CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now is lunchtime series that showcases exciting new faculty work in the humanities in a dynamic and inter-disciplinary setting.

Signature Spain, the Un-tour

Erin Hogan, Associate Professor, Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication; Dresher Center Summer Faculty Fellow (Summer 2021)

Erin Hogan shares an audiovisual component of her upcoming book on Spanish film: A nine-minute video essay inspired by an official 2015 tourism advertisement. The original video, "Trademark Spain: All that you expect and more than you imagine," celebrates the country’s main industries of tourism, housing, and construction. Hogan's spoof video, by contrast, mirrors the framework of the source text to illuminate the less marketable, and indeed more unjust, qualities of these industries with clips from the chapter’s filmography (2000-11). To the tunes of French composer Georges Bizet’s Carmen, a cliché of the Spanish tourism route and one created from an outside perspective, this “un-tour” provides an insider perspective that satirically underscores the divide between the ideal marketed image and the lived reality during economic hardship.

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“Someday I Will be Proved Innocent”: Henry A. Brown, Police Violence, and the Third Degree

Mike Casiano, Assistant Professor, American Studies

In this talk, Mike Casiano examines the trial of Henry A. Brown, a 19-year-old Black naval deserter who, after experiencing days of torture by federal officials and the Baltimore police, confessed to murdering a white Naval Academy nurse in 1921. Through a close analysis of Brown's arrest, confession, retraction, trial, and the Black-led grassroots activism surrounding his sentencing, this talk will explore and contextualize the swell of police violence that became institutionalized and administratively sanctioned by the Baltimore police during the 1920s.

Image description: Side by side photos - On the left, a woman wearing a blue top stands in front of a wall with decorative tile. On the right, a man gives a speech behind a podium on stage.