Guides: Community Outreach and Partnerships @ Pitt-Bradford Hanley Library: Campus and Community Common Reader

Fall 2024 - Spring 2025

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Call Number: Reserves E98.P5 K56 2020
Publication Date: 2020, 2nd Edition
Drawing on her life as an Indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings--asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass--offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 2013
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces indigenous teachings that consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take "us on a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices.

September 5, 2024 – Foraging Walk and Sumac Lemonade, 4 to 5:15 p.m. behind Blaisdell Hall on the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford campus. Pitt-Bradford’s Isaac Spaeth will introduce participants to will some local plants that are edible and/or medicinal, helping us to recognize some of the gifts that local plants provide to people. Participants can also learn how to make and sample sumac “lemonade.” Those wishing to attend are asked to contact Dr. Mary Mulcahy, associate professor of biology at Mary.mulcahy@pitt.edu. Free.

September 7, 2024 – Goldenrod and Asters nature walk with Pitt-Bradford students, 12:30 p.m., Pfeiffer Nature Center, 14 South Main St., Portville, N.Y. Students will read from a chapter of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book “Braiding Sweetgrass” about “Learning from Asters and Goldenrod” and then use simple botanical identification keys to explore goldenrod and aster species diversity. Those wishing to attend are asked to contact Dr. Mary Mulcahy, associate professor of biology at Mary.mulcahy@pitt.edu. Free. This event has been canceled.

September 12, 2024 – “Braided Walk” – Nature walk and readings from “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, 4 to 5:15 p.m. behind Blaisdell Hall at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. Pitt-Bradford botany students will lead the walk and find places with plants talked about in “Braiding Sweetgrass” and read a short passage about that plant. Those wishing to attend are asked to contact Dr. Mary Mulcahy, associate professor of biology at Mary.mulcahy@pitt.edu. Free.

Sat., September 28, 2024 - Guided Mushroom Foraging Walk, 2 p.m. Sponsored by the Bradford Area Public Library (BAPL). Sam Warren: a NYSOGA licensed guide will lead a guided mushroom foray into our local woods on (location received upon registration). Free program, but registration is necessary as the guides are limited to the number of people they are permitted to lead. For more information, visit the BAPL events page.

Sat., November 16, 2024 - Lance White Eagle and Brenda White Eagle: Culture of Indigenous People, 11:30 a.m. at the Bradford Area Public Library. The Bradford Area Public Library is the sponsor of this free program; no registration is necessary.

Summer 2024 Book Discussion Series

In preparation for the author's visit to Pitt-Bradford in March 2025, we hope the Braiding Sweetgrass book discussion will inspire and encourage the campus and community to engage with Kimmerer's topics.

The hybrid book discussion series will consist of three sessions. Discussions will be held in the Hanley Library, Osborne Room on the second floor, and online through Zoom.

For more information and to register for the discussion, please visit https://www.upb.pitt.edu/book-discussion.

Books will be available in the Pitt-Bradford Panther Bookstore starting June 17.

Summer 2024 Reading Series for Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer
"As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild."
James A. Cannavino Library Braiding Sweetgrass LibGuide
"This guide provides you with resources to supplement the book as well as offer some assistance in reading the text including important vocabulary, illustrations to supplement the book's explanations, and more."

Fall 2022

In The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Joyful Clemantine Wamariya provokes us to look beyond the label of "victim" and recognize the power of the imagination to transcend even the most profound injuries and aftershocks. Devastating yet beautiful and bracingly original, it is a powerful testament to her commitment to constructing a life on her own terms (Penguin Random House).

This campus and community reader is brought to you by Pitt-Bradford First-Year Seminar, Creative and Professional Writing Program, Spectrum Series & Hanley Library.

The campus community can purchase the book at the Panther Shop, Online, or borrow from the library by logging into my.pitt.edu and using this link. The community can find a copy at the Bradford Area Public Library.

The Girl Who Smiled Beads author visit on Oct. 26 at 7:30.

Zonta Club of Bradford:

Thursday, September 15 at 6:30 pm

First Presbyterian Church Library

Bradford Area Public Library, “Open Book Club”

Saturday, September 17 at 10:30 am

Bradford Area Public Library, Conference Room

Bradford Area Public Library, “BYO - Book Club”

Wednesday, September 28 at 6 PM

The Bradford Area Public Library

Facebook Live Event: https://www.facebook.com/bradfordareapubliclibrary

Panel Discussion

An Enduring Pursuit: History, Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing

October 12, 202 Poster event details as listed in the text above 2

7:00 PM

University Room, Commons - Public invited

We invite the campus and the community to a panel session on October 12 at 7 PM in the University Room. Panelists will discuss topics associated with the first-year common and community reader, The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Joyful Clemantine Wamariya.

The panel will begin with a brief overview of Rwanda and transition into contextual knowledge of the Rwandan Civil War and massacre through Wamariya’s accounts in The Girl Who Smiled Beads. Several panelists will then describe the truth, reconciliation, and healing process from trauma and war while further examining the actions taken by truth and reconciliation commissions. The panelists will conclude with the repercussions of war and conflicts as it relates to the people forced to flee and the West’s reactions. As time permits, each section will end with a brief Q&A. This panel session is in preparation for Wamariya’s visit to the Pitt-Bradford campus on October 26.

Panelists:

•   Fatima Saccoh, Pitt-Bradford Senior, a Pre-Med Biology major, and President of the African Student Association
•   Dr. Jonathan Chitiyo, Associate Professor of Education and the Director of Teacher Education & First Year Seminar Program
•   Shelley Alcorn, Director of the YWCA Victim Resource Center, works with domestic violence and sexual assault survivors. Shelley started at the YWCA as a Shelter Staff, became the Sexual Assault Counselor/Advocate, and in 2019 was appointed Program Director.
•   Dr. Adedoyin Ogunfeyimi, Assistant Professor of Composition
•   Dr. Stephen Robar, Associate Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Environmental Studies Program, & International Affairs Program

Moderator: Jenelle Johnson
Sponsored By: The First Year Seminar Program and the Hanley Library

Author's Visit

Author's Visit: The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Joyful Clemantine Wamariya

The Girl Who Smiled Beads October 26 Author Visit

October 26, 2022

7:30 PM

Bromeley Theater, Blaisdell Hall

Public invited

This campus and community reader is brought to you by Pitt-Bradford First-Year Seminar, Creative and Professional Writing Program, Spectrum Series & Hanley Library.

Historical Dictionary of Rwanda by Aimable Twagilimana
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2015
Blessed with natural beauty and rich vegetation, Rwanda is often called the "land of a thousand hills" (le pays des mille collines), a reference to its many lush and green rolling hills. Moreover, for many Rwandans, at least in the past, Rwanda, in spite of its small size, is vast; in fact, it means the universe. This idyllic view, however, sharply contrasts with the sad history of ethnic strife that unfolded since the 1950s: the 1959 Hutu Revolution followed by years of anti-Tutsi pogroms, undemocratic regimes, the civil war of 1990-1994, and, more significantly, the April-July 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and the killing of Hutu who opposed the killings. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Rwanda contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Rwanda.
The Land Beyond the Mists by David Newbury; Jan Vansina (Foreword by)
Call Number: ebook
Publication Date: 2013
The horrific tragedies of Central Africa in the 1990s riveted the attention of the world. But these crises did not occur in a historical vacuum. By peering through the mists of the past, the case studies presented in The Land Beyond the Mists illustrate the significant advances to have taken place since decolonization in our understanding of the pre-colonial histories of Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern Congo. Based on both oral and written sources, these essays are important both for their methods--viewing history from the perspective of local actors--and for their conclusions, which seriously challenge colonial myths about the area.
One Hundred Days of Silence by Jared Cohen
Call Number: DT450.435 .C64 2007
Publication Date: 2007
In the spring of 1994, eight-hundred thousand Rwandan Tutsis and Moderate Hutus were killed in a horrific genocide. One Hundred Days of Silence is a scathing look at the challenges of humanitarian intervention, the history of U.S. policy toward the 1994 Rwanda genocide, and the role of genocide in the larger context of strategic studies. It looks at the principal questions of what the U.S. knew, and why it didn't intervene, and how non-intervention was justified within the American bureaucracy.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch
Call Number: DT 450.435 .G68 1998
Publication Date: 1998
An unforgettable firsthand account of a people's response to genocide and what it tells us about humanity. This remarkable debut book chronicles what has happened in Rwanda and neighboring states since 1994, when the Rwandan government called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. Though the killing was low-tech--largely by machete--it was carried out at shocking speed: some 800,000 people were exterminated in a hundred days. A Tutsi pastor, in a letter to his church president, a Hutu, used the chilling phrase that gives Philip Gourevitch his title. With keen dramatic intensity, Gourevitch frames the genesis and horror of Rwanda's "genocidal logic" in the anguish of its aftermath: the mass displacements, the temptations of revenge and the quest for justice, the impossibly crowded prisons and refugee camps. Through intimate portraits of Rwandans in all walks of life, he focuses on the psychological and political challenges of survival and on how the new leaders of postcolonial Africa went to war in the Congo when resurgent genocidal forces threatened to overrun central Africa. Can a country composed largely of perpetrators and victims create a cohesive national society? This moving contribution to the literature of witness tells us much about the struggle everywhere to forge sane, habitable political orders, and about the stubbornness of the human spirit in a world of extremity.
On the Path to Genocide by Deborah Mayersen
Call Number: DS195.5 .M3738 2014
Publication Date: 2014
Why did the Armenian genocide erupt in Turkey in 1915, only seven years after the Armenian minority achieved civil equality for the first time in the history of the Ottoman Empire? How can we explain the Rwandan genocide occurring in 1994, after decades of relative peace and even cooperation between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority? Addressing the question of how the risk of genocide develops over time, On the Path to Genocide contributes to a better understand why genocide occurs when it does. It provides a comprehensive and comparative historical analysis of the factors that led to the 1915 Armenian genocide and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, using fresh sources and perspectives that yield new insights into the history of the Armenian and Rwandan peoples. Finally, it also presents new research into constraints that inhibit genocide, and how they can be utilized to attempt the prevention of genocide in the future.
Eyewitness to a Genocide by Michael Barnett
Call Number: DT450.435 .B38 2003
Publication Date: 2003
Why was the UN a bystander during the Rwandan genocide? Do its sins of omission leave it morally responsible for the hundreds of thousands of dead? Michael Barnett, who worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1993 to 1994, covered Rwanda for much of the genocide. Based on his first-hand experiences, archival work, and interviews with many key participants, he reconstructs the history of the UN's involvement in Rwanda. In the weeks leading up to the genocide, the author documents, the UN was increasingly aware or had good reason to suspect that Rwanda was a site of crimes against humanity. Yet it failed to act. Barnett argues that its indifference was driven not by incompetence or cynicism but rather by reasoned choices cradled by moral considerations. Employing a novel approach to ethics in practice and in relationship to international organizations, Barnett offers an unsettling possibility: the UN culture recast the ethical commitments of well-intentioned individuals, arresting any duty to aid at the outset of the genocide. Barnett argues that the UN bears some moral responsibility for the genocide. Particularly disturbing is his observation that not only did the UN violate its moral responsibilities, but also that many in New York believed that they were "doing the right thing" as they did so. Barnett addresses the ways in which the Rwandan genocide raises a warning about this age of humanitarianism and concludes by asking whether it is possible to build moral institutions.
Ghost of Rwanda by PBS: Frontline (Television program)
Call Number: Digital Streaming
Publication Date: 2005
Rwanda was supposed to be easy.Ten years ago, when the United Nations sent peacekeepers to this small, Central African nation -- with the full support of the U.S. government -- most of the policy-makers involved believed it would be a straightforward mission that would help restore the U.N.'s battered reputation after failures in Bosnia and Somalia. Few could imagine that, a decade later, Rwanda would be the crisis that still haunts their souls."Ghosts of Rwanda," a special two-hour documentary to mark the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide -- a state-sponsored massacre in which some 800,000 Rwandans were methodically hunted down and murdered by Hutu extremists as the U.S. and international community refused to intervene -- examines the social, political, and diplomatic failures that converged to enable the genocide to occur.