Ellen Samuels has spent a lot of hours in loud, cramped MRI machines.
She said medical personnel would give her these “little headphones” to play music, but the sound of banging metal coils and vibrating electrical pulses all but muted that music.
So to pass the time, she would craft poems in her head. Without the ability to jot them down, she imagined haiku because the five-seven-five-syllable format was easier to remember.
Embedded within a four-decade-long endeavor to document the history of cartography is a deceptively simple question: What is a map?
In a world where most people interact with maps almost daily, pulling them up on their smartphone to effortlessly chart a path through the lattice of streets that lie between Point A and Point B, the map, at first glance, is a tool.
But ask a generations-spanning team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison what a map is, and they’ll give you a more complex answer. Maps are more than a flattened rendering of the land around us, said Matthew Edney, a senior scientist at UW and a professor of geography at the University of Southern Maine.
“They’re cultural documents,” he said. “They’re social instruments.”
We Are Here: Local Mapmakers Explore the World That Connects Us is an exhibit that was developed by the UW Madison Cartography Lab and currently showing at the Overture Center until January 16th. The exhibit features work from both current students and alumni from their current places of employment and aims to let people know that Madison is a hub and important place of cartography training.
“When I studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, it was the humanities classes that I had put to the side that ultimately started me on this path of thinking about creativity in a much more cultural context — not designing for design’s sake, but connecting design to the rhythm of what’s happening in the world.”— Virgil Abloh, designer, born 1980 (Read the obituary.
Noted: “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”: In this franchise reboot, Carrie Coon plays the daughter of OG (original Ghostbuster) Egon. After he dies, Coon, who got her start at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in Madison-area theater, brings her kids to his rural Oklahoma house and discovers the ghosts are coming back.
“Enemies of the State”: Oscar-winning documentarian and University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Errol Morris is executive producer of this true tale of a family that caught up in intrigue when their hacker son is targeted by the federal government.
Noted: Another striking example is the singing shawls made by the Karen people of Myanmar and northern Thailand, says Jennifer Angus, who teaches textile design at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. These woven garments, so named because they’re worn at funeral ceremonies where mourners sing around the clock for several days, sometimes have a fringe made from the shiny, iridescent elytra, or hard outer wings, of jewel beetles. Angus, who grew up in Canada, had never seen anything like it. “I really had trouble believing that it was real,” she says.
The discovery inspired Angus to start incorporating insects into her own work. Her first installation was at a storefront gallery in Toronto, where she arranged hundreds of weevils into a wallpaper-like pattern on the walls. When people walked up to take a closer look, Angus says, “literally, I saw them take a step back as they realized the wallpaper was composed of insects.” The piece created tension, she says, between what people expect when they see a pattern they associate with domestic spaces and the realization that the pattern is composed of bugs, which most people don’t like to find in their homes.
Books designed for children may be perpetuating gender stereotypes, a new study warns.
More than 240 books written for children five years old and younger were analysed by a team from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
They found that books with a male main character were more often about professions, whereas those with a female protagonist were about affection.
Noted: A recent count by Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that “books about white children, talking bears, trucks, monsters, potatoes, etc. represent nearly three-quarters of children’s and young adult books published in 2019.” In other words, vegetables, animals, monsters, and aliens had more visibility in books than brown or black characters.
Noted: “Just Be Claus” is Joosse’s 55th book published for kids. Originally from Grafton, she started telling stories in grade school and later studied creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After having her own children, she was inspired by them to write children’s books.
The Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is pleased to announce the winners of the “East Asia in Wisconsin Library Program” competition. Grants have been awarded to public libraries throughout Wisconsin, enriching their collections with new titles that will enable patrons to deepen their understanding of East Asia (which includes China, Japan, and Korea). Over $24,000 in funding will be distributed to 29 libraries, representing 12 of the state’s 14 library systems.
Quoted: Garcia earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She recalls taking American English classes and only learning about white male authors.
She remembers thinking: “America is more than these old dead white dudes.” She decided to minor in Chicano/Latina studies and American Indian studies, where she saw herself reflected in the stories she learned about.
“It brought me back to that feeling of empowerment, of feeling seen,” she said. “This was something that was me.”
In 2018, a new street in the Darbo-Worthington Neighborhood on Madison’s east side was created in honor of the legacy of Richard Davis, a Madison jazz legend and Professor Emeritus of Bass at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught for nearly four decades. Now, after a fundraising effort throughout the pandemic, Davis’ former student and mentee, Wilder Deitz, has honored the man who inspired him and so many others with a commemorative plaque to accompany the street sign on Richard Davis Lane.
Quoted: What do you know about the Native peoples who have called Wisconsin lands their home for thousands of years?
November is Native American Heritage Month and is a good opportunity to learn about the history, culture and sovereignty of the 11 federally recognized tribes in Wisconsin and the Brothertown Indian Nation, which hopes to regain its federal status.
Most people know little to nothing about Native Americans, said Aaron Bird Bear, director of tribal relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Keeping ourselves ignorant about Indigenous nations, about our shared history and our treaty-based relationships with Indigenous nations is a form of collective amnesia,” Bird Bear said.
“One thing we would hope is that people really think deeply during Native American Heritage Month of how they can interrupt or arrest settler colonialism itself, which is a process by which the vast majority of U.S. society knows little to nothing about the people who’ve lived here for 20,000 years and counting.”
Pitches and Notes and Fundamentally Sound, two student a cappella groups, will take the stage for a combined show at Shannon Hall at Memorial Union Friday.
After more than 40 years of extensive research, UW-Madison’s History of Cartography Project is nearly complete. We talk with the director of the plan about the contents of the six-volume set, what he hopes people gain from the project, and his love for maps.
Firms build worlds. On this, historians and businesspeople agree. Corporations have always been among the greatest forces shaping American life. And the many corporations that hold private archives documenting their past activities have unique powers to disclose—or hide—their contributions to racial injustice in America. That’s why, if they truly want to advance the cause of social justice, companies should throw open their archives for researchers to use.
-Gregg Mitman
The Wisconsin Black Student Union (WBSU), the Division of Diversity, Equity, & Educational Achievement (DDEEA), and the Black Cultural Center (BCC) will host “The Stories We Tell: Sharing Black Activism Experiences at UW-Madison” this afternoon, a panel discussion with UW-Madison alumni and current students about their activism during their time as students at the UW.
Deryk Gonzalez and your friendly neighborhood Deryk G. are one in the same. By day, you might experience Deryk, the soft spoken, well intentioned University of Wisconsin engineering student, who wishes to make his family proud and enjoys his time with friends. But after a quick costume change, the vivacious funk-lionheart known as Deryk G. comes to. It’s a persona that never requires a mask, with an aptitude for animated, romantic story-telling that allows him to live his truth.
Noted: The program, which costs $15 for adults and $10 for ages 2 to 12 (museum admission is included), will also offer a scavenger hunt through the exhibition “Jennifer Angus: Magicicada.” Angus, an artist (and design professor in the School of Human Ecology), has devised decorative scenes and Victorian-like dioramas involving hundreds of preserved insects. Enhanced by historical taxidermy specimens, the show promises some haunting pleasure.
James Gavins’ afrofuturistic, sci-fi thriller-based film “Cicada” explores a parallel universe in which a psychotherapy simulator will ease the trauma from Black history in America. It debuts this afternoon at 4 p.m. with a film screening followed by a panel discussion at the UW Union South Marquee Theater.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, time for the Wisconsin Book Festival, 28 events this week alone, both in-person and online, and Stu Levitan welcomes one of the featured presenters, and one of the brightest stars in the firmament that is the University of Wisconsin faculty, Professor Jordan Ellenberg, to discuss his NYTimes best-seller, Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else.
For today’s show, Monday host Patty Peltekos speaks with Jo Handelsman about her new book, A World Without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet.
The Wisconsin Book Festival and the Wisconsin Science Festival are co-presenting a book event with Jo Handelsman this Thursday, October 21 at 6 p.m. in the Discovery Building at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. More information available at the Wisconsin Book Festival website.
Jo Handelsman is the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a Vilas Research Professor, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. She previously served as a science advisor to President Barack Obama as the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) from 2014 to 2017. She is the author of A World Without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet (Yale University Press, 2021).
Performer, educator and author Erica Halverson has a lot to say about how the arts can be used in schools to transform education in a meaningful way in her book “How The Arts Can Save Education.” Halverson, who also is a professor of curriculum and instruction at UW-Madison, will discuss her book during an in-person event at the Wisconsin Book Festival later this month.
With significant financial support from Marv and Jeff Levy, two brothers and alumni at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the George L. Mosse Humanities building will soon be called Irving and Dorothy Levy Hall.
UW-Madison announced on Wednesday a $20 million donation for a new academic building that will help clear the way for the demolition of the Humanities Building.
For today’s show, Ali celebrates the 15th annual Passing the Mic Intergenerational Hip Hop Festival with First Wave creative director James Gavins and student poets Azura Tyabji and Zack Lesmeister, who read samples of their poetry on air and share what it’s like being an “artivist” in Madison.
Wolk and his book would have been better served if he’d assembled a different kind of avengers, the pioneering scholars who are already doing precisely this type of research: Anna F. Peppard, Brian Johnson, Adilifu Nama, Ramzi Fawaz, Frederick Luis Aldama and Julian Chambliss.
The New York Times dropped jaws with a tea-spilling article detailing an ongoing six-year dispute between a white writer who donated a kidney and a writer of color who wrote a short story inspired by the donation. Dawn Dorland and Sonya Larson now find themselves deep into contentious litigation with no end in sight.
Larson’s path toward writing was more conventional than Dorland’s. She started earlier, after her first creative-writing class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The First Degree” next screens Oct. 24 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cinematheque, with live piano accompaniment by David Drazin. The film is scheduled to air on Turner Classic Movies, with the Chicago Film Archives-commissioned score written and performed by Quasar Wut-Wut, sometime before mid-2022.
The group is preparing for a 7:30 p.m. performance Thursday in Shannon Hall at Memorial Union. It’s the first stop on Sphinx Virtuosi’s national fall tour, and also the first classical music concert with an in-person audience held in the UW-Madison theater since the pandemic halted operations in March 2020. The concert also will be streamed online.
Luthra is the fall 2021 interdisciplinary artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Division of the Arts. The program brings visiting artists to campus for a semester, where they teach a class intended for students of different disciplines, artists and not, as well as programming a series of live performances and lectures that the general public can enjoy.
Legendary actor, UW alum Andre De Shields to spearhead BIPOC arts initiative.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the University of Wisconsin Marching Band took the field before Wisconsin’s season opener against Penn State Sept. 4, it marked the band’s first performance at a home football game in nearly two years.
It also was the first time drum major Joshua Richlen of Greendale got to do his thing at Camp Randall Stadium.
’While it’s really a bummer not to show with my classmates, it really did open up opportunities and push us to go the extra mile to make the best of what we have.’ UW BFA grad said
“We certainly made some exciting research discoveries about the objects,” said Natalie Wright, one of the graduate students who worked on the exhibition with UW-Madison professor Marina Moskowitz, the Lynn and Gary Mecklenburg Chair in Textiles, Design and Material Culture.
Today, we welcome back Wednesday host Ali Muldrow (and her adorable new co-pilot, Frida Hallelujah) for a conversation about the importance of the arts with UW’s new arts director, Chris Walker.
Among her young followers, Ms. Aniston’s apparent fallibility may well be a trump card, said Jonathan Gray, a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin.
A new exhibit open in the Ruth Davis Design Gallery on UW-Madison’s campus explores how everyday objects of the home represent the political discourse of the time.
Dr. Lisa Arkin, the Director of Pediatric Dermatology at UW School of Medicine, says working with children and their families is what she was put on this earth to do. A career she only discovered after the terrorist attacks in NYC on September 11, 2001.At the time of the attacks, Arkin was working as a story editor for HBO and Showtime. But on 9/11, she was called in for jury duty.
New University of Wisconsin Division of Arts Director Chris Walker has been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for many years now. He arrived as a visiting faculty member and worked in the Dance Department, the School of Education and as the founding artistic director of the First Wave Scholarship Program. While reflecting on where he began at UW, he talked about how his journey and work at the UW has come full circle.
New University of Wisconsin Division of Arts Director Chris Walker has been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for many years now. He arrived as a visiting faculty member and worked in the Dance Department, the School of Education and as the founding artistic director of the First Wave Scholarship Program. While reflecting on where he began at UW, he talked about how his journey and work at the UW has come full circle.
One day pre-pandemic, Lori Lopez, a UW-Madison associate professor of media and cultural studies, joined a Hmong teleconference call with more than 1,000 listeners.
The call was not a meeting or presentation, but a live call-in radio program where people could share their stories, listen to conversations or get news about their community.
She said it was a radio station — without being a radio station.
“I was like Hmong people are being really entrepreneurial and coming up with all sorts of really cool media solutions to the fact that they’re such a small community and they can’t really have a traditional media structure,” the director of the Asian American Studies Program told Madison365.
Now, seven years later, she released her book titled “Micro Media Industries: Hmong American Media Innovation in the Diaspora” on Aug. 13.
Sara Archambault is thrilled that the documentary she produced, “Truth or Consequences,” is playing Friday under the stars (weather permitting) as part of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s Rooftop Cinema series. And not just because she used to live in Madison as a graduate student in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Communication Arts department.
Newly-appointed director of the Division of the Arts Chris Walker will introduce a multitude of new grants and programming that center on art and activism and broadening cultural horizons.
Noted: Includes interview with Jonathan Gray, professor of media and cultural studies at UW–Madison.
“There’s a real demand for this kind of public thing,” Leckrone said. “I know people who do theater and other things just don’t have venues to perform. And I’m interested in all the arts. So I thought I could lend a hand. I certainly want to.”
The network featured content from NPR reporters, freelancers and member stations, such as the National Center for Audio Experimentation (NCAE) at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, which shared staff and resources with WHA (Wisconsin Public Radio). The NCAE produced radio dramas and other explorations of sound, including the All Things Considered theme, composed by Don Voegeli.
Stu Levitan welcomes one of the brightest stars in the firmament that is the University of Wisconsin faculty, Professor Jordan Ellenberg, here to talk about his New York Times best-seller, Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else.
Includes interview with KT Horning, director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the School of Education.
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.
Written by UW alum Brandon Taylor whose debut novel “Real Life” was a finalist for the Booker Prize for fiction.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It was during his time as an undergrad at UW-Madison that Mays found his niche: Documentaries.
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.
