This event will consist in a screening of Mr. Derek Burrows' 2016 documentary film, Before the Trees Was Strange, which tells a complex story of how his family experienced race and racism in the Bahamas and the United States.  The screening will be followed by a talk-back session, in which audience members are invited to share experiences and discuss meanings with a panel, including, Mr. Burrows, law professor Dr. Melynda Price, and philosophers Dr. Gregory Fried, & Dr. Arnold Farr. The keynote event is made possible by the co-sponsorships of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies, Peace Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Culture, &  International Studies Program at the University of Kentucky.

Dr. Fried and Mr. Burrows lead the Mirror of Race project, housed at Boston College.  It is an online archive of early American photography with interpretation that "serve[s] as an opportunity to reflect on what race means in the United States today—and what it can, should, and should not mean in the future." This screening and talk-back are part of the project's outreach efforts.

An Inaugural Lecture for the Cottrill-Rolfes Chair in Catholic Studies, College of Arts and Sciences.  Reception to follow.

Prof. Catherine Wanner (Penn State University) has conducted 30 years of ethnographic research in Ukraine. She is the author or editor of seven books, including her most recent monograph, Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine (Cornell University Press, 2022), and the forthcoming edited volume, Dispossession: Imperial Legacies and the Russo-Ukrainian War (Routledge, 2023). Her research has focused primarily on the politics of religion in Ukraine and increasingly on human rights and conflict mediation within the context of war. She is the convenor of the Working Group on Lived Religion in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In 2020 she was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Prize from the Association for the Study of Eastern Christianity.

Sponsored by World Religions, History, Anthropology, Sociology, MCL, and the Lewis Honors College, and with special thanks for the support of the Gaines Center for the Humanities.