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Art and the Freedom Struggle – Commencement Forum
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Art and the Freedom Struggle: A Workshop on Mumia Abu-Jamal, Art, Incarceration, and Creating Activation Space with Melaine Ferdinand-King
Workshop aims to spark engaged activity on the local level related to issues of mass incarceration, and spirited dialogue on the importance of responding creatively in times of political duress.
Saturday, May 25 from 11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Willis Reading Room
John Hay LibraryIn person only. Free and open to the public.
Co-sponsored by the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.
The workshop will employ the research Melaine Ferdinand-King, Curator and Ph.D. Candidate, Africana Studies, conducted to curate the exhibition Art and the Freedom Struggle: The Works of Mumia Abu-Jamal, on view at the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice through July 19, 2024.
Attendee participants will receive:
- Brief overview of the creative process engaged to produce the exhibition
- Images of the current exhibit installation
- Background information on Melaine Ferdinand-King’s conceptualization of creating activation space(s)
- Recent report on the conditions in U.S. federal prisons
After remarks by Melaine Ferdinand-King and Christopher West, Curator of the Black Diaspora at the John Hay Library, attendees will be invited to explore these questions:
- How do you understand the relationship between art and politics?
- What struggles are you trying to overcome?
- In what ways are you creative?
Attendees will receive resources for further research and advocacy about the rights of the incarcerated.
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Brown Library’s Second Born-Digital Publication Named Finalist for ACLS Open Access Book Prize and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award
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Shadow Plays shortlisted for new book prize that recognizes innovative, equitable, and inclusive access to humanities scholarship
Providence, R.I. [Brown University] The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has announced the finalists for the 2024 ACLS Open Access Book Prizes and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Awards. Open access publishing offers exciting new opportunities for scholars to share their research with wider audiences. At the same time, it provides readers around the world with access to reliable and thoughtful studies of the human experience.
The finalists, five history titles and five multimodal works, were selected by a distinguished panel of scholars, librarians, digital humanities experts, and accessibility specialists from among 112 submissions from 46 publishers. One open access monograph in each category will receive dual awards: authors receive the $20,000 ACLS Open Access Book Prize, and publishers of the winning titles receive the $30,000 Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award to support forthcoming books that would not otherwise be published open access. The prizes, among the largest for scholarly books, will be presented in May 2024 at the ACLS Annual Meeting.
Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World (Stanford University Press, 2022), by Professor of Italian Studies Massimo Riva, is among the five finalists in the multimodal, born-digital category. Developed by Brown University Digital Publications (BUDP), Shadow Plays explores popular forms of entertainment used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to transport viewers to a new world, foreshadowing present-day virtual, augmented, and extended reality experiences. At a time when the gap between simulation and reality is getting ever smaller, a cultural-historical exploration of the pre-history of virtual reality can help us better understand the present in light of the past while exploring the past using the tools forged in the present.
“My topic was perfectly suited for a born-digital publication,” explained the author in an interview with ACLS. “I was thrilled at the opportunity to reach a broader audience, thanks to the open access format. Through Brown University Digital Publications, I was able to design and implement a digital format combining scholarly accuracy and interactive features (models and simulations) aimed at the general reader.”
Shadow Plays was also the category winner for Best E-Product for the 47th Annual PROSE Awards juried by the Association of American Publishers. Other award-winning publications developed by Brown University Digital Publications include Furnace and Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1618) with Scholarly Commentary (University of Virginia Press, 2020), awarded the 2022 Roy Rosenzweig Prize in Creativity in Digital History by the American Historical Association; and A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures (MIT Press, 2022), which was shortlisted for the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan International Book Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy. Fourteen other publication projects are in development.Questions about BUDP or Shadow Plays can be addressed to Allison Levy, Director of Brown University Digital Publications (allison_levy@brown.edu).
About ACLS and Arcadia
Formed a century ago, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a nonprofit federation of 80 scholarly organizations. As the leading representative of American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, ACLS upholds the core principle that knowledge is a public good. In supporting its member organizations, ACLS utilizes its endowment and $37 million annual operating budget to expand the forms, content, and flow of scholarly knowledge, reflecting our commitment to diversity of identity and experience. ACLS collaborates with institutions, associations, and individuals to strengthen the evolving infrastructure for scholarship. In all aspects of our work, ACLS is committed to principles and practices in support of racial and social justice.
Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1 billion to organizations around the world.
About Brown University Digital Publications
Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Brown partners with leading scholarly publishers to ensure that these groundbreaking works are validated via rigorous academic review and reach the broadest possible audience for the greatest possible impact. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.
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Student Presentations: Gardner Fellows’ Research Projects on Chinese Library Materials
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Join the Brown University Library on Monday, April 29 from 1 – 2 p.m. in the Hecker Room at the Rockefeller Library or on Zoom for a presentation by the two inaugural Gardner Fellows. This special event showcases the culmination of their intensive research into the rare East Asian materials housed within the University’s distinguished special collections.
Zoom link: https://brown.zoom.us/j/93707735503
Zoe Yu ’27
Harmonizing Ideologies: Representations of Christianity in Late Qing China
This research studies Christianity that was at the heart of the most notable cultural conflicts in China, particularly from the Taiping Rebellion of 1851–1864 to the Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901. Through a linguistic, musical, and visual examination of two documents from Brown Library’s special collections, the so-named 1907 “Chinese Hymnal” compiled by American missionaries, and a Chinese artist’s 1871 illustrated rendition of English Puritan John Bunyan’s 17th-century novel The Pilgrim’s Progress, Zoe Yu ’27 sheds light on the endeavors of missionaries, musicians, and artists to sinicize Christianity and navigate linguistic and ideological barriers in promoting national salvation during the tumultuous late Qing Dynasty.
Jared Ong ’25
A Tale of Two Travelers: Imperial China Through Travel Literature in the Late Qing Dynasty
This study compares two travelogues in Brown University’s Gardner Collection — 鴻雪因緣圖記 (A Wild Swan’s Trail: The Travels of a Mandarin) by Lin Qing in 1849, and 唐土名勝圖會 (Famous Sights of the Chinese Land) by Okada Gyokuzan in 1805 — and examines the contrasting visions of China in late imperial China from Chinese and Japanese perspectives. Through the mapping and analysis of depicted scenes in both sources and a comparative analysis of their provenance, we uncover not only a vibrant tapestry of Chinese life, but also these two travelers’ perspectives on the final vestiges of the last imperial dynasty of China.
Gardner Fellowship
Established in 2023, the Gardner Fellowship encourages Brown students in all disciplines to venture beyond traditional academic boundaries to explore, interpret, and integrate these unique materials into contemporary scholarship and discourse.
This event is a testament to the creativity and scholarly dedication of the fellows, supported by the Brown University Library. It’s an opportunity to witness how the integration of rare materials can enrich academic research and contribute to a broader understanding of our cultural and historical heritage.
We invite students, faculty, and anyone with an interest in East Asian studies, rare materials, and innovative scholarship to attend. Come and be part of a dialogue that bridges the past with the present through the insightful work of our Gardner Fellows.