Responding to Our World: A Celebration of the New Voices Breaking Boundaries Archives

Join the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections and Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB) at a unique gathering to launch the archiving of VBB founder Sehba Sarwar’s three-decade artistic career and VBB’s extensive, multi-sensory 17-year history.

The event will showcase VBB’s archived videos, photographs, writings and art in a collection curated by UH archivist Vince Lee and intern Emily Brooks. Also featured will be conversations with Karen Farber, Christa Forster, Elizabeth Gregory, Karen Martinez, Sixto Wagan, Borderlines editors Margot Backus and Maria Gonzalez, and VBB board members including Yolanda Alvarado and Carmen Peña Abrego. VBB’s new website, designed by Angela Martinez with direction by Dee Dee Dochen, will also be launched.

The evening will include refreshments and opportunities to engage with Sehba Sarwar and VBB’s work in Houston and beyond.

The event will be held in the Elizabeth D. Rockwell Pavilion at the MD Anderson Library on Monday, November 14 from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

October 2016 Technology Training

Free workshops in Adobe Acrobat, EndNote, Excel 2013, HTML and CSS, Illustrator CS6, InDesign CS6,
Photoshop CS6, PowerPoint 2013, and SPSS are being held in October at the University of Houston Libraries.

The Technology Training program at UH Libraries offers technology courses to current UH students, faculty and staff. Classes are held in the Learning Commons Training Labs on the first floor of the MD Anderson Library.

View the full calendar and reserve your seat.

Event and Pop-Up Exhibit: Hip Hop and Masculinity

The University of Houston Libraries and UH Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program will present “A Conversation About Hip Hop and Masculinity” with Professor Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University and Professor Anthony B. Pinn of Rice University on Thursday, October 27.

Along with the conversation between scholars, a pop-up exhibit of photographs from the Peter Beste and Lance Scott Walker Houston Rap Collection will be on display, with an introduction to the collection by archivist Julie Grob.

The event and exhibit will be held in the Elizabeth D. Rockwell Pavilion at the MD Anderson Library from 1:00 – 2:15 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

Professor Neal will also be the keynote speaker of the UH College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences John P. McGovern Endowed Lecture on the evening of October 27.

Neal is Professor of African & African American Studies and the founding director of the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE) at Duke University where he offers courses on Black Masculinity, Popular Culture, and Digital Humanities, including signature courses on Michael Jackson & the Black Performance Tradition, and The History of Hip-Hop, which he co-teaches with Grammy Award Winning producer 9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit). He is the author of several books including What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1999), Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002) and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (2013). The 10th Anniversary edition of Neal’s New Black Man was published in February of 2015 by Routledge. Neal is co-editor of That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (Routledge), now in its second edition.

Pinn is the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and professor of religion, and the founding director of the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) at Rice University. Pinn’s research interests include religion and culture; humanism; and hip hop culture.  He is the author/editor of over 35 books, including Noise and Spirit: Rap Music’s Religious and Spiritual Sensibilities (2004), Introducing African American Religion (2012), The End of God-Talk: An African American Humanist Theology (2012), and the novel, The New Disciples (2015).