Margo Guernsey’s documentary The Philadelphia Eleven tells the story of eleven women were ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 1974 in violation of church policy, transforming an institution despite threats to their personal safety and risk of rejection from the church they loved. “It is about how to break down barriers with grace,” according to Guernsey, “and be true to oneself in the process.”

In this episode, you’ll hear the discussion with Margo Guernsey which followed the screening of The Philadelphia Eleven hosted on the University of Wyoming campus last semester. If you would like to watch the film before listening, it can be accessed here by all UW students, faculty, and staff. Members of the public should visit https://www.philadelphiaelevenfilm.com/watch.html.

The screening and discussion were sponsored by UW Philosophy & Religious Studies, UW Libraries, Canterbury Fellowship in Laramie, and the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research.

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To help us continue developing humanities content like this, please consider making a financial contribution. You can do so ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠. We greatly appreciate your support!

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Music: 'Solecism' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au.

Ahead of her Sandeen Lecture on Dec. 9, "The Herder's Laboratory: Indigenous Climate Science in the Peruvian Andes," Dr. Allison Caine was interviewed by Dr. Kayla Burd. Listen in to learn more about her background, the research she conducted in Peru, and her ongoing work.

Dr. Caine is a cultural anthropologist with a research focus on the environment, climate change, rural health, and well-being. She works primarily with Quechua alpaca herders in Peru, with ties to sheep ranching in Wyoming. Her research in Peru takes a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to understanding contemporary environmental problems.

To help us continue developing humanities content like this, please consider making a financial contribution. You can do so ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. We greatly appreciate your support!

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Music: 'The Spaces Between' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0, www.scottbuckley.com.au.

At the end of a week-long retreat at the University of Wyoming's Neltje Center⁠, fellows in our ⁠Humanities Research Group⁠ program discuss what they accomplished and what they valued about the one-of-a-kind experience:

(01:22) Shelby Shadwell and Amanda Sikirica

(11:45) Seth Swanner and Hannah Phalen

Learn more about the research of this year's fellows here.

To support our research fellowship program or to help us continue developing content like this, please consider making a financial contribution. You can do so ⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠. We greatly appreciate your support!

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Music: 'Solecism' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au.

Soon, we'll begin releasing humanities conversations once again, including an interview with this year's Sandeen Lecturer, a conversation between Humanities Research Group fellows while at the Neltje Center, and a Q&A discussion about the documentary The Philadelphia Eleven. Please subscribe and stay tuned for the exciting content we'll release in the future!

Music: 'The Spaces Between' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au.

Surveying the visual iconography of mental illness throughout the history of art often reveals a number of reoccurring and prevalent stereotypes, replete with stigma, shame, and misunderstanding. Looking to key examples from contemporary art, such as Anna Schuleit Haber’s installation Bloom (2003) and the Faces of Mental Health Recovery public art project (2014), shows that art has the power to reclaim traumatic and harmful pictorial narratives of mental illness, transforming past portrayals or sites of pain into powerful spaces of hope and belonging. Haber’s installation in a mental health hospital reclaimed this space through filling it with 28,000 potted plants and flowers, imbuing life and community through an evocative, living medium. Faces similarly relies on community, as it represents a partnership between patient and artist, collaborating together to create photographic portraits of mentally ill individuals at community mental health centers. These two examples provide a backdrop to explore contemporary art as a powerful medium that can transform the ways in which mental illness has been portrayed or represented visually, perhaps also playing a role in healing, understanding, and hope.

The Sandeen Lecture in the Humanities is named for Dr. Eric Sandeen, the founding director, and now director emeritus, of the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research. The lecture is co-sponsored by the humanities research institute and the Wyoming Humanities Council.

The Sandeen Lecture takes place annually in December, on the Monday of finals week during the fall semester. Each year, the faculty fellows in the cohort of the institute's Humanities Research Group vote to decide which fellow will deliver the lecture, therefore to be chosen for it is a particular honor, showing the respect of one's peers and showcasing some of the best humanities research by UW faculty.

This will be an online discussion with Dr. Alexandra Kelly for her new book "Consuming Ivory: Mercantile Legacies of East Africa & New England." She will be joined by Dr. Adam Blackler and Dr. Melissa Morris to answer questions and discuss her book.

The economic prosperity of two nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century New England towns rested on factories that manufactured piano keys, billiard balls, combs, and other items made of ivory imported from East Africa. Yet while towns like Ivoryton and Deep River, Connecticut, thrived, the African ivory trade left in its wake massive human exploitation and ecological devastation. At the same time, dynamic East African engagement with capitalism and imperialism took place within these trade histories.

Drawing from extensive archival and field research in New England, Great Britain, and Tanzania, Dr. Alexandra Kelly investigates the complex global legacies of the historical ivory trade. She not only explains the complexities of this trade but also analyzes Anglo-American narratives about Africa, questioning why elephants and ivory feature so centrally in those representations. From elephant conservation efforts to the cultural heritage industries in New England and East Africa, her study reveals the ongoing global repercussions of the ivory craze and will be of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, and conservationists.

There is a sense that WWII represented a seminal moment in racial thought and that the realization of the Holocaust was transformative in the role of race-thinking by state agencies and popular institutions, particularly in the U.S. Dr. Patton's research challenges this assumption, particularly since Black American soldiers went back to a country that held steadfastly to Jim Crow, which included anti-miscegenation laws. Separating race and racism in Germany and in the United States becomes impossible to untangle because they are braided together, and while many biracial German children remained in Germany, the U.S. and German governments collaborated and destroyed families by forbidding interracial coupling and encouraging white German women to put up their mixed-raced children for international adoption in an effort to keep Germany white. Dr. Patton uses her own family’s history as an exemplar, this research explores issues of race, gender, place, and nation as it relates to this largely erased history.

The Sandeen Lecture in the Humanities is named for Dr. Eric Sandeen, the founding director, and now director emeritus, of the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research. The lecture is co-sponsored by the humanities research institute and the Wyoming Humanities Council. The Sandeen Lecture takes place annually in December, on the Monday of finals week during the fall semester. Each year, the faculty fellows in the cohort of the institute's Humanities Research Group vote to decide which fellow will deliver the lecture, therefore to be chosen for it is a particular honor, showing the respect of one's peers and showcasing some of the best humanities research by UW faculty.

About Dr. Tracey Owens Patton:

Dr. Tracey Owens Patton is a Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism, adjunct Professor in African American & Diaspora Studies in the School of Culture, Gender, and Social Justice, and affiliate faculty in the Creative Writing MFA Program in the Department of Visual and Literary Arts at The University of Wyoming. She also served as the Director of the African American & Diaspora Studies Program from 2009-2017 at the University of Wyoming. She made UW history by becoming the first Black woman tenured and promoted to associate professor at the University in 2006, and earned a promotion to full professor in 2012. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Utah. Her area of specialization is critical cultural communication, critical media studies, rhetorical studies, and transnational studies. Her work is strongly influenced by critical theory, cultural studies, womanist theory, and rhetorical theory. She has authored a number of academic articles on topics involving the interdependence between race, gender, and power and how these issues interrelate culturally and rhetorically in education, media, memory, myth, and speeches. She places a strong emphasis on the interconnection between research and teaching, thus the courses she teaches involve issues concerning cross-cultural communication, rhetoric, and social justice. Dr. Patton has presented her research at nearly 80 different academic conferences and has published a co-authored book titled, Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo: Breaking Away from the Ties of Sexism and Racism (2012). This evening she is sharing a portion of her upcoming second book involving race, memory, rejection, and World War II.

Photo description: Twins, Lilli (left) and Lore (right) at the Wasserturm (Water tower) in Mannheim, Germany which is a popular landmark in the city. Family photo, author’s private collection, supplied by Lilli.