Thursday, March 7 at 6:00 p.m. – Maneula Picq will present Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics as part of the University of New Mexico’s Global Futures Initiative Speakers Series. The book is the fruit of a decade working with Kichwa peoples in the Ecuadorean Andes. Her work at the intersection of scholarship, journalism, and activism led her to be detained and expelled by the government of Ecuador in 2015, then nominated in a New Generation of Public Intellectuals in 2018.
Global Futures is an interdisciplinary arts and humanities initiative for critical inquiry, pedagogical innovation, and social justice. The manifold and accelerating crisis of the current historical moment presents unique challenges that require creative new forms of research and collective action. The Global Futures Initiative brings together artists, activists, organizers, and scholars to creatively envision new social possibilities that connect community-based engagement and global movements for social transformation and planetary futurity.
Wednesday, February 27 – Seattle University hosts Casandra López alongside Cedar Sigo and Laura Da’. López will be reading from her debut University of Arizona Press collection Brother Bullet. In this powerful collection, Casandra López confronts her relationships with violence, grief, trauma, guilt, and, ultimately, survival. Revisiting the memory and lasting consequences of her brother’s murder, López traces the course of the bullet—its trajectory, impact, wreckage—in poems that are paralyzing and raw with emotion, yet tender and alive in revelations of light.
Monday, February 25, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. – Marquis Bay will discuss his new book Them Goon Rules, which reads like a critical memoir and queries the function and implications of politicizing Blackness, Black feminism, and queerness. Them Goon Rules binds together his personal experiences with social justice work at the New York-based Audre Lorde project, growing up in Philly, and rigorous explorations of the iconoclasm of theorists of Black studies and Black feminism.
Thursday, September 26, 2019 at 1:00 p.m. – The Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records Division (Polly Rosenbaum Building, 1901 West Madison Street., Phoenix, AZ) hosts David Berman for a lecture on one of Arizona’s highly colorful politicians, George W. P. Hunt. A territorial representative and seven-time Arizona state governor, Hunt joined Woodrow Wilson in making the Democratic Party the party of Progressive reform. Berman’s political biography follows Hunt through his years in the territorial legislature, and then as governor. Author David R. Berman’s well-researched and detailed work features Hunt’s battles to stem the powers of large corporations, democratize the political system, defend labor rights, reform the prison system, abolish the death penalty, and protect Arizona’s interests in the Colorado River. He had a special concern for the down and out. He found the “forgotten man” long before Franklin Roosevelt.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019 – David Berman will be hosted by the Tucson chapter of the Corral of Westerners for a lecture on one of Arizona’s highly colorful politicians, George W. P. Hunt. A territorial representative and seven-time Arizona state governor, Hunt joined Woodrow Wilson in making the Democratic Party the party of Progressive reform. Berman’s political biography follows Hunt through his years in the territorial legislature, and then as governor. Author David R. Berman’s well-researched and detailed work features Hunt’s battles to stem the powers of large corporations, democratize the political system, defend labor rights, reform the prison system, abolish the death penalty, and protect Arizona’s interests in the Colorado River. He had a special concern for the down and out. He found the “forgotten man” long before Franklin Roosevelt.
Thursday, November 8 at 6:30 p.m. – The Center of the American West hosts Rebecca Robinson and Stephen Strom to celebrate the joint release of Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land and Bears Ears: Views from a Sacred Land.
Through twenty individual stories, Voices from Bears Ears captures the passions of the debate that led to the creation of Bears Ears National Monument, a land of unsurpassed natural beauty and deep historical significance. The story of this place reflects the cultural crosscurrents that roil our times: maintaining tradition and culture in the face of change, healing the pain of past injustices, creating shared futures, and protecting and preserving lands for future generations.
Bears Ears captures the singular beauty of Bears Ears country in all seasons, its textural subtleties portrayed alongside the drama of expansive landscapes and skies, deep canyons, spires, and towering mesas. To photographer Stephen E. Strom’s sensitive eyes, a scrub oak on a hillside or a pattern in windswept sand is as essential to capturing the spirit of the landscape as the region’s most iconic vistas. Years from now, this book may serve as either a celebration of the foresight of visionary leaders or as an elegy for what was lost.
The Center of the American West takes as its mission the creation of forums for the respectful exchange of ideas and perspectives in the pursuit of solutions to the region’s difficulties. They believe that an understanding of the historical origins of the West’s problems, an emphasis on the common interests of all parties, and a dose of good humor are essential to constructive public discussion.
Friday, September 14 at 6:30 p.m. – Join us for a special opening night screening of Bisbee ’17 at the Loft Cinema, featuring a post-film Q&A with director Robert Greene, in conversation with our own UA Press Bisbee ’17 author, Robert Houston! Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing at this event.
About the film:
It’s 2017 in Bisbee, Arizona, an old copper-mining town just miles from the Mexican border. The town’s close-knit community prepares to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Bisbee’s darkest hour: the infamous Bisbee Deportation of 1917, during which 1,200 striking miners were violently taken from their homes, banished to the middle of the desert, and left to die
Townspeople confront this shocking, controversial past by staging dramatic recreations of the escalating miners’ strike. These dramatized scenes are based on subjective versions of the story and “directed,” in a sense, by residents with conflicting views of the event. Deeply personal segments torn from family history build toward a massive restaging of the deportation itself on the exact day of its 100th anniversary. In Bisbee ’17, filmmaker Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine) bends the boundaries of documentary and confronts the current political predicaments of immigration, unionization, environmental damage and corporate corruption with direct, haunting messages about solidarity and struggle, creating a unique, thought-provoking film that stirs up the ghosts of our past as a cautionary tale that speaks to our present. (Dir. by Robert Greene, 2018, USA, 124 mins., Not Rated)
“Audacious and timely … a bracing documentary … confirms that director Robert Greene is one of America’s finest new voices in non-fiction.” – Nick Schager, Variety
Wednesday, April 11 at 6:00 p.m. – Author Ted Fleming and illustrator Kim Kanoa Duffek will discuss their work on No Species is an Island and the collaboration between science and art at the Desert Laboratory Library on Tumamoc Hill. To make reservations for the talk and the shuttle up and down the hill, please contact Cynthia Anson at desrtlaboratory@gmail.com or 520-629-9455.
Saturday, April 7 at 12 p.m. and 2 p.m – Mark Nelson, one of the eight crew members locked in Biosphere 2 during its first closure experiment, will offer a compelling insider’s view of the dramatic story behind the mini-world in a two separate talks at Biosphere 2. In each lecture, Nelson will clear up common misconceptions about the 1991–1993 closure experiment and discuss the project’s implications for today’s global environmental challenges. Copies of his book Pushing Our Limit: Insights from Biosphere 2 will be available for purchase and signing.
Monday, September 25 at 7:30 p.m. – With tantalizing and artistic glimpses of actively eroding slopes, impact craters, strange polar landscapes, and avalanches, Alfred McEwen and Ari Espinoza present a selection of the most stunning images collected from HiRISE and recently published in the book Mars: The Pristine Beauty of the Red Planet. The event is part of the UA’s Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory’s Public Evening Lecture Series. Following the lecture, there will be a book signing, reception, and, weather permitting, the Raymond E. White, Jr. Reflector in the historic Steward Observatory dome will open for public viewing of the night sky.
The University of Arizona Press
