The essay introduces audiences to the work of Lekić-Fridrih and, in particular, to her Silent Mass, a performance resisting the “Be Manly” movement, a series of mass prayer events held in Croatian public squares by a battalion of men who pray for the abolition of women’s rights, for women’s “chastity,” and for men’s “masculine authority.” Arijana Lekić-Fridrih: All Art is a Political Statement links the erosion of women’s rights across intercontinental boundaries and offers Lekić-Fridrih’s video interviews and public performances as a guide for activism and collective action against retrograde restrictions on the freedom of women.
During the event, Lekić-Fridrih will be in conversation with Rebekah Modrak and and writer and professor Brian Willems (University of Split). The event will take place in Room 555 Weiser Hall, University of Michign.
The event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, and the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design.
As part of EveryLibrary Live!, the extraordinary week of literary celebration and advocacy (September 22-27, 2024), EveryLibrary’s Executive Director John Chrastka talks with Rebekah Modrak and Nadine Kalin, the editors of Trouble in Censorville, and freedom-to-read advocates Willie Carver, Gavin Downing, and Julie Miller.
Their “Fight for the First” Panel will air at 12pm ET on Monday, September 23, 2024. It’s part of a series that includes over 25 panels featuring 45+ authors, publishing professionals, and experts on book bans, censorship, and the First Amendment.
Modrak, Kalin, Carver, Downing and Miller are editors or contributors to the new book “Trouble in Censorville: The Far Right’s Assault on Public Education – and the Teachers Who are Fighting Back,” which documents the right-wing ideological opposition to diversity and changing social mores that has resulted in book bans and the passing of an unprecedented number of laws that invoke the “divisive concept” premise to legitimate discrimination. Since 2020, legislation has prohibited K-12 instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation and has led to the shuttering of libraries in schools. In Trouble in Censorville, 14 public school teachers bring readers face-to-face with first-hand accounts of what it means to be living and working under these realities and how to resist attacks on the freedom to read and to think critically.
On Tuesday, October 1, 2024 (6:30pm), Literati Bookstore will host an in-person, open-to-the-public event featuring the recently published book Trouble in Censorville: The Far Right’s Assault on Public Education – and the Teachers Who Are Fighting Back. Edited by Rebekah Modrak and University of North Texas professor Nadine M. Kalin, the book features 14 testimonials by public school teachers who describe being fired, harassed, or smeared for teaching historical truth and racial justice and for offering books by and about LGBTQ+ people.
Their stories bring readers face-to-face with the human cost of these attacks, which range from social isolation to pent-up anger over institutional betrayal to the terrible toll on teachers’ mental and physical health. Educators predict the future of a generation of students who are told to walk out of the room in the face of discomfort and no longer have access to books or critical thinking about American society. Their stories of frontline resistance provide a battle plan for confronting censorship, rallying support, and mobilizing a grassroots defense of public schools.
The Literati event will feature readings by Modrak and local educators — Sarah Anton, a secondary English teacher, and Jeff Gaynor, an Ann Arbor School Board member — and a Q&A period with the audience.
For the first time, K-12 educators who have been threatened, ostracized, smeared as “pedophiles” and “Marxists,” placed on leave, and fired for teaching the historical truth of the struggle for racial justice, or for offering books by and about LGBTQ+ people tell their harrowing, powerfully personal stories. In Trouble in Censorville, 14 public school teachers bring readers face-to-face with first-hand accounts of what it means to be living and working under these realities.
Educators predict the future of a generation of students who are told to walk out of the room in the face of discomfort and who no longer have access to books or critical thinking about American society. They describe the social isolation of being the only teacher in their school to fight back against far-right agitators and extremist trolls. They talk, with unvarnished honesty, of their pent-up anger over institutional betrayal, and of the terrible toll the radical right’s culture war on public education has taken on their mental and physical health, from panic attacks to insomnia to high blood pressure.
And yet, these teachers are fighting back. They’re mobilizing colleagues, parents, and community members who share their faith in the freedom to read, the freedom to think critically, the freedom to challenge small-minded provincialism. Their stories of frontline resistance, collected here, provide a battle plan for confronting censorship, rallying support, and mobilizing a grassroots defense of public schools.
Terrifying, infuriating, and inspiring, Trouble in Censorville sounds the alarm for a democracy on fire.
Praise for Trouble in Censorville:
Trouble in Censorvilleis an urgent bulletin from the teachers and librarians on the front lines of the war against reason that is sweeping our country. Their powerful testimony is enraging – these vicious attacks are not what they signed up for. But it’s also profoundly uplifting, a vision of courage, resistance, and grace under fire that is a model for us all in these dark times. —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home
An essential record of the often-invisible war on educators. Moving and inspiring, these stories are a reminder that teachers and librarians are on the front lines of the resistance against authoritarianism. —Annalee Newitz, author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind
An urgent and compelling battle cry against the insidious rise of censorship. Everyone who believes in freedom of expression should examine this text.—Juno Dawson, Author of This Book is Gay
This is easily one of the best, most important books I’ve read this year. Here, educators control their own stories and share the impact from start to finish, both on their careers and themselves, with no chance for the media to distort or deceive. —Sarah Mueller, Teacher and Book Blogger
Rebekah Modrak contributed a chapter to the recently published book Art-Based Research in the Context of a Global Pandemic, which explores the opportunities offered by art-based research. Art-Based Research (Routledge 2023), edited by Usva Seregina and Astrid Van den Bossche, considers the central, illuminative role that art-based research plays in our understanding of the unfolding crises of the Covid-19 global pandemic. Contributions to the book capture and explore lived experiences of the pandemic and begin a discussion about how meaning-making is changing through and beyond the pandemic. The book further explores how the practice of art-based research in itself has been challenged and transformed.
Modrak’s chapter, titled “‘Public School Teachers, You All Completely Disgust Me!’: How My Fake Trump Fought the Revolt of the Elites in Pandemic-era Ann Arbor,” reflects upon an artwork she created during the first year of the COVID pandemic in which she studied a group of consumer-minded parents who regarded public education as a ‘service’ like any other, subsidized by their tax dollars and, therefore, answerable to them. Incensed by the choice to shift learning to virtual classrooms early in the pandemic, before vaccines were available, this group of parents gave public commentary at Board of Education meetings disparaging the expertise of teachers, unions, and school board representatives and tacitly embracing the corporate paradigm that regards public schools as purveyors of goods and services, beholden to customers. In her chapter, Modrak describes hiring a Donald J. Trump impersonator to reread excerpts of these parental criticisms aloud in school board meetings, recording Trump’s diatribe, and inserting the video into a pre-recorded Board of Education meeting as though Trump had been one of the public speakers. The video work was introduced into Facebook groups to elicit conversations about the toll such tactics were taking on teachers.
distant.gallerypresents The Broken Timeline (TBT), a lineage of web-based curatorial projects that give insight into the discourse on digital art and its curation today. Curated by Annet Dekker, Marialaura Ghidini, and Gaia Tedone in collaboration with Valiz, the TBT made a small selection of our favourite projects that highlight the intricate socio-technicalities of the web. Following and subverting technical trends, and despite being often short-lived and thus lacking a historical memory, these projects present new ways of audience engagement, question the value of authorship, and open the possibility to reconfigure traditional models and methods for presenting, accessing, and distributing art. Thereby they are challenging established museum values and advancing alternative ways of understanding art stewardship, curatorial authority, and public access.
Participating artists: Rebecca Birch and Rob Smith, Damjanski, Emmanuel Guez and Zombectro, Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Mary Meixner, Marialaura Ghidini and Rebekah Modrak, Martine Neddam, Chiara Passa, Nina Roehrs, Sakrowski, Sebastian Schmieg and Silvio Lorusso, Guido Segni and Matìas Ezequiel Reyes, Krystal South, Franz Thalmair, and Miyö Van Stenis.
The Public Philosophy Journal (PPJ) at Michigan State University will offer the Radical Humility: Forumon Wednesday, April 6 from 3-5pm. The event centers around a series of reflections about the book Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts (Belt Publishing 2021), a collection of articles that explores the salience of humility within our current social and cultural contexts, and examines the ways in which humility can affect social and institutional change. The collection is edited by Rebekah Modrak and the Jamie Vander Broek.
Inspired by the ideas found in Radical Humility, a group of artists, activists, and authors have come together to write responses to the book, which will be published by the Public Philosophy Journal. The Radical Humility Forum is a space for the responders to have a dialogue about those pieces and the ideas on radical humility contained within.
In addition to Modrak and Vander Broek, participants include:
Ruth Nicole Brown, the Inaugural Chairperson of the Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University.
Nimot Ogunfemi is a doctoral student in Counseling Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
Dr. Beronda Montgomery, a writer, science communicator and currently a Michigan State University Foundation Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics.
Todd Shaw has been on faculty since 2003 and has appointments both in UofSC’s Department of Political Science and the African American Studies Program.
Morgan Shipley (Ph.D.) is the Inaugural Foglio Endowed Chair of Spirituality and Associate Chair of Religious Studies at Michigan State University.
Paulina Camacho Valencia is an artist, educator, and scholar. She is a member of the Chicago ACT Collective, a group of friends committed to building political artistic collaborations in multiple communities through artmaking.
Gretel Van Wieren is Professor of Religious Studies and affiliated faculty in Philosophy at Michigan State University where her research and teaching explore the spiritual and moral dimensions of people’s relationships to land.
The Public Philosophy Journalseeks to engage in philosophy with the public by creating an inclusive space in which community voices are recognized, heard, and supported as vital to the practices of public philosophy.
The newly published book Art as Social Practice: Technologies for Change (Routledge, March 2022) features a chapter by Rebekah Modrak. With a focus on socially engaged art practices in the twenty-first century, Art as Social Practice, edited by xtine burrough and Judy Walgren, explores how artists use their creative practices to raise consciousness, form communities, create change, and bring forth social impact through new technologies and digital practices.
Modrak’s chapter, Can This Be a Community When You’re Trying To Sell Me A Luxury Watch?, proposes that if companies are going to claim to create “community,” artists should bring them into the fold of community-engaged practices and trouble their claims.
Art as Social Practice features a foreword by artist Suzanne Lacy. Section introductions by authors/artists Anne Balsamo, Harrell Fletcher, Natalie Loveless, Karen Moss, and Stephanie Rothenberg present chapters that feature in-depth case studies by established and emerging contemporary artists including Kim Abeles, Christopher Blay, Joseph DeLappe, Mary Beth Heffernan, Chris Johnson, Rebekah Modrak, Praba Pilar, Tabita Rezaire, and Sylvain Souklaye.
Artists offer firsthand insight into how they activate methods used in socially engaged art projects from the twentieth century and incorporate new technologies to create twenty-first century, socially engaged, digital art practices. Works highlighted in this book span collaborative image-making, immersive experiences, telematic art, time machines, artificial intelligence, and physical computing. These reflective case studies reveal how the artists collaborate with participants and communities, and have found ways to expand, transform, reimagine, and create new platforms for meaningful exchange in both physical and virtual spaces.
UM Careers for Sex Offenders is a series of “career brochures” sent through email that satirically promotes the University of Michigan campus as a safe space for sexual predators.
The work responds to the U-M’s failure to protect victims from sexual predators on campus through a series of devastating alleged and confirmed offenses, including Dr. Robert Anderson‘s molestation of more than 950 people (mainly student athletes and chiefly male African American students), former Provost Martin Philbert‘s sexual harassment of graduate students and staff, Lecturer Bruce Conforth‘s manipulation and sexual abuse of female students, David Daniels’ solicitations of student sex, and Walter Lasecki‘s alleged sexual harassment of at least five students, among other offenders.
A common theme in these case is the university’s failure to sanction or fire the offender and their strategy of shuffling the predator into retirement or resignation without prosecution or sanctions. The Office of Institutional Equity (OIE)—now the Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX (ECRT)—has failed to properly investigate, to compare records across cases, and to find violations, and the Board of Regents has failed to hold administrators accountable. As a member of the Academic Affairs Advisory Committee (AAAC) that advises the provost, I had a front-row seat to Provost Philbert’s overseeing the sexual misconduct umbrella policy during which he defended OIE’s deplorable record and refused to consider alternative models, a defensiveness that continues with the current administration.
To be added to the email list, contact “CareersForSexOffenders@umich.edu”.
University of Michigan Sexual Misconduct Harassment Assault Philbert Conforth Anderson
University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel Hired an Alleged Sexual Predator as Provost in 2017 and will now Chair the 2022 Provost Search Committee.
Rebekah Modrak was recently interviewed by Brainard Carey for Yale University radio WYBCX. Modrak and Carey discussed her use of “watchdog”-style creative tactics that hold brands and institutions accountable. And they discussed the reception of her work by the unusual but ideal audience of Wieden+Kennedy New York, the advertising agency team that invited Modrak to speak about ethics, advertising, photography, Re Made Co., and RETHINK SHINOLA.
Brainard Carey has been interviewing artists and members of the art world since 2002 when he started writing for the Brooklyn Rail. He founded the interview series for Yale radio in 2010.
