St. Louis Humanities Festival: A Sense of Place

Co-sponsored by Cinema St. Louis, the Missouri Humanities Council, University of Missouri-St. Louis, Washington University and Webster University

The Missouri Humanities Council is pleased to partner with the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Washington University in St. Louis, Webster University, and Cinema St. Louis in presenting the first annual St. Louis Humanities Festival, a series of complimentary public programs that will bring diverse audiences in contact with scholars, authors, filmmakers and other experts and practitioners in the humanities.

This year’s presentations and discussions include:

Friday, April 13, 10-11:30 a.m.

"Gloryland: Literature and Interpretive History as Tools for Social Change" presented by Shelton Johnson,

University of Missouri-St. Louis, Century Rooms, 3rd floor Milleninum Student Center)

Shelton Johnson is a Park Interpreter at Yosemite National Park and a novelist. Featured in Ken Burns's film series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, he talks about his research into the African-American Cavalry officers who served as the first guards for the early National Park, Yosemite. Johnson will read from his novel Gloryland (2011), about a Calvary guard and his family, which Johnson spun from his park research. Johnson, who grow up in Detroit, discusses his concerns about the low numbers of minority visitors to the National Parks and why we need to work to ensure that all Americans feel welcome and at home in the Parks and other natural areas of America, which should be comfortable places for all of us. Gloryland will be available for signing.

The event is free and open to the public. No registration needed. Call 314-516-5698 for more information.

2:30-4 p.m.

Poetry Readings by celebrated soldier-poet Brain Turner and Missouri Veterans

Missouri poet laureate and Webster professor David Clewell will be the master of ceremonies.

Webster University, East Academic Building, Room 253, 545 Garden Ave., Webster Groves

Brian Turner is a soldier-poet who is the author of two poetry collections, Phantom Noise (2010) and Here, Bullet (2005) which won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor's Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA "Best in the West" award, and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. Turner's poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, the Georgia Review, and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. Turner was also featured in Operation Homecoming, a unique documentary that explores the firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words. Turner was selected as one of 50 United States Artists Fellows.

Also on the program will be poetry readings by veterans who have participated in an MHC-sponsored project to teach creative writing to veterans as a part of their re-acclimation process. The event is free and open to the public. Call 314-968-7054 for more information. This program is sponsored by Webster University and the Missouri Humanities Council.

Saturday, April 14

1:30-3:30 pm: Battle for Brooklyn, June 2011, 93 minutes (Washington University in St. Louis, Brown Hall, Rm. 100)

Battle for Brooklyn, the controversial documentary by acclaimed filmmakers Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley (Horns and Halos) tells of one Brooklyn neighborhood’s battle against the corporate developers of the Atlantic Yards project. It is an intimate look at the very public and passionate fight waged by residents and business owners of Brooklyn’s historic Prospect Heights neighborhood facing condemnation of their property to make way for the Atlantic Yards project, a massive plan to build 16 skyscrapers and a basketball arena for the New Jersey Nets. The film focuses on graphic designer Daniel Goldstein, whose apartment sits at what would be center court of the new arena. A reluctant activist, Daniel is dragged into the fight because he can’t accept that the government should use the power of eminent domain to take his new apartment and hand it off to a private developer. Daniel and a host of Brooklynites form the group “Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn” to pursue alternate plans to the developer’s proposal. Along the way, Daniel loses a fiancé, falls in love again, gets married and starts a family. Battle for Brooklyn is a thoroughly engaging look at the infuriating erosion of individual rights in the interest of corporate concerns and political maneuvering.

Q and A with filmmaker Michael Galinsky and Bruce Lindsey, Dean of the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu/

###