The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities is pleased to welcome Professor Steven Thrasher for a talk on his newest work, The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide.

Over the course of his career, Professor Thrasher has studied several viruses and the public health issues they pose– namely the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Covid pandemic, and most recently Mpox (formerly known as “Monkeypox”). The Viral Underclass combines these years of study along a common theme: that of a disproportionately impacted “underclass.” Of this, Thrasher writes that “a theory of the viral underclass can serve as a framework for understanding how vulnerability is manufactured for certain kinds of people and how it spreads through society more broadly.”

In the opening section of his book, Thrasher relates his personal experience when the Coronavirus pandemic hit. It was one of uncertainty, but also of calculated risk: “where can I access the best, most affordable healthcare?” The rest of the book follows suit as Thrasher’s research traces the lives of several people within the “viral underclass” to show the human impact of larger systemic issues. Thrasher’s work shows us that exposure, infection, and mortality rates from these viruses follow similar patterns—the same groups over and again are devastated, groups such as LGBTQ communities, black communities and other people of color, the impoverished, the homeless, and the incarcerated. What’s more is that these inequities spill over into care: treatment and accessible healthcare resources are difficult to access or, at times, nonexistent. Thrasher’s work reveals, ultimately, that viruses act as a “magnifier of the divisions already present in our world.”

Join us for what promises to be a fascinating and urgent talk on the nature of viral pandemics/epidemics in our contemporary world, and the ways in which the “viral underclass” is disproportionately impacted.

Steven W. Thrasher is an assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern Medill., and he is the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting (with an emphasis on issues relevant to the LGBTQ community). Thrasher has worked as writer-at-large at the Guardian, staff writer at the Village Voice, and facilitator for the NPR StoryCorps project. His articles are regularly published in the New York Times, BuzzFeed News, Esquire, the Nation, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Daily Beast. He’s also a former researcher for Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.” Thrasher is also a frequent guest on NPR, CNN, and Democracy Now. He has also lectured extensively at universities and cultural institutions internationally, including the San Francisco Public Library, the Schomburg Center in Harlem, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the American University of Beirut.

Bill Deresiewicz has led a fascinating career, one that spans the diverse fields of literary criticism, contemporary politics and social commentary, and higher education. If there is one through line for Deresiewicz’ thinking it is that of “flatness”: diagnosing and recognizing flatness, and working toward its opposite (depth, complexity, and enrichment).

For Deresiewicz, flatness is an intellectual concern, a state of being that higher education often encourages—i.e. students pursuing a major or degree without considering the larger questions facing them as people such as who they want to be, what kind of life they want to live, and why. This has created, according to Deresiewicz, a crisis in higher education as students feel alienated from their studies, their relationship to it being purely vocational or practical. There is an interconnected network of influences that create such a system: parental and societal expectations, economic pressures and the need for financial stability, and the university itself. These actors perpetuate a cycle that flattens our experience of the world and our relationship to ourselves. What is needed instead is what Deresiewicz calls a “moral imagination,” an intangible but necessary component of a complete education.

Similar ideas expand to the art world as well. In an article published in Salmagundi, Deresiewicz lambasts an art world that not only rewards but perhaps requires politically-oriented work. Here is where complexity is lost– in the wake of unidimensional political arguments that encourage predictable reactions rather than opening up to a range of emotional and intellectual responses. Deresiewicz contends that great art, the art we should encourage and consume, is art that resists closure by diving into questions of our own humanity. Here is where the work of art is performed—not in flattened political rhetoric but in broad, ambiguous, and complex ideas that speak to the human experience. Most recently, Deresiewicz has written on solitude and loneliness, two experiences that our current culture makes different to achieve. According to Deresiewicz, what we lose in a culture of “celebrity” and “interconnection” is our sense of self. We look outwards to others for recognition and validation, when identity can be better attained through introspection and isolation.

In a world that tends to flatten, how can we find depth? In a world that constrains ideas and ways of thinking, how can we find freedom? Bill Deresiewicz will answer these questions and more in conversation with OCH Director and TU Professor of English, Sean Latham.

William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the best-selling author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. His new book is The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society. Deresiewicz has published over 300 essays and reviews. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle’s Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and a Sydney Award; he is also a three-time National Magazine Award nominee. His work, which has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and many other publications, has been translated into 18 languages and anthologized in 39 college and scholastic readers.

In an article for the New York Times, Andrew Ross and Julie Livingston lay bare the realities of car ownership for lower income, non-white, and/or previously incarcerated American citizens. It’s a fascinating piece, one that asks us to consider histories of segregation and redlining alongside the concept car ownership. It also draws parallels between many recent iterations of filmed police brutality and everyday traffic stops—several black Americans killed by police in recent years were first pulled over for minor roadway violations. The focus of the essay, however, is on the specific obstacles that these Americans face when it comes to car ownership. Acquiring a car often leads to predatory lending and disproportionate amounts of debt. Driving a car puts them at risk of “revenue policing” and the fees and fines that follow. Ultimately, Ross and Livingston ask us to reconsider perhaps the most iconic symbol of American freedom: the automobile. What does freedom of movement (enabled by automobiles) mean to those who face predatory lending or policing racial disparities? What does this inequality imply for the American ideal of freedom?

Andrew Ross will speak at length on these issues and more. “Automobiles have always been promoted and sold as the great American ‘freedom machines,'” Ross writes, “but for too many of us, they have become vehicles of unfreedom.” Drawing on interviews with formerly incarcerated men and women, Ross will discuss the ways in which car ownership and car use can lead to detention, either through policing or auto loan debt traps, while serving, increasingly, as a channel of surveillance. In response, Ross will lay out a vision for an alternative transportation landscape, one based on principles of mobility justice.

Andrew Ross is a social activist and Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. A contributor to the Guardian, the New York Times, The Nation, and Al Jazeera, he is the author or editor of more than twenty-five books, including Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing, Bird On Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City, Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty and Property Values in Disney’s New Town, and Fast Boat to China: Lessons from Shanghai.His most recent book (co-authored with Julie Livingston), is Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality. He is a co-founder of several groups, including Decolonize This Place and the Debt Collective. More details about Ross’s work can be found at https://andrewtross.com.

Earlier this year, the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities published a video essay by TU Prof. Sara Beam. In it, Beam explores everyday spaces from the perspective of disability and accessibility. The essay demonstrates that a small shift in perspective can change entirely how we understand any given space. In a similar vein, TU Prof. Jan Doolittle Wilson’s new book asks the audience to perform a shift in perspective, one that explores disability as a concept and a state of mind.

In Becoming Disabled: Forging a Disability View of the World, Jan Doolittle Wilson describes how becoming disabled is to forge a new consciousness, one that challenges ableist discourses and systems. The work intends to create alternative meanings that understand disability as a valuable human variation. Using an autoethnographic approach (i.e. analyzing lived experience), as well as multiple first-person accounts from disabled writers, artists, and scholars, Wilson critiques the disabling impact of language, media, medical practices, educational systems, neoliberalism, mothering ideals, and other systemic barriers. From her own disability view of the world, she demonstrates the value of human interdependency and the necessity of social supports for individual flourishing and happiness. And she offers a powerful vision of a society in which all forms of human diversity are included and celebrated and one in which we are better able to care for ourselves and each other.

Some of the OCH’s central questions regarding freedom– “What does freedom mean? How can we account for both the needs of the community and individual freedoms?”– take on renewed urgency when considered from the perspective of disability. At once a diagnosis of a world that fails to accommodate fully disabilities and a look forward to a better, more inclusive world, Wilson’s book offers us new insights and new perspectives. Join us in celebrating Wilson’s most recent publication.

Dr. Jan Wilson is a professor of history at the University of Tulsa. Her research and teaching interests focus on the history and study of gender, disability, feminism, and sexuality. She recently finished the manuscript for her second book titled The Zoey Prism, which draws on historical analysis, theory, and her personal experiences to offer new perspectives on concepts such as mothering, identity, intersectionality, the gaze, and the meaning of disability. Dr. Wilson lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her husband, Nathan, her children, Zoey and Connor, and dogs Linda and Marlin.

In the 21st century, machines are learning to write essays, diagnose disease, create visual art, and even write new computer code. As our lives are increasingly guided by artificial intelligence, what are the implications for the humanities, and for human freedom itself? This talk and discussion will explore Renaissance humanism’s origins in a similar moment of technological upheaval and will suggest that humanistic study can articulate concepts of human agency, academic freedom, and truth that are indispensable in the age of the machine.

Professor Blaine Greteman is a Renaissance scholar, both in his field of expertise and in his penchant for exploring wide-ranging topics– such as mapping Renaissance England, medieval and early modern literature, the state of education in today’s political and social climate, and challenges facing the humanities in higher education. If you look through his author pages on sites like Slate and The New Republic, this diversity of interests becomes apparent. As an organization that is committed to the arts and humanities, we’re particularly drawn to his work on the state of the humanities today.

He has written about the experience of teaching Walt Whitman in a time of political uncertainty and social unrest. In another essay, he discusses the impact of Silicon Valley “disruptors” who claim to offer higher education a technological way out of its current mires, such as ballooning student debt and decreasing government funding. And he has also written on the balance humanities educators must strike in maintaining the traditions that make it a valuable field of study, while also adapting to a rapidly changing technological environment.

Most recently, in an article published by Newsweek, Greteman addresses a recent disruption to higher education: ChatGPT. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence software that “can produce uncannily human prose.” Greteman, perhaps surprisingly, embraces such technology, seeing it as an opportunity to let machines help us in our thinking. In his professional life, he writes, he has used AI software to generate poetry and performed “a computational analysis of Shakespeare’s social network.” More than that, however, Greteman understands this moment as an indicatio to shift from an educational model that “tests basic skills in processing, retaining, and communicating information.” Rather educators need to guide students to explore “deeper humanistic questions” that AI software, such as ChatGPT, struggles to compute.

The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities is thrilled to welcome Blaine Greteman for an especially urgent discussion on the role of the humanities and the realities of freedom in the age of AI.

Blaine Greteman is a professor of English at the University of Iowa. He has written two longer scholarly works, The Poetics and Politics of Youth in Milton’s England and Networking Print in Shakespeare’s England. As an educator, he currently directs the University of Iowa’s General Education Literature program, where he supervises about 1,500 undergraduates each semester. He also writes for popular publications including The New Republic, Slate, The Week, and The London Review of Books.

Susan Briante is the author of Defacing the Monument, a series of essays on immigration, archives, aesthetics and the state. For this work, Briante won the Poetry Foundation’s Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism in 2021. Briante will be in conversation with TAF and OCH fellow Kaveh Basiri to discuss Defacing and perform a poetry reading.

In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly calls the collection “a superb examination of the ethical issues facing artists who tell others’ stories” and a “dazzlingly inventive and searching text.” In another review, author Marie Scarles locates Briante’s focus on “the Southwest border, documenting the cruelty and violence of US immigration policy.” In this political, national/global discussion is also a very personal lyrical element. Briante accounts for herself as affected observer, as activist, as poet, all existing in the same poetic world. Additionally, as Scarles notes, Briante’s book isn’t just about the struggle for justice at the southern US border, but also a meditation on documentary poetics more broadly, tracing its history from James Agee to NourbeSe Philip.

As a whole, this work fits into a trend called documentary poetics, a recently burgeoning genre that uses legal documents, news reportage, testimony, personal experience, and other elements (both fiction and non) to form the basis for its content. What emerges, especially for Briante, is a complex web of information, a narrative perhaps, that attempts to tell a more complete story of an event. Briante’s work hits at the heart of debates about immigration, border control, and the legal system. What does freedom mean to those attempting to cross the US-Mexico border? How is the US embodying its ideal of “freedom” as it relates to immigrants? How does Briante’s innovative work help us to think about these questions? Join us for what promises to be a fascinating evening.

Susan Briante is the author of three books of poetry: Pioneers in the Study of Motion, Utopia Minus, and The Market Wonders. She has received grants and awards from the Atlantic Monthly, the MacDowell Colony, the Academy of American Poets, the US-Mexico Fund for Culture, and (most recently) the Ucross Foundation. She is a professor of English in the creative writing program at the University of Arizona. There she serves as co-coordinator of the Southwest Field Studies in Writing Program, which brings MFA students to the US-Mexico border to engage in reciprocal research projects with community-based environmental and social justice groups.

The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities pleased to host TU Assistant Professor of History, Nicole Bauer, for a talk on her newest book, In the Kingdom of Shadows: Secrecy and Transparency in the French Revolution. In it, Bauer examines the changing attitudes towards secrecy in the eighteenth century, and the development of ideas around government transparency before and after the French Revolution. From the author: “Secrecy can call to mind mystery, darkness, wickedness, and the unknown. Meanwhile the cultural origins of government transparency are equally murky. By looking at the interplay of politics and culture in the French Revolution, we can gain insights into our attitudes towards secrecy today.” Bauer offers at once a history of the idea and impact of secrecy in the French public sphere—it’s politics and influence.

The right to privacy (secrecy) is fundamental to American conceptions of individual freedom; and the ongoing desire for transparent governance fuels many contemporary political discussions, as was made apparent by the January 6 Committee’s investigation and the recent finding of mis-stored classified documents of past and current presidents. How do the concepts of secrecy and transparency contribute to the OCH’s ongoing examination of the nature of freedom? How does Bauer’s research into French history help us to understand better today’s social and political world?  Bauer will address these questions and more in a conversation with OU Professor of History, Jennifer Davis. Join us for what promises to be an informative and interesting evening!

Nicole Bauer is a cultural historian specializing in early modern France. Her current book project explores the history of dreams, compassion, and ideas of the self in early modern Europe. Her research has been supported by the Institut français d’Amérique and the Oklahoma Center for Humanities. She teaches courses on the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, gender and queer theory, and dabbles in film studies.

“The Rhyme and Rhythm of Democracy: Why Fact-checking, Media Literacy, and a Knowledgeable Electorate are Not Enough”

Since 2016 those who are concerned about the health of American democracy have been lamenting the easy spread and amplification of bogus claims, vast conspiracy theories, and massive lies through media both social and traditional. This concern is necessary but insufficient. Professor Siva Vaidhyanathan’s talk will argue that pro-democracy Americans must also rediscover the poetry and music of democracy — the stirring rhymes and rhythms. From Walt Whitman to Woody Guthrie to Aaron Copland to Nina Simone to Bruce Springsteen, American democracy has been moved and expanded by stirring appeals to community and humanity, solidarity and freedom. As we rush into a world governed by data and computer code, committed to raw utilitarianism, this talk argues for a revival of more humane American values that could generate better visions and conversations about the America we can build.

Vaidhyanathan’s previous works include Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, The Googlization of Everything and Why We Should Worry, and The Anarchist in the Library. In one way or another, these works investigate the negative impacts of various technological advancements such as social media websites, search engines and algorithms, and mass data collection and storage. His work serves as a warning, as a diagnosis of dangerous patterns and trends that can harm individuals, their relationships with others, and the community at large. What does freedom and responsibility mean in our digital information age? What dangers does the internet pose to both the ideals and realities of freedom? What possibilities does it enable as the nation continues to strive towards freedom and fairness for all? Join us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion on these issues and one possible solution rooted in the arts and humanities: a return to “the poetry and music of democracy.”

Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan directs the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, which hosts a Democracy Lab, produces  several podcasts, and the Virginia Quarterly Review magazine. He has appeared in an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to discuss early social network services. Vaidhyanathan has appeared in several documentary films, including Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013), Inside the Mind of Google (2009), and Freedom of Expression (2007). Vaidhyanathan has also written for many periodicals, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Bloomberg View, American Scholar, Dissent, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Washington Post, Esquire.com, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Nation.

The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities is excited to host an upcoming conference on The All-Black Towns of Oklahoma, an event featuring seven speakers discussing this important legacy of the state. 

On Saturday, February 18, authors, historians, town and state-level leaders, and other experts will convene to explore the concept of all-black spaces and their role in Oklahoma’s history and future. In addition to examining the foundations of the nearly fifty all-black towns that once spanned the state, the conference will also address the decline of the remaining thirteen historic townships, and their potential for opportunity and growth. 

The conference will be held at the Henry Zarrow Center in the heart of Tulsa’s Arts District, and will accompany a curated exhibit on these fascinating towns.  

Obtain your free tickets for this event here.

Conference Schedule

Saturday, February 18  

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The All-Black Towns of Oklahoma exhibit and public lectures have been made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in partnership with the Social Science Research Council.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Social Science Research Council.