Calendar of Events

Art in Words: A Visual Artist’s Journey Through Nature and Storytelling

Suzanne Stryk will share her experience writing from the perspective of a visual artist in her book The Middle of Somewhere: An Artist Explores the Nature of Virginia. She notes, “This may be the first book in which the illustrations came first.” The term “synthesis” best describes her creative non-fiction approach, as she weaves together elements of art, memoir, travel, nature, and history. During her presentation, she’ll show her artwork while discussing various written passages from the book.

7:00 pm - 8:00 pm at Addison's Book Store, 126 S. Gay Street. Free!

https://knoxvillewritersguild.org/events/art-in-words-a-visual-artists-journey-through-nature-and-storytelling/

// Join us for an inspirational in person event. We will be live before a full house at The Mill and Mine and are looking forward to hearing from this diverse line up of presenters.
// Doors open at 6:30pm
// Presentations to begin at 7:20p

//Presenters: To be announced soon!

// Donations support future PechaKucha Knoxville Nights.
// Family friendly event however the content is uncensored.

The Mill and Mine, 227 W. Depot Street, Knoxville, TN 37917
https://www.pechakucha.com/events/pechakucha-knoxville-vol-54

Event by McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture
1327 Circle Park Drive, Knoxville, TN

A central aspect of Cherokee worldview is ᎠᏰᎵ ᎦᏙᎬ (ayehli gadogv) or "Standing in the Middle," a philosophy under which humans occupy a role in a web of complex interactions between mutually dependent organisms. Standing in the Middle emphasizes the importance of balance and reciprocity in persisting relationships. Join us for a lecture featuring Dr. Christopher B. Teuton, which is the first in a series of talks that will explore how Standing in the Middle informs ecology, conservation, management practices, epistemology, and science communication in the face of unprecedented anthropogenic (human-caused) change. Light refreshments will be available before the lecture.

About the Lecturer: Christopher B. Teuton (Cherokee Nation) is a scholar of Indigenous oral and written literary studies, community-based cultural heritage and language revitalization work, and fieldwork exploring the perpetuation of Indigenous arts and epistemologies. Teuton is author of Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), a collection of forty interwoven stories, conversations, and teachings about Western Cherokee life, beliefs, history, and the art of storytelling. His recently published book, Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teachings of the Natural World (University of Washington Press, 2023), co-authored with the late Cherokee Nation leader Hastings Shade, articulates a Cherokee view of nature grounded in Cherokee names for that world as well as stories and reflections of Cherokee elders and knowledge keepers. Teuton is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

https://www.facebook.com/events/598716219757946/

"The Principle Creation that Brought Us Over:" James Baldwin on Religion, Race, and Love
Thursday, February 6, 2025 6pm

Dr. Tracey E. Hucks is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Africana Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School and the Suzanne Young Murray Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She has served most recently as Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Colgate University where she has been James A. Storing Professor of Religion and Africana and Latin American Studies. Hucks previously taught at Davidson College, where she was the James D. Vail III Professor and chair of the Africana Studies Department and was chair of the Department of Religion at Haverford College. In 1995, she was a resident graduate scholar at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. A graduate of Colgate University, she earned her AM and PhD from Harvard University.

Hucks is the author of Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism, published in 2012 and was a finalist for the American Academy of Religion First Book Award and the Journal of Africana Religions Albert J. Raboteau Book Prize. Yoruba Traditions is a comprehensive study of the history of African American Yoruba religious practice in the United States exploring themes of religious nationalism and Africa as a sacred geo-political symbol.

Her most recent book, Obeah, Orisa and Religious Identity in Trinidad: Volume One: Africans in the White Colonial Imagination was published in 2022. In this study, Hucks traces the history of African religious repression in colonial Trinidad through the late nineteenth century. Drawing on sources ranging from colonial records, laws, and legal transcripts to travel diaries, literary fiction, and written correspondence, she documents the persecution and violent penalization of African religious practices encoded under the legal classification of “obeah.”

She is the author of numerous articles on theory and method in Africana religious studies, religion and nationalism, religion and healing in African diaspora religions and has travelled extensively throughout Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and the Americas for her archival and ethnographic research on Africana religious traditions.

John C Hodges Library, Room 100 , 1015 Volunteer Blvd, Knoxville TN
865-974-2466 or https://calendar.utk.edu/event/the-principle-creation-that-brought-us-over-james-baldwin-on-religion-race-and-love