October 11, 1996

GREGORY S. JAY, Professor, Department of English
"D.W. Griffith and the American Indian: A Report from the Library of Congress"

Gregory Jay will discuss his most recent work on literary and early film depictions of Native Americans in his presentation, "D. W. Griffith and the American Indian: A Report from the Library of Congress." The presentation will focus Professor Jay's research use of the Library of Congress's Paper Print Collection of American Silent Cinema, and he will discuss the difficulties of making the various transitions from literary research on Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans to silent film studies at the Library of Congress. As a part of the presentation, Professor Jay will also present a 15-minute video clip.

November 8, 1996

LESLIE BELLAVANCE, Professor, Department of Art
"The Natural Collection"

Photographer and artist Leslie Bellavance has long been drawn to books and the book format. Addressing the notion that an artist who is a scholar presents a paradox to a twentieth-century construct of both identities, Leslie Bellavance will discuss appropriate and inappropriate uses of library collections in her work. In both her work and scholarship, Professor Bellavance has consistently questioned presumed dichotomies such as nature/culture, reason/emotion, female/male, proposing interfaces and structures to suggest the dichotomies do not exist. In this case the repository of culture that is the library becomes a natural landscape.

In her presentation Leslie Bellavance will discuss several works, including "Unthinkable Acts/Unspeakable Body," an installation referencing textbooks originally exhibited at the Chicago Cultural Center; "Common Knowledge" and "The Book of Common Knowledge," an installation and related book work; "Faint/feint," a collaborative project with Phil Berkman, Paul Krainak, and Michiko Itatani. She will also discuss her current book project done in collaboration with Nexus Press.

December 6, 1996

NANCY HUBBARD, Associate Professor, School of Architecture and Urban Planning
"The Poor House Revisited"

In a slide presentation, preservationist and architectural historian Nancy Hubbard will discuss her research and overall use of information resources relating to her recent work on the structure, function, and social meaning of the American poorhouse. While the poorhouse has been identified by scholars as "the" welfare institution of the nineteenth century, it has rarely been considered in terms of its architecture, and the relationship between architectural form and social welfare programs. Beginning with a 1990 Fromkin Research Grant and Lectureship--a program of the Golda Meir Library--and using Wisconsin as representative of the historical changes throughout the nation, Professor Hubbard undertook a statewide survey of poorhouse sites, combining this fieldwork with research in county records at the State Historical Society and records of charity organizations in the Golda Meir Library. She is using this research to draw the connections between the form, function, and meaning of this important social welfare institution.

Professor Hubbard's presentation may also touch on two of her other current research projects relating to Civil War cemetery design and the architecture and landscape design of the Civilian Conservation Corps. In both these projects she combines site surveys with documentary research in various state archives, including Ohio,Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

February 14, 1997

Portia Cobb Assistant Professor, Department of Film, and Director, Community Media Project
"Research for Film: 'Don't Hurry Back (From Anywhere that Requires Patience)'"

Video artist and filmmaker Portia Cobb will discuss her research and overall use of information resources relating to the production of her recent film Don't Hurry Back (From Anything that Requires Patience), a personal, diary-like documentary based on her several visits to West Africa. Her research and her film focus on the notion of "home," specifically nomadic space and home space as defined in different parts of the country and around the world. Her work draws on readings from literary and film theory by thinkers such as Bell Hooks and Teshome Gabriel. Her trips to West Africa, especially to the poor nation of Burkina Faso, the cite of FESPACO, an African film festival (where she has shown her own work and the work of participants in the Community Media Project), have had a profound influence on her recent efforts. As part of her presentation Professor Cobb will show some short clips from her film.

Portia Cobb came to UWM in 1992 and was named Director of the Community Media Project the following year. The decade-old Project emphasizes the presentation of films created by and focusing on people of African descent. Among its goals are to provide an outlet for filmmakers who do not have the resources to make or distribute their own films, and to work with city youths via community-based organizations to teach them how to turn their creative energies into films. Among the youth projects are the well-received documentaries "Sign of the Times" (1993), and "Enough is Enough: Timeout for the Sellout" (1994). Professor Cobb's own work deals with the issues that face the black community, including her award-winning "No Justice, No Peace" (1992), an experimental documentary focussing on police brutality. Portia Cobb was a 1994 recipient of the Diverse Visions Regional Interdisciplinary Grant of Intermedia Arts Minnesota, and recently received a 1997 Carnegie Mellon University Studies for Creative Inquiry Artist's Residency Fellowship.

March 21, 1997

LYNNE KLEINMAN, Lecturer, Department of History
"Undergraduate Use of Primary Resources in Researching Women's History"

In a slide presentation, Lynne Kleinman will discuss her own research and her undergraduate students' use of primary source materials, such as manuscripts, archival records, and contemporary publications, to conduct original research on Wisconsin women. Dr. Kleinman became familiar with the archival resources at the Golda Meir Library while working on her dissertation "Milwaukee-Downer College: A Study in the History of Women and the History of Higher Education in America, 1851-1964." When she offered her 1994 course on Wisconsin Women's History, she prepared her students to work with original source materials, and required them to conduct original historical research on women's lives in UWM's Milwaukee Urban Archives and other repositories. The results were several important contributions to regional women's history, including two prize-winning papers, "Laura Sherry: A Spirit in League with Her Heart" by Karen Rasmussen, and "Lucy Smith Morris" by Margery Sinclair. Since then, Lynne Kleinman and several of her students have presented their work and their research experiences in a number of venues.

April 25, 1997

JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ, Assistant Professor, Department of History
"Using Local Archives to Investigate Social Movement History"

Joseph Rodriguez will discuss his use of primary source materials in researching social movements in the San Francisco Bay area, and how they relate to city planning and broader social movement trends. Professor Rodriguez, whose research and teaching interests include U.S. Latinos, Asian-Americans, and urban history, has been utilizing records from regional Bay-area repositories to investigate how regional change since the 1960s has stimulated grass-roots social movements. Focusing on issues relating to minority populations, transportation systems, urban development and planning, and social displacement, Professor Rodriguez is attempting to correlate social protests from the 1960s and 1990s to demonstrate the historical progression of how urban development and public policy affects the social fabric of city populations, and how these populations, in turn, can effect change in the built environment.