Hitchcock is a professor of printmaking in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has lived in the Midwest for more than two decades, but he doesn’t think of it as “home.”
Bersch, who recently got his doctorate in film studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the researcher for the popular film podcast “Blank Check with Griffin & David.” Since its debut in 2016, the podcast hosted by actor/comedian Griffin Newman and The Atlantic film critic David Sims has looked at the complete filmographies of directors, from the masterpieces to the misfires.
In 2016, then an assistant professor of design studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she launched a “social weaving project” called the Weaving Lab, by the Image Lab created by cartoonist Lynda Barry at the campus’ Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. For two summers, Fairbanks and a small team of UW students took over the Image Lab space, installing four large floor looms so that anyone could pause at a loom, think about the big questions she’d posted beside each, and weave their own contribution to the collaborative tapestries.
Harvey, in his 30s and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin College of Agriculture, was invited by the YMCA to establish a new program in Vladivostok, Russia.
Noted: Controversy exploded in August, when the association’s president, James H. Sweet, a leading historian of the African diaspora at the University of Wisconsin, published a column in its magazine called “Is History History?,” which lamented a “trend toward presentism” and a troubling politicization of scholarship.
The study of pre-modern history, Sweet wrote, is shrinking, while scholars of all periods increasingly question whether work that doesn’t focus on “contemporary social justice issues” like race, gender and capitalism really matters. “The allure of political relevance, facilitated by social and other media,” he argued, has encouraged “a predictable sameness” that misses the messiness and complexity of the past.
Noted: In the episode, first airing Jan. 20, Brown tastes “sophisticated Wisconsin cheeses,” is a judge in a mustard-tasting contest and learns about the University of Wisconsin, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed First Unitarian Society meeting house, her first supper club (Tornado Club Steak House) and the joys of curling and its Madison roots — the latter with help from Olympian Becca Hamilton, according to publicity material on the episode.
There might be a new way to think of one particular species of invasive snail being found in Wisconsin’s water: as a part of a gourmet meal.
At least that’s the approach Minneapolis chef Yia Vang and Titus Sielheimer, a fisheries outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant, made this summer, when they filmed themselves harvesting and cooking up Chinese mystery snails in northern Wisconsin.
On the evening of July 12, 1893, in the hall of a massive new Beaux-Arts building that would soon house the Art Institute of Chicago, a young professor named Frederick Jackson Turner rose to present what would become the most influential essay in the study of U.S. history.
It was getting late. The lecture hall was stifling from a day of blazing sun, which had tormented the throngs visiting the nearby Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, a carnival of never-before-seen wonders, like a fully illuminated electric city and George Ferris’ 264-foot-tall rotating observation wheel. Many of the hundred or so historians attending the conference, a meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA), were dazed and dusty from an afternoon spent watching Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show at a stadium near the fairground’s gates. They had already sat through three other speeches. Some may have been dozing off as the thin, 31-year-old associate professor from the University of Wisconsin in nearby Madison began his remarks.
Growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in a predominantly white community, Beth Nguyen began grappling with her identity at an early age.
At 8 months old, she and her family fled Vietnam by ship after the fall of Saigon, eventually immigrating to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Nguyen detailed that journey, her coming of age and her longing to fit in as an American in her award-winning debut memoir “Stealing Buddha’s Dinner,” published in 2007.
Now an English and Asian American studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nguyen teaches others how to shape their own thoughts and experiences into meaningful stories. “Find that perspective,” she encourages them. “Meld into it. Use it.”
With the fall semester drawn to a close and a new year on the horizon, University of Wisconsin-Madison professors in departments ranging from math to English are reflecting on their favorite reads of the year.
They shared with the Cap Times the best books of 2022 — a diverse array of topics and genres, including social justice, animal studies and Slavic science fiction.
Noted: The Wisconsin First Nations website continues to be an educational favorite as well. PBS Wisconsin Education created the site in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education as an important space for educators to access authentic educational videos, lesson plans and learning tools.
This year was another big year for Meet the Lab, a digital collection of middle school learning resources developed in collaboration with research labs on the UW-Madison campus. Two new labs joined the lineup, showcasing the many topics and identities within scientific communities. Visual Communicators: Superpowered by Color explores how to use visual features to make sense of something through the Schloss Visual Reasoning Lab. They research human reactions to messages made with visual elements like color, shape and line. Learn why their research matters in a real-life mapmaking example.
In 2018, students called on UW-Madison to remove the name of Fredric March – a UW alum and one of Hollywood’s most celebrated stars in the 1930s and 40s – from a theater in Memorial Union.
That came after a UW-Madison study, commissioned in the wake of the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, examined the history of student organizations in the 1920s.
The department hosted its annual holiday sale, featuring plenty of great presents for art lovers. All available pieces were made by UW art students.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison student from Wausau will be the first nuclear engineer to compete in the Miss America contest Dec. 15. Grace Stanke, who was crowned Miss Wisconsin in June, is using her platform to advocate for nuclear energy while showing women they can succeed in male-dominated industries.
Taught by Ariel (AJ) Juarez, the class allows students to work on the building blocks of the dance style, such as house — a freestyle dance method that evolved from the underground music scenes in Chicago and New York City — and popping, which involves creating a jerking effect by contracting and relaxing one’s muscles.
New York Times movie critics say the Black Panther films have underlying messages about the politics of colonization and the African diaspora. We hear from Ramzi Faraz, a UW-Madison English professor and author, about how political movements influence comics and the ways characters shape identity.
After majoring in interior design in the early 1960s at the University of Washington, a foundation for his collecting aesthetic and artistic vision, Chihuly enrolled in the country’s first glass program at the University of Wisconsin, where he also studied sculpture. Incorporating glass into tapestries to create textile and glass curtains soon gave way to his overriding interest in glassblowing.
A fair number of famous musicians have called Wisconsin home. Les Paul. Al Jarreau. Steve Miller. Justin Vernon.
Now, there’s Yung Gravy.
Matthew Hauri didn’t actually grow up in Wisconsin; he was born in Rochester, Minn. But the now 26-year-old was a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison when he uploaded his first Yung Gravy EP to SoundCloud in 2016. A year later, he signed a deal with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records (the label behind Taylor Swift, the Weeknd and other A-listers), before graduating in December 2017.
30-member show choir receives standing ovation for fantastic performance Saturday night.
An anti-war student activist at UW-Madison became a union organizer on Milwaukee area factory floors in the 1970s and ‘80s. Now a retired lawyer and author of “Fighting Times: Organizing on the Front Lines of the Class War,” Jon Melrod finds common cause with the workers’ rights movement of today.
Noted: My mother moved to Madison from Chicago just over 50 years ago to pursue a college degree and provide a brighter future for my sister and me. The Gee family now consists of three generations of University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates. The university, and a small but thriving community of Black UW alumni, offered opportunities, resources and friendships that allowed us to create lives of unlimited promise, rooted in Black excellence and Black culture.
Noted: Sneha, the narrator and protagonist, is a young Indian immigrant and University of Wisconsin-Madison grad who comes to work in Milwaukee in 2013. She’s a low-level contract consultant doing dehumanizing work at a corporation. Every boss encounter is fraught, because she’d like to be sponsored for permanent residency in the United States.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Gender and Women’s Studies Professor Sami Schalk recently released her second book “Black Disability Politics.” The book was designed to bridge a gap between Black activism and disability activism because, as a disability activist, Schalk said the Black perspective is often neglected or not seen in the disability studies field.
Artists Sanford Biggers, MASK Consortium and Wildcat Ebony Brown of the Wide Awakes made their debut at the Chazen Museum of Art on Thursday, introducing the “re:mancipation” project.
Unfolding like a political thriller, American Experience: Taken Hostage is a riveting four-hour, two-part documentary film about the Iran hostage crisis, when 52 American diplomats, Marines and civilians were taken hostage at the American Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979.
Ahead of its premiere, PBS Wisconsin spoke with writer, producer, director and University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Robert Stone about the film.
The potential for adults returning to school to reach goals of obtaining degrees and knowledge is often most affected by external factors that can make everyday life and returning to academics a difficult balance. The UW Odyssey Project is a remedy to that problem, and over their 20 years working to bring adults to higher education, they have gone the extra mile every time.
The Odyssey Project started in 2002 and quickly started changing lives. Acting as an avenue for adults to return to higher education through the resources and knowledge that run throughout UW-Madison has allowed the Odyssey Project to serve a plethora of people each year to achieve their academic, career, and personal goals. A celebration at the UW-Memorial Union was only fitting.
It’s Homecoming Week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Badger Band is getting ready for its annual parade performance.
News 3 Now photojournalist Sydney Martin caught up with the band as they ran through one of their final practices before the event.
Jennifer Angus is a professor of design studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. About 22 years ago, she moved to the city, bringing with her a passion for insects and art.
“I got into it when I was doing research in northern Thailand on tribal minority dress, and I came across a garment that was embellished with these hard outside wings that are known as elytra,” said Angus.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison historian on Wednesday won one of the nation’s most prestigious awards, which comes with a no strings attached $800,000 stipend to spend however she sees fit.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named UW-Madison professor Monica Kim, 44, as one of 25 national recipients of the MacArthur fellowship. Also known as the “genius grant,” the awards are given annually to a select group of individuals across a range of disciplines who show exceptional creativity in their work and future ambitions.
Erika Meitner recently arrived in Madison as a professor and master of fine arts program director in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s English Department. She’s written six books of poems, and her work frequently appears in anthologies. In her latest collection, Useful Junk, Meitner considers what it means to be a sexual being in a world that often renders women all but invisible. Meitner takes the podium Oct. 15 at the Central Library at 7:30 p.m.
Last December, Danielle Hairston Green took the stage in front of a roomful of strangers and told a witty, passionate story about “leaping and soaring” to overcome life’s obstacles. Not only did she receive raucous applause, but she also won that night’s monthly themed StorySLAM at the High Noon Saloon, sponsored by The Moth Madison.
On Oct. 14, Hairston Green will join nine other area storytellers at The Barrymore Theatre to compete in the first in-person Madison Moth GrandSLAM Championship since October 2019.
“It’s important for people to find a home to not only share their thoughts and experiences, but to do so in a space that’s nonjudgmental and where people are vulnerable,” says Hairston Green, who is director for the Human Development and Relationships Institute in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension. “Sometimes at StorySLAMS, you’re in front of people you’ve never met and may never see again, and that’s a freeing experience.”
This year’s show is entitled Something’s Coming!, and features music from artists like Prince and Katy Perry as well as songs from West Side Story, Muolin Rouge and Footloose.
A new exhibit at the Chazen Museum of Art explores stories of racism and resistance on the campus of UW-Madison. Kacie Lucchini Butcher, the curator of the exhibit joins the show to talk about the years-long effort.
Mike Leckrone, the beloved former director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison marching band, will return to the stage for a one-week show at the Overture Center.
At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, I majored in English literature and was tortured by my inability to decide what to do with my life. In my junior year, I took a film-history course and was entranced by German Expressionist films.
Leckrone, who spent a dazzling half century (1969-2019) as director of the University of Wisconsin Marching Band — years filled with fun, hard work, great acclaim and, inevitably, loss — has fashioned a cabaret-style show, “Mike Leckrone: Moments of Happiness,” that will mix music and storytelling across five performances at Overture’s Playhouse theater Oct. 12-16.
A college degree can be an important step for starting a career, but many colleges and universities struggle to create a welcoming environment for students of color. Angela Fitzgerald sits down with Tiffany Tardy from All-In Milwaukee, a nonprofit working to improve college retention and graduation rates for students from underserved communities.
Tardy is the Program Director for All-In Milwaukee, an organization providing financial aid, advising, program and career support for limited-income college students from the Milwaukee area. She has a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master’s of Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Wisconsin Watch is joining a nationwide project led by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers that aims to protect democracy by limiting the spread and impact of misinformation.
With a newly announced $5 million award from the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program, researchers will continue development of Course Correct, a tool designed at the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication to help journalists identify and combat misinformation online.
Smith grew up in St. Paul, Minn., and graduated from the University of Wisconsin — Madison.
Thursday afternoon, a group of alumni, faculty and students from UW-Madison’s art and art history departments will read an open letter outside the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
They’ll be there to protest the mistreatment of artists during this year’s Wisconsin Triennial exhibition, which was the first Triennial in the museum’s history to focus exclusively on the experiences of Black women, femmes, and gender non-conforming artists.
Thursday afternoon outside the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, a group of alumni, faculty and students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s art and art history departments will gather in support of Black women artists.
Why Race Matters, a digital series elevating issues of importance affecting Wisconsin’s Black communities, returns to PBS Wisconsin with four all-new episodes.
In the premiere episode of the new season, available now, Fitzgerald speaks with University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Emerita Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings to discuss the history of Critical Race Theory, what it is and how it’s used in educational settings.
On Thursday several members of the group delivered a letter to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s front desk addressed MMoCA’s executive director in a show of support for artists who took part in the museum’s “Ain’t I Woman?” exhibit.
Today, a new exhibit is being opened to the public at the Chazen Museum of Art on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The culmination of multiple years of research and planning, the UW-Madison Public History Project exhibit looks to ask questions about the real history of UW-Madison itself. The Public History Project looks to give voice to a lesser-known history of UW-Madison through students, staff, and associates of the university who have been affected by marginalization across identities.
What did Yung Gravy wear when he performed in Wisconsin recently? Kwik Trip merch, of course.
On Sunday, the 2017 University of Wisconsin-Madison alum performed at the state’s capitol for Taste of Madison.
The band’s origins come from Fountain of Life Church on Madison’s south side, where Saffold, Dr. LaVar Charlston, Anthony Ward and Marcus Fleming were church musicians. Each of them were regularly asked to perform at weddings and other functions, and over time it became clear they had something special.
There’s a renewed push to restore Academy Award-winning actor Fredric March’s name on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
A student-led group voted in 2018 to remove the UW alum’s name from a theater in Memorial Union because of his association with a student group that shared a name with the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century.
This history professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and president of the American Historical Association tried to say something sensible, and partially succeeded. It is, however, perilous to deviate even microscopically from progressive orthodoxy, as enforced by today’s censorious professoriate, so he experienced Twitter crucifixion. His “crap” was “white-centric” and advocating “white supremacist Aryan eugenicist” history, etc. Sweet’s critics reduced him to quivering contrition because he had written this:
And since 2012, Barry, a 66-year-old who in 2019 received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship — the so-called genius grant — has been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has held various positions and now does cross-disciplinary teaching on creativity. So when it comes to self-expression, to making art, it’s fair to say that she’s an expert. But in many ways, not nearly as much of an expert as your average little kid, which is something Barry has been thinking about a lot lately.
That’s one of the many messages of Quanda Johnson’s exhibit “Trauerspiel: Subject Into Nonbeing,” an autoethnographic meditation on anti-Black violence and its consequential trauma that is now on display at the Chazen Museum of Art in downtown Madison.
She was expected to go to Cornell University with her boyfriend of three years, but she read an article about the University of Wisconsin and “something came over me”, she says. “And I thought: ‘I’m going to this other place.’”
UW Varsity Band Concert 2022, 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 26
Third-year director Corey Pompey leads the UW Varsity Band through a mix of new material and familiar favorites, including a tribute to the music of Queen and a salute to members of our nation’s armed forces.
Poem by Paul Tran, a poet and an editor whose debut collection, from which this poem is taken, is “All the Flowers Kneeling” (Penguin Books, 2022). They are an assistant professor of English and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Explore John Bascom, the colorful President of the University of Wisconsin from 1874-1887 who championed women’s rights, worker’s rights, temperance, the pursuit of truth, and a notion that would go on to earn fame as “The Wisconsin Idea.” Professor Emeritus of History J. David Hoeveler, of UW Milwaukee, whose most recent book is John Bascom and the Origins of the Wisconsin Idea, sheds light on the important Wisconsin figure.
Two well-known names from UW-Madison will now be part of the 11-member body that advises the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, the university announced Thursday. Amy Gilman, director of the UW-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, and Dipesh Navsaria, professor in the School of Human Ecology and of pediatrics and adolescent medicine in the School of Medicine and Public Health, were named Aug. 12 as new members of the National Museum and Library Services Board.
“A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said” (University of Wisconsin Press), in Trade Paperback and eBook formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Indiebound
Kuku’s stories are delectable and fun, but they also reveal the ridiculousness of gender expectations and the sexual politics that assign men and women rigid roles in intimate relationships.
-Dr Ainehi Edoro is assistant professor of global black literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder and editor-in-chief of Brittle Paper, an online magazine for African literature
Quoted: “What any curriculum should be is thoughtful, give students something they don’t already have, and make them into what we may call critical democratic citizens,” Michael Apple said. He’s the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Apple says the efforts to ban “Flamer” and other books centered around the LGBTQ+ experience are part of a well organized campaign.
He adds that “Flamer” is an award-winning book about acceptance and self-discovery.
Daniel Grabois, an assistant professor of horn at UW-Madison, joins the show to tell us what electro-acoustic music is, and to tell us about the Electro-Acoustic Research Space that makes it possible for him and his students to experiment with instruments.
