Author: Robert Ham
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Karen Tei Yamashita receives 2021 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
Yamashita used her acceptance speech, in part, to emphasize the significance of this medal being awarded to an Asian-American writer “especially this year, post-pandemic, having weathered the Twitter absurdity, corruption, and mendacity; the brutality of racial profiling; and the provocation of anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-Muslim, [and] anti-Asian hatred.”
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New grant to support Dickens Project programming in year ahead
The programming in 2022 is focused on questions of race and social justice in the 19th century and today, with the summer’s Dickens Universe event broadening its purview by pairing a British novel with an African-American novel.
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Exhibit showcases remarkable lives of everyday Santa Cruz residents
Sponsored by The Humanities Institute and curated by THI’s Summer Public Fellow Morgan Gates, ‘Do You Know My Name?’ highlights the stories of everyday Santa Cruzans throughout the region’s history who were neither rich nor famous but whose lives are remarkable.
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Award-winning poet Gary Young to read at 12th annual Morton Marcus memorial event
Gary Young has written powerful, richly detailed verses often inspired by the bounty of the natural world. And as with most great poetry, Young’s work is great on the page, but truly comes to life when it is read aloud.
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Talk to focus on subpar treatment of Native women with tuberculosis
Caitlin Keliiaa, a historian and assistant professor, will be presenting her talk, “Settler Colonialism is a Sickness: How Federal Indian Health Failed Native Women,” a discussion on the young Native women who contracted TB, but received subpar treatment—or no help at all—due to their ethnicity.