Includes interview with KT Horning, director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the School of Education.
Why diverse children’s books are important tools for teaching kids about themselves and others
CBS News
Category: Arts & Humanities
Q&A: Jazz musician Johannes Wallmann pays tribute to a creature he’s never met
The Capital Times
Johannes Wallmann got the recording of his new jazz album “Elegy For An Undiscovered Species” in just under the wire. The director of jazz studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison brought 14 musicians, including a string section, together in the Hamel Music Center for a week in late February 2020 to record the tracks for the album. Two weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down everything.
‘Filthy Animals: Stories,’ by Brandon Taylor: An Excerpt
New York Times
Written by UW alum Brandon Taylor whose debut novel “Real Life” was a finalist for the Booker Prize for fiction.
Yung Bleu, Lakeyah, breakout Milwaukee rappers take center stage for city’s first big concert since COVID-19
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted: The Madison club Liquid first took a chance on Mando in 2017, where he played his first residency while studying marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He used his talent as a DJ, and his marketing skills, to get prime gigs around the Midwest.
There Is No Art Without Culture, No Culture Without Community
WORT FM
Chris Walker is a renowned dancer and the founding Artistic Director of the groundbreaking First Wave hip-hop program at UW-Madison, and was recently appointed director of the Division of Arts. He joins us to talk about the power of art, and what is happening with art and diversity at UW-Madison.
Brandon Taylor: ‘I grew up reading my aunt’s nursing-home manuals and bodice-rippers’
The Guardian
Previously you pursued a biochemistry PhD [at the University of Wisconsin-Madison]. How did that compare?You were expected to participate in your own education, whereas at Iowa you’re not allowed to talk while people criticise your work – there’s this gag rule, to preserve the real-world encounter with the text.
Quality time with a few of Joan Wildman’s recordings
Tone Madison
Noted: This is the second in a short series of articles Tone Madison is running about the recorded works of pianist Joan Wildman. Read our previous piece on Wildman’s elusive discography, and check back soon for a collection of remembrances of what it was like to collaborate with Wildman.
Enwejig Works To Preserve Wisconsin’s Indigenous Languages
WORT FM
For hundreds of years, Wisconsin’s indigenous languages faced suppression and extermination. Concerted efforts to wipe out native tongues played out in a variety of arenas — from schools to government policies.
Enwejig hopes to address some of those past injustices. The group, which formed last year on the UW-Madison campus, works to bring visibility and recognition to Wisconsin’s native languages.
For more on the group’s mission, our producer Jonah Chester spoke with Brian McInnes, an associate professor of civil society and community studies/American Indian studies at UW-Madison.
Filmmaker Marquise Mays’ “The Heartland” examines the unrequited love between Black kids and the city of Milwaukee
Madison365
It was during his time as an undergrad at UW-Madison that Mays found his niche: Documentaries.
14 Excerpts from Commencement Speeches Without the Word C*vid
New York Times
André De Shields
Mr. De Shields is an actor, director and choreographer. He was the keynote speaker at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Why is today different from any other day?
Because you are about to use the many years you have prepared to go out into the world and find employment.
But not just any employment. Here is my charge to you: Don’t look for just a job. Look for that horizon that if you do not discover it, it will forever remain a secret. Look for that treasure, that if you do not uncover it, it will forever remain just X marks the spot. Look for that mystery that if you don’t unravel it, it will forever remain a mystery.
UW students create art space on State Street
WISC-TV 3
After another year of not being able to show off their exhibits, two UW-Madison students are renovating a space on State Street to flaunt their art.
10 New Books We Recommend This Week
New York Times
SHAPE: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else, by Jordan Ellenberg. (Penguin Press, $28.) In fine-grained detail, “Shape” reveals how geometric thinking can allow for everything from fairer American elections to better pandemic planning. It offers a critique of how math is taught, an appreciation of its peculiar place in the human imagination and biographical sections about beautiful minds and splendid eccentrics. Ellenberg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is “rather spectacular at this sort of thing,” our critic Parul Sehgal writes. His “preference for deploying all possible teaching strategies gives ‘Shape’ its hectic appeal; it’s stuffed with history, games, arguments, exercises.”
3 Black women from Jacksonville debut acclaimed books, become friends
Florida Times-Union
Noted: Moniz’ collection of short stories, “Milk Blood Heat,” was called an “electrifying debut” by a Washington Post reviewer who wrote it is “exhilarating and shocking and even healing.” She won the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, among other awards, and is leaving Jacksonville soon to teach creative writing at her alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lois Ehlert captivated children with ‘Chicka Chicka Boom Boom’ and other picture books
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted: Her father set up a folding table for her workspace. She treasured it so much she took it with her when she left home for art school. Ehlert studied at the Layton School of Art and graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
45 Memorial Day Songs: War Songs for Memorial Day
Parade
1. The Animals, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place”The Animals‘ 1965 hit “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” wasn’t written explicitly about the Vietnam War, but many troops who fought in the stalemate adopted it as a rallying cry for the futility of their efforts and the lack of support veterans received if they were lucky enough to return home after battle. “We had absolute unanimity is this song being the touchstone,” Vietnam War veteran and University of Wisconsin Communications Systems Director Doug Bradley said in a 2006 interview. “This was the Vietnam anthem. Every bad band that ever played in an armed forces club had to play this song.”
UW Fine Arts students put together collaborative art gallery in State Street venue
Badger Herald
UW student Paulina Eguino and recent graduate Tony Torres transformed a rundown venue space into a polished exhibition featuring over 30 pieces and several graffiti murals. The result — a contemporary art gallery that looks more like a fixture of a Brooklyn neighborhood than a space in downtown Madison.
“Wearable Tracy” and Connections Forged Through Funky Hats
The New Yorker
The two women met while Kim was taking a “Design Thinking” workshop at the University of Wisconsin; Brandenbug, an anthropologist, gave a lecture about empathy and creativity, and the material so stuck with Kim that she struck up a conversation that led to a lasting friendship.
‘Shape’ Makes Geometry Entertaining. Really, It Does.
The New York Times
Ellenberg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is rather spectacular at this sort of thing. A seam in his narrative is a critique of how math, and especially geometry, has been taught. (His strategy for success in teaching is to employ more strategies; multiply approaches so students might find one that works for them.) He also takes a few well-aimed swipes at current depictions of the campus culture wars. The “cosseted” American college student might have launched a thousand Substacks, but have you heard of the “Conic Sections Rebellion”? Some 44 students, including the son of Vice President John C. Calhoun, were expelled from Yale in 1830, for refusing to take a geometry exam.
Some call it pop others call it soda
The Washington Post
The DARE project is overseen by the University of Wisconsin at Madison. (That’s in Dane County, a rare Midwestern outpost of pop/soda parity, according to popvssoda.com.) An online subscription to the dictionary is $49 a year. There’s more info at dare.wisc.edu.
Choreographer Litza Bixler goes from ‘Shaun of the Dead’ to UW-Madison
The Capital Times
In her career, Litza Bixler has been a choreographer, writer, teacher, costume designer, visual artist and filmmaker. So it’s ironic that the thing this eclectic artist may be best known for is a movie scene in which everybody is doing the same thing.
Wisconsin Film Festival announces 115 films to be streamed online for 2021
Wisconsin State Journal
Usually running in April, this year’s festival will take place May 13-20 and will feature 115 films — from narratives to documentaries, international, independent, animated films, shorts and more. The lineup was announced Friday, and single tickets are now on sale at wifilmfest.org. Viewers can buy tickets for particular works for $10, a series for $50 or an entire festival pass for $140.
Why our dislikes should be celebrated as much as our likes
The Conversation
I’m not the only one who thinks dislikes can be every bit as interesting as likes, either: While the internet and social media are full of praise for fandoms and stans, there’s a deep well of content honoring profound dislikes.
–Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Book review of Assignment Russia: Becoming a Foreign Correspondent in the Crucible of the Cold War by Marvin Kalb
The Washington Post
In 1957, when Marvin Kalb joined CBS Radio in New York to write local news, television was called “electronic journalism,” and the backdrop for the “CBS Morning News” was a cardboard sign hanging above a desk on the fifth floor of the Grand Central Terminal building. The United States had yet to recognize what it referred to as “Red China” diplomatically, and Edward R. Murrow still worked for CBS
-Kathryn J. McGarr is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the author of “The Whole Damn Deal: Robert Strauss and the Art of Politics.” Her forthcoming book is about Washington foreign policy reporters in the early Cold War.
Why Disability Studies Scholars Are Protesting a Prominent Textbook
Chronicle of Higher Ed
A few lines above hers in the table of contents, Pickens saw the name of Sami Schalk, another colleague. Schalk, who studies race, gender, and disability in American literature as an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, also did not know she was going to be included in the reader. She messaged several of the other authors and soon formed a group text, which migrated to Facebook, then an email chain.
Moda Magazine hosts virtual Fashion Week for tenth anniversary
Badger Herald
After last year’s canceled events, Moda Magazine prepares mostly-virtual fashion week with Porchlight donation drive, revamped website.
Here’s how pop culture has perpetuated harmful stereotypes of Asian women
Today
Quoted: When a national tour of the musical came to Madison, Wisconsin, in 2019, Lori Kido Lopez — a media and cultural studies professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison — protested outside of the theater. As she told TODAY over Zoom, “Miss Saigon” embodies “the classic story of the self-sacrificing Asian woman.”
Kim, the protagonist, is a sex worker who falls passionately in love with an American GI — a romance that is, as Lopez pointed out, “already extremely uncomfortable because there’s a power dynamic where he’s paying her for sex.” He promises to take her back to the states; she promptly becomes pregnant. But the plan fails, leaving her languishing in war-torn Vietnam with a child to raise on her own.
UW–Madison music student wins classical Grammy Award
Madison Magazine
As if classical musician Sarah Brailey weren’t already accomplished enough, the doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music can now add a Grammy Award to her list.
Wealth disparities exist within UW’s art program, what can be done?
Daily Cardinal
Johanna Wienholts, a Lecturer of Harp at UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music spoke about major stereotypes art students face. She also touched upon wealth disparities within musicians and common misconceptions that plague the passion and future of art students, specifically at UW-Madison.
How Wisconsin’s Charlie Hill Influenced Native American Comedy
Wisconsin Public Radio
After majoring in speech and comedy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he joined the American Indian Theatre Ensemble Company. He portrayed the Nez Perce trickster figure Coyote in a production called “Coyote Tracks.” The ensemble went on a six-week tour of Germany but infighting and an inability to receive regular payments led to the end of the troupe. When Hill returned to the United States, he began hanging out at new comedy clubs like Catch a Rising Star and the Improvisation in Greenwich Village.
Madison singer wins Grammy for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
Wisconsin State Journal
Sarah Brailey already hosts a Madison radio show, runs a music competition, co-founded a popular local live performance series, and is a month away from finishing her doctorate at UW-Madison.
U.S. Lawmakers Suggest 25 Movies About Latinos to the Film Registry – The New York Times
New York Times
The list speaks to many parts of the Latino experience, including people who are native to the United States and its territories and those who migrated to the country because of its politics and interventions in Latin America, Theresa Delgadillo, a Chicana and Latina studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in an interview.
Golden Globes: Mark Ruffalo wins 1st Globe for ‘I Know This Much Is True’; Aaron Rodgers gets a shoutout from Jodie Foster
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted: Ruffalo had been nominated for Golden Globe awards three times before: for best actor in a comedy or musical for the 2014 movie “Infinitely Polar Bear”; best actor in a TV movie or miniseries for “The Normal Heart”; and best supporting actor in a movie for 2014’s “Foxcatcher,” as former University of Wisconsin-Madison wrestling coach David Schultz.
Cap Times Talk: ‘Real Life’ author Brandon Taylor
Capital Times
The book, which came out in early 2020, has added resonance in Madison because it was inspired by Taylor’s experiences here. He was a biochemistry Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before he left to pursue a writing career in 2016.
Q&A: Dantiel Moniz feeds the inner fires of girls and women with ‘Milk Blood Heat’
Capital Times
Even though she is teaching at University of Wisconsin-Madison this semester, the author of “Milk Blood Heat” has managed to keep warm.
The Comfort of a Lunar New Year in Isolation
Time
Essay by Professor Beth Nguyen
Lunar New Year might bring to mind festivals and fireworks, but I’ve always associated it with a kind of isolation. Long before the pandemic, long before the rest of America learned about sriracha and pho, I grew up in a Vietnamese refugee family in a mostly white town in Michigan.
Poem: Smokey
New York Times
Born and raised in Compton, Calif., he is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he directs the M.F.A. program in creative writing. His latest collection, ‘‘Imperial Liquor,’’ was published by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2020 and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry.
American Hegemony Is Ending With a Whimper, Not a Bang
The Nation
Today, in the era of a 78-year-old president, a veritable Rip Van Biden, Americans and the rest of the world are, it seems, waking up in a new age. It could well be a daunting one.Invest your way with Schwab.From automated investing to financial consultants, get tools and resources that match your needs.
-Alfred McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.
Nathans And Ronstadt Premier A New Music Video For ‘Ghost Writer’
Wisconsin Public Radio
Nathans has roots in Madison. He said he “began playing guitar and writing songs when I lived in Madison roughly two decades ago. I worked for The Capital Times covering the (University of Wisconsin) System, and I remember sitting at the Board of Regents meetings at the top of Van Hise Hall and scrawling song lyrics in my reporter’s notebook.
Artist Vicki Meek’s Nasher Exhibit is a Profound Celebration of African Ancestry
D Magazine
Noted: Meek knows a thing or two about the symbols and rhetoric associated with the African American race dialogue. She earned her MFA at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which she calls “the Whitest place in the world.” In the 1960s, the university was a hotbed of civil rights activism. By 1971, when Meek arrived on campus, the administration had purged the campus of “most of the so-called radical element,” she says. “And I had gone to that school because of the radical element.”
Mellon Foundation grants $72 million to humanities projects focused on issues of racial justice
Inside Higher Education
Another $5 million grant, awarded to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, focuses on antiracism literacy in the sciences and medicine. “Over the summer in response to Black Lives Matters protests, my history of science colleagues and I were talking about how we could ramp up the teaching we do on histories of race in the sciences and medicine,” said Elizabeth Hennessy, the project leader and an associate professor of history and environmental sciences at Madison. “A typical education in the sciences doesn’t include a history of your own discipline. It rare that is an emphasis in scientific training, but I think it’s a really important emphasis.”
Noel Spangler, designer of Summerfest’s smiley face logo, dies at 97 from COVID-19
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Noted: From there, Spangler became an art professor for the University of Wisconsin in Madison, then, aspiring to make more money for his family, started doing work for some commercial firms in Milwaukee.
Michael Apted Took The Very Long View
The New Republic
The clever farmer’s son from Yorkshire, Nick Hitchon, defied social class determinism and became a physics professor: He left for America at an early age and taught at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The show must go on: UW-Madison classical musicians turn to technology
Daily Cardinal
As people continue to become more accustomed with working during the pandemic, musicians have started to experiment with technology and find new ways to collaborate with one another. While the process has not been easy, there are positives to these changes.
UW–Madison alumnus to star in ‘Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical’
Madison Magazine
André De Shields — best known for his work in “Play On!,” “The Full Monty,” “The Wiz” and most recently, “Hadestown” — will star as Anton Ego in “Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical.”
2020 Staff Picks: Danez Smith Returns Home to Madison to Perform Poetry From Latest Book “Homie”
Madison 365
Noted: They spent their formative years in Madison, living here from age 17 to 23. Smith participated in the nation’s premier Hip Hop Arts scholarship program First Wave at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Statue of Vel Phillips, Wisconsin’s first Black female Secretary of State, could be placed on Capitol grounds as soon as summer 2021
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A statue of the first Black woman to become secretary of state in Wisconsin could go up in front of the state Capitol building as early as next summer.
Manitowoc Public Library is increasing diversity, inclusion in its collections
Herald Times Reporter
Noted: This past September, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for East Asian Studies offered a new grant program called East Asia in Wisconsin Library Program as part of their mission to promote better understanding of East Asian histories and cultures.
UW Madison’s Wisconsin Singers share holiday spirit in online performances
NBC-15
A University of Wisconsin- Madison singing troupe are sharing the spirit of the holidays virtually this year by posting their productions online.
UW First Wave alum Zhalarina Sanders wins Chicago Emmy for music video series
Madison365
Now 28, the University of Wisconsin First Wave alum has won a Chicago Emmy for her three-part music video series, “The Light,” produced with PBS Wisconsin, with her sights set on launching a career in television and music.
Wisconsin Union Theater continues to host virtual events for community
Badger Herald
Wisconsin Union Theater presents virtual events like their concert series, performances from Christian Sands Trio, Jeremy Denk.
Canadian illustrator Julie Flett’s books reveal the truth about modern Indigenous life
NBC News
Only 46 out of 4,035 books for children and teens reviewed in 2019 were by Indigenous authors, according to data compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Local performer’s pro-staying-at-home video goes viral, thanks to Rafael, Ava & Oprah
Madison 365
James Gavins, the creative director of the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has taken to making music, dance and comedy videos during the COVID pandemic. Performing is nothing new for Gavins — an alum of the UW’s First Wave performing arts scholarship with a degree in theater, he worked with the Youth Arts Initiative and mounted a one-man show before returning to UW to join OMAI.
“The comedy and the sketches, and things like that, I’ve been doing that for a while, but as far as the music … that really started once quarantine hit, because I was an artist at home figuring this all out for myself, this is how I communicate. You try to communicate, and this is how I relate to most people,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
State Street mural artists discuss the work ahead
The Capital Times
On Wednesday evening, the artists behind three of those murals gathered virtually for a panel discussion with Chazen Museum of Art director Amy Gilman and University of Wisconsin-Madison art professor Faisal Abdu’Allah, hosted by UW-Madison’s Center for the Humanities.
Black Arts Matter Festival goes virtual this year to build community for Black artists
NBC-15
According to a news release, University of Wisconsin- Madison alumna Shasparay Irvin, an artist and slam poet, co-produced the festival along with the Wisconsin Union Theater. Irvin created the festival while she was a student and debuted it in 2019.
How Susie Yang Went From Tech Entrepreneurship to Literary Stardom
Wall Street Journal
Around the same time, her high school friend Lucy Tan, author of What We Were Promised, got into the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s MFA program. “I remember when she told me, I was like, ‘What is an MFA program?’ When she explained it to me, I just remember being so inspired, but also shocked.” Yang was surprised to learn there was a professional track for literary writers.
New UW acting prof Baron Kelly uses arts to open doors
Capital Times
As an educator, actor, director and author, Kelly has built his career on making lasting connections. This fall, Kelly joined the UW-Madison Department of Theatre and Drama, where he earned a Ph.D. in theatre research in 2003. He’s teaching a small, upper-level Shakespearean performance course this fall.
Spinoza: A Heretical and Modern Mind
WSJ
The standard biography of the man is the fascinating “Spinoza: A Life,” by Steven Nadler, a philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin. A revised edition of this much-admired book has recently appeared.
12 fall movie inspired trips
Washington Post
Back to School – To embody Rodney Dangerfield this autumn, you’ll need to get in a car and drive through Wisconsin’s stunning changing foliage. End up at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (called “Grand Lake University” in the 1986 film) to see the lakeside college dressed in fall colors. Bonus points if you take this trip wearing a cardigan or find time to drink champagne in a hot tub.
Yung Gravy talks about the message he wants his listeners to take away from his music – The Observer
Observer
The 24-year-old rapper grew up in Rochester, Minnesota and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His song “Mr. Clean” blew up when he had two semesters left, leading him to drop one of his majors and graduate a semester early. Although “Mr. Clean” was released in August 2016, he only revealed his identity later on in the song’s music video, released in March 2017.
UW Division of Continuing Studies cuts art programs
Wisconsin State Journal
In response to the budget fallout of COVID-19, UW-Madison’s Division of Continuing Studies is cutting support for community art programs.