History, UCLA, author of Freedom Dreams).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
What Does Abolition Feel Like?
Anna Martine Whitehead
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Performance artist Anna Martine Whitehead discusses her artistic practice, focused on how she centers Black liberation, queer livingness, and creative alternatives to policing and prisons in her work. An artist talk will be followed by a conversation between Whitehead and performer and poet, Gabrielle Civil. Introduced by Gwyneth Shanks (Theater and Dance).
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
September 21, 2021
Two Cent Talk Series: Phuc Tran and Kristen Case
5:00-6:30 p.m., Arts Collaborative, 62 Main Street
Phuc Tran has been a high school Latin teacher for more than twenty years while also simultaneously establishing himself as a highly sought-after tattooer in the Northeast. Tran graduated from Bard College in 1995 with a BA in Classics and received the Callanan Classics Prize. He taught Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in New York at the Collegiate School and was an instructor at Brooklyn College’s Summer Latin Institute. Most recently, he taught Latin, Greek, and German at the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine.
Kristen Case teaches courses in American literature, environmental writing, and the intersection of 20th- and 21st-century American literature and philosophy. She has published essays on Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William James, and is the author of the book American Poetry and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). She is co-editor of the volumes Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge UP, 2016) and 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions, 2019).
Sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
September 20, 2021
Abolition for the 21st Century
Orisanmi Burton, Dylan Rodriguez and Jackie Wang
Freedom and Captivity lecture series
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Join us for Abolition for the 21st Century’ with Orisanmi Burton (Anthropology, American University, Abolition 101 video), Dylan Rodriguez (American Studies, UC-Riverside, founding member of Critical Resistance and author of Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime) and Jackie Wang (USC).
To register for the event, please click here.
The Freedom and Captivity lecture series is sponsored by the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Art, English and Creative Writing, Music, Philosophy, Sociology, Theater and Dance, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the African American Studies program, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Colby Libraries, and the Cultural Events Committee.
Jacinta (2020) w/ director Jessica Earshaw and subject Jacinta Hunt
Cinema in Conversation: Films of Freedom, Captivity, and Human Rights
7:00 p.m., Maine Film Center
A deeply intimate portrait of mothers and daughters and the effects of trauma, JACINTA follows a young woman in and out of prison as she attempts to break free from an inherited cycle of addiction, incarceration, and crime.
Cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Oak Institute for Human Rights, Cinema Studies, and the Maine Film Center.
Part of Freedom & Captivity, a statewide initiative to explore an abolitionist future for Maine.
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