The 53rd Annual Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture
The Comforts of Heritage: Race, Tourism,
and Memory in the American South

October 27, 2022 at 4:00 p.m.

The 2022 Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture will be presented by Shevaun Watson (Associate Professor, UWM Department of English) with an introduction by Derek Handley (Assistant Professor, UWM Department of English).

This lecture will be presented simultaneously in person and virtually on Zoom. Click here to register for the event.

Please contact libspecial@uwm.edu for more information and accommodations.

About the research:

Many Americans profess to learning a great deal about history and heritage through travel to sites of cultural significance. While tourism offers enjoyable encounters with history, these experiences can be problematic when that history involves uncomfortable truths about our shared past, especially in relation to slavery, the Civil War, and systemic racism. Heritage tourism of the American South, with its contested memorial landscapes, and its millions of visitors each year, draws our attention to the complex and unsuspecting ways that leisure travel shapes people’s understandings of race and racism in the United States.

Watson’s research, which is focused on Charleston, South Carolina, explores how tourists are invited to remember the South and its role in history in strategic ways through the built environment, heritage displays, guided tours, and other tourist experiences. She finds that comfort—physical and psychological ease—functions as a powerful common denominator connecting tourism, heritage, race, and memory. Heritage tourism in the South is an especially salient lens for considering contemporary issues of antiracism and social justice because it compels us to ask how comfort can at once draw so many people into the fraught spaces of the historical roots of racial injustice, yet also undercut the collective will for social and political change.

This event is by the UWM Libraries. The UWM Libraries invite proposals for the 2023 Fromkin Research Grant and Lectureship. The grant encourages and assists UWM scholars in all fields of study to conduct research on individuals, groups, movements, and ideas, in the Americas and elsewhere, which have influenced the quest for social justice and human rights in the United States. To learn more about the grant and submit a proposal, visit our website.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is proud to host the City of Milwaukee’s first Home Movie Day. Community members from Milwaukee and the surrounding cities and counties are invited to participate. The public is invited to bring in their home movies in 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, VHS, Mini-DV, or digital formats; to have their materials inspected and/or repaired by UWM volunteers; with selections screened for an audience while the owner narrates.

Throughout the day, volunteers will provide quick explanations on how to care for film, video, and digital files, as well as ideas on where to get old media transferred. There will also be a recurring raffle and interactive games such as Home Movie Day Bingo , where participants will call out things they identify or recognize for prizes!

The event is free and open to public. It will take place in Mitchell Hall at UWM (3203 N Downer Ave, Milwaukee WI 53211) Room B91 on Saturday, October 15^th. Community members are welcome to drop by from 10:00am-4:00pm, and films will be screened on a first come, first served basis.

A NOTE ON OUR SPONSORS:
Light refreshments and door prizes will be provided by our sponsors: Supernova Coffee & Doughnuts on 3^rd Ave Market Hall, and Fischbergers Variety on Holton, to name a few!

Please view event flyer here!

Please join us at 3:30 P.M. on Wednesday, October 12th in Curtin Hall 368 for a lecture and Q&A with Dr. Nick Marx, author of That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them. 

That’s Not Funny argues that it is both an intellectual and politically strategic mistake to assume that comedy has a liberal bias. Right-wing comedy has been hiding in plain sight, finding its way into mainstream conservative media through figures ranging from Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld to libertarian podcasters like Joe Rogan.

Selected as a 2022 Best Comedy Book by Vulture, That’s Not Funny taps interviews with conservative comedians and observations of them in action. You may find many of these comedians appalling, some very funny, and others just plain weird. They are all, however, culturally and politically relevant as the American right attempts to seize spaces of comedy and irony previously held firmly by the left. Like this brand of humor or not, you can’t ignore it.

Nick Marx is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.

Visiting Writer & Panther alum Phong Nguyen (PhD, 2007) will visit campus October 13 to discuss his new novel, Bronze Drum.

The author will deliver a craft talk at 3 pm in Lubar S250 (livestreamed here) and a reading/Q&A at 7 pm in Curtin 175 (livestreamed here). For more information:

• The author’s website
• An interview discussing the history the novel explores
• An excerpt from the book

Bronze Drum is a stunning novel of ancient Vietnam based on the true story of two warrior sisters who raised an army of women to overthrow the Han Chinese and rule as kings over a united people.

This event is co-sponsored by Boswell Books and the UWM Asian Studies Certificate Program.