Art and Care with Anne Basting
Wednesday, February 10, 12-1 p.m., Zoom (register here)
Reading: Chapter 11: “From Islands to Archipelagos“ in Basting, Anne (2020). Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Dementia and Elder Care. HarperOne.
Time: 10 min read
This week, HHRG will be joined by artist, scholar, and TimeSlips founder Anne Basting to discuss a chapter in her new book “Creative Care” that details the project, “the Islands of Milwaukee,” that Basting and other artist and organizational collaborators initiated in her hometown of Milwaukee. The Islands of Milwaukee approached the crisis of social isolation in elderly communities by engaging with older folks who live on their own around the city—inviting them to respond to a question a day and turning it into a larger creative call and response project that sought to bring meaning and connection to people in their homes.
Special guest discussant: Anne Basting is an artist, scholar, and educator committed to the power of the arts and culture to transform our lives as individuals and communities. She is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and founder and President of the award-winning non-profit TimeSlips.
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Monday, March 1, 12-1 p.m., Zoom
Reading: Three poems from The Tradition by Jericho Brown, this year’s pick for One Book One Philadelphia through the Free Library of Philadelphia.
1] Jericho Brown, "Bullet Points" from The Tradition
2] Jericho Brown, "Crossing" from The Tradition
3] Jericho Brown, "I Know What I Love" from The Tradition
If you are a current Jefferson student and would like a free copy of the physical book, please contact Matilda.Ostow@jefferson.edu.
From publisher Copper Canyon Press: Beauty abounds in Jericho Brown’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, despite and inside of the evil that pollutes the everyday. A National Book Award finalist, The Tradition questions why and how we’ve become accustomed to terror: in the bedroom, the classroom, the workplace, and the movie theater. From mass shootings to rape to the murder of unarmed people by police, Brown interrupts complacency by locating each emergency in the garden of the body, where living things grow and wither—or survive. In the urgency born of real danger, Brown’s work is at its most innovative. His invention of the duplex—a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues—is an all-out exhibition of formal skill, and his lyrics move through elegy and memory with a breathless cadence. Jericho Brown is a poet of eros: here he wields this power as never before, touching the very heart of our cultural crisis.
Special guest discussant: Ana Maria Lopez, MD, MPH, MACP, Professor and Vice Chair, Medical Oncology, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Chief of Cancer Services, Jefferson Health New Jersey, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center
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Monday, March 15, 12-1 p.m., Zoom
Reading: Michael Chabon, "The Recipe for Life," The New Yorker, January 2018.
Leading up to Michael Chabon’s visit, the Health Humanities Reading Group will discuss one of Chabon’s shorter nonfiction pieces exploring themes of parenthood, childhood, and imagination.
Special guest discussant: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Lecturer of Writing and Rhetoric, Thomas Jefferson University.
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Monday, March 22, 12-1 p.m., Zoom
Reading: Marilisa C. Navarro, “Radical Recipe: Veganism as Anti-Racism”
Time: 18 min read
This week, HHRG will discuss anti-racism in relation to food, foodways, veganism and cookbooks. Special guest discussant Dr. Marilisa Navarro will join the group in considering how two cookbooks—Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry and Decolonize Your Diet by Luz Calvo and Catriona Esquibel—go beyond conveying recipes to produce knowledge, critique racism and colonialism, deconstruct the white-centric veganism narrative, and highlight the voices, histories and experiences of people of color.
If you are a current Jefferson student and would like a free copy of either Afro-Vegan or Decolonize Your Diet, please contact Matilda.Ostow@jefferson.edu (supplies limited).
Special guest discussant: Marilisa C. Navarro, PhD, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, College of Humanities and Sciences, Thomas Jefferson University.