CLAS Acts April 2022
Monthly newsletter of the TT faculty of CLAS
A Note from Dean Drake
The email we received taking us to Alert Level 1 was like spotting the first bulbs of spring coming through the compacted leaves. I’ve been so happy to see your faces!
In fact, we need to see each other so please save the date Wednesday, April 27, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for a drop-in celebration of our survival with an emphasis on the social and fun. More details soon.
Our new Alert Level means that we have been able to relaunch the Brews with the Dean series. At the recent Trail Point event some faculty asked me to use this space sometimes to share about books I’m reading and music I’m enjoying. I’m flipping between two books right now: Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance (who is coming to GVSU!—his prose is performance) and Valerie Boyd’s Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, which I picked up because I spent a few days recently in Polk County, Florida, near where Hurston grew up and where she collected the stories and songs that inspired her writing, including the great novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Would love to talk about how these two books talk to each other…
So I’m grateful for conversation and travel, and I am also grateful for those who applied to be Faculty Fellows and lead our vision implementation projects. We could only select some of that wonderful group, but I hope that everyone who applied will become part of the designing and testing process. There will be many opportunities to be involved in our collective work, which will launch in May.
I’d like to thank those who offered their perspectives at the open meeting of the GVSU Arts Celebration Steering Committee on March 18. The committee wants these events to be widely engaging and meaningful for our large and diverse community. As you will read about below, our GVSU Arts lecture on April 5 is An Evening with Hanif Abdurraqib. Please encourage your students to get past the word “lecture” and give this a try. They won’t be disappointed.
I’m not sure how aware you all are of the work our unit heads are doing on the CLAS Budget Committee and the Unit Head Agenda Committee. These groups have been performing some heavy lifting this year in addition to navigating the challenges of leading during a pandemic and in a time of significant change in higher ed. As I have been reviewing unit head FARs, I have also been impressed by their fine work as teacher-scholars. Please join me in expressing gratitude for our dedicated unit heads.
This month will fly by, full of events to honor our highest achievers and our wonderful, resilient graduating seniors. Commencement for CLAS will take place on April 29 at 7 p.m. at Van Andel Arena. Please consider attending the ceremony—our presence means so much to the graduates and their families.
Though we may not have seen the last of the snow flurries, we know that we are coming into sunny days, celebrations, and the finish line of a challenging year.
Jen
Lifting Up the Work--MacArthur Fellow Hanif Abdurraqib
If you go to Hanif Abdurraqib’s website you are greeted with:
HI. I'M HANIF. I WRITE POEMS. I WRITE THINGS ABOUT MUSIC. I AM PROBABLY EATING FRENCH FRIES.
In his list of works is a category called “I Get Interviewed”. One look at the list and you want to add to his statement “a lot”. That’s the thing of it; you find yourself caught up in his direct, grounded presentation of self which is backed up by many publications in places like The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Paris Review.
He hasn’t updated his website in a little while so his most recent book Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance (2021) has already been available on Audible and in print for months to much acclaim, but his website says it is “forthcoming in 2021”. He’s probably been pretty busy since being named a MacArthur Fellow in September. That hasn’t made it to his website either.
It doesn’t seem to matter because the work is speaking for itself, and marketing seems to be low or even off the radar. His focus is on lifting up the work of others, which bodes well for the students at his current gig as the Booth Tarkington Writer-in-Residence at Butler University (2021–2022 academic year).
As it happens, the MacArthur Foundation is up to date on its website. There it says of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance:
His thought-provoking observations on key artists and cultural moments in music, film, dance, and comedy—ranging from William Henry Lane, a nineteenth-century minstrel dancer who performed for White audiences in blackface, to Beyoncé’s 2016 Super Bowl appearance and the dance and music television show Soul Train—form a focused analysis of Blackness and a celebration of Black identity. Abdurraqib uses particular events and personal experiences, such as a live performance by a Black punk band or reminiscences about Wu Tang Clan, to explore themes such as Black anger and the entertainment industry’s long history of exploiting and abusing Black artists.
At the end of the GVSU Arts Celebration Poetry Night, poet Danez Smith asserted that Hanif is “the best human in America”. That’s a big rap, and yet the sense we get of Hanif in his short MacArthur Foundation video or when reading or listening to A Little Devil in America is an understated siren song of ideas that stick with you.
On Tuesday, April 5 at 7 p.m., the GVSU Arts Celebration will host Hanif Abdurraqib in a free virtual presentation that will also include a conversation with History’s Louis Moore. Bank on an evening of broadened horizons, compelling perspectives, and lyrical analysis.