Calendar 2026

Join us at the State Theatre for a viewing and discussion of the documentary Reclaiming Ground Zero, which follows New Yorkers in the aftermath of 9/11 as they struggled to decide what to do with the site of the attacks.

After the 9/11 attacks, once the smoke cleared and the rubble was removed, New Yorkers had a city to rebuild. There was one fundamental question: no one could agree on the future of Ground Zero. Some wanted the towers back, while others believed the site should remain a memorial. Then, a single event changed everything…

Then the city decided to do one of the bravest—or stupidest—things in the history of city planning. They gathered 5,000 representative New Yorkers into the largest town hall in American history to vote on the city’s six proposals. People expected chaos and yelling. But instead, the representatives rejected all the proposals and this top-down approach and successfully charted a new path forward. It was this meeting that determined what is at Ground Zero today.

A public libretto reading of a new opera-in-progress, Contested: The Monument and the Shadow, by librettist Anita Gonzalez with composer Joel Thompson. Moving between past and present, the opera explores the construction and removal of Confederate monuments in the American South, examining how societies preserve, challenge, and reckon with contested histories. It brings conflicting perspectives into dialogue and invites audiences to consider whose memories are preserved, how historical narratives evolve, and what it means to confront the legacy of the past.
Audience members will have the opportunity to respond to the work and provide feedback to the creative team. Come to be a part of the creative process and to get a sneak peak at this new opera in development!

In an age of division and polarization, it is essential to develop skills for facilitating constructive dialogue. Join us for an interactive workshop with Dr. Nicholas Longo, who works closely with students building civic skills and confidence as the inaugural director of the Rutgers Democracy Lab. Participants will develop skills such as learning to listen, ask questions, invite stories, and find common ground. We will also introduce facilitation practices useful for instructors and then engage with relevant scenarios that will help us learn to work with others to address conflict in healthy ways. Ultimately, this workshop is about helping instructors become bridge builders and change agents for a more vibrant democracy. The session is part of the Promoting Democracy Teaching Series, co-sponsored by CRLT and Ginsberg Center.

Lunch is Provided and available at 11:45am. Program begins at 12pm. Space is limited and registration is required.

Join Disagree Better to learn how to reduce inflammatory rhetoric and foster a culture of healthy debate in this interactive workshop. Conflict is necessary for progress, but polarization is a threat to our stability. The goal of the workshop is to equip students with the tools to navigate difficult conversations without sacrificing their principles or their peer's dignity.

Students attending this workshop will receive a free copy of Off Ramp: How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt by Spencer Cox.

Join us on the Diag for democracy centered film features this week!

National Treasure (2004) follows historian and cryptologist Benjamin Franklin Gates as he races to find a legendary Templar treasure, steals the Declaration of Independence, and evades a rival team of mercenaries.

Bring a blanket or a lawn chair. Popcorn and refreshments provided.

The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness begins with good health for all. Since George Washington ordered mass smallpox inoculation for soldiers during the Revolutionary War, public health has quietly protected our unalienable rights over the past 250 years. On September 15, the University of Michigan School of Public Health brings this history into the light with an expert panel that will explore public health innovations in the United States - including the history of the uniformed Public Health Service Commissioned Corps - and the school's own part in leading transformative change.

How can looking beyond the United States help us better understand the challenges facing democracy today?

As part of the University of Michigan’s Democracy Week, the Ford School will host Democracy in Global-Historical Perspective, a public-facing discussion examining democratization, democratic backsliding, and the resilience of democratic institutions across time and place. The conversation will move beyond a solely U.S.-focused lens to situate contemporary democratic challenges within broader global and historical patterns.

Join us for a lunch-and-learn conversation exploring how territorial status shapes daily life for the millions of U.S. citizens and nationals living in Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and other U.S. territories. From access to federal programs and voting rights to questions of identity, governance, and belonging, this informal discussion will unpack what it actually means to live under a political status that is neither full statehood nor independence.

Lunch will be provided. Open to students, faculty, and staff — no background in the topic required.

This talk examines the lives and political projects of young women activists in 1930s–40s Sylhet who were drawn to join the Communist Party. Among them was Hena (Dutt) Das, who remained in (East) Pakistan after Partition, and who would be politically and socially engaged in Bangladesh until her death in 2009. In this talk, Shehabuddin will focus on the revolutionary education and experiences that first brought Hena Dutt and her teenage classmates to the Communist Party, how they understood and inhabited communism in their daily lives, and how their personal and political histories complicate ideas about religious and national belonging, about the much-described tug between communism and feminism, and about the relationship between the personal and the political.

Ever wonder how animators make a character walk? In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn how to pose your own hand-drawn characters in 2-, 4-, or 8-frame "walk cycles." Each participant's finished drawing will be scanned and processed into a playable digital avatar inside a custom web-based video game, setting the stage for community game tournaments at early voting sites this October!

Two hundred fifty years ago this summer, a group of delegates in Philadelphia signed a document that risked everything on a single conviction: that ordinary people, given truthful information about those in power, could govern themselves. But that promise is harder to keep every year. The Information Age has transformed into information overload; it’s more difficult than ever to know what to trust, and in cities and towns across America, there are far fewer independent reporters demanding government transparency and holding our officials to account.

We live in a visual world where people increasingly access information through images and video. How do we turn narratives and data into clear, compelling visuals that move people to participate in civic life and work for social change?

Join us for a special Democracy Week event with designer and author Ariel Aberg-Riger, exploring how visual storytelling can make information more accessible and actionable. At this hands-on event, participants will learn how images, design choices, data, narrative and context all work together to communicate ideas to broad public audiences.

Dinner is provided and available at 5:30pm. Program begins at 6pm. Space is limited and registration is required.

An evening conversation featuring scholars, curators, and civic leaders from U.S. territories - places where residents are U.S. citizens or nationals but have long lacked full access to U.S. democracy. Each speaker will discuss the tools they draw on to shift political narratives in their community and expand perceptions of local political agency and possible political futures: curation and public history, literary publishing and civics education, constitutional drafting, and scholarship rooted in Africana studies and self-governance.

Through creative, cultural, and civic practice, the speakers illuminate how their communities are reclaiming political voice, preserving history, and imagining more self-determined futures.

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to join a respectful conversation centering on a highly challenging issue. Braver Campus Dialogues enable participants to discover that differing viewpoints are not obstacles, but essential components in addressing our most controversial topics. Guided by an experienced moderator, participants navigate the intricate complexities of the issue, share diverse perspectives, and gain deeper understanding of root causes and potential solutions for its most pressing social and political challenges.

Join us on the Diag for democracy centered film features this week!

Discover the true power of the dark side in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Years after the onset of the Clone Wars, the noble Jedi Order leads a massive clone army into a galaxy-wide war against the Separatists. When the sinister Sith unveils a thousand-year-old plot to rule the galaxy, the Republic crumbles and from its ashes arises the evil Galactic Empire. Anakin Skywalker is seduced by the dark side of the Force to become the Emperor’s new apprentice.

Popcorn and refreshments provided! Bring a blanket or lawn chair!

How do states project power beyond military cooperation? This talk examines the role of educational films, institutional networks, and audiovisual media in shaping the US–Turkey alliance before and during the Cold War. Drawing on Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey–US Relations (Columbia University Press, 2026), Etem argues that film was central to the projection of power through international alliances and institution building. Bringing together archival research from Turkey and the United States, the talk traces how governments, universities, philanthropic foundations, and international organizations collaborated to produce, circulate, and exhibit films that supported political, educational, and developmental agendas. By examining film as a technology of governance, the talk offers a new perspective on how media shaped international relations and the making of Cold War alliances in the Middle East.

Noam Lupu (Vanderbilt University), Nicholas Carnes (Duke University), Adam Dean (George Washington University)

Join us on the Diag for democracy centered film features this week!

Selma is a 2014 historical drama directed by Ava DuVernay that chronicles Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dangerous 1965 campaign for equal voting rights, culminating in the historic marches from Selma to Montgomery and the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

Bring a blanket or a lawn chair. Popcorn and refreshments provided.

BLOCK X BLOCK brings Detroit community leaders and University of Michigan voices together monthly to listen, learn, and act. The series builds trust, shared understanding, and pathways to meaningful change- block by block. The first session, focused on Immigration and Voting Rights, will feature brief presentations by Miguel Rodriguez, Rachel Marquez, and community organizers from Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation, as well as UM-Dearborn professor and practicing immigration attorney Shahad Atiya, followed by a facilitated discussion and a storytelling/listening circle.

Whose Democracy? is a two-year initiative of the Stone Working Group on Inequality and Political Economy (SWIPE) within the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics. Across four semesters, the series examines how inequality shapes democracy, offering programming that follows the full arc of politics.

This opening event considers who runs for office and how candidacy and social class can shape the course of American democracy.

Presented as part of the University of Michigan’s Democracy Week, this symposium explores the enduring legacy of the May 18, 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement and the role of visual media in shaping South Korea’s democratic consciousness. Organized in conjunction with an exhibition of 90 curated images from the Gwangju 5·18 Archives on campus, the event bridges historical analysis with living memory. Survivors and eyewitnesses will share their reflections alongside scholars to examine how images and personal testimony break through censorship and serve as vital tools for historical justice—connecting Gwangju’s struggle to global conversations on human rights.

Why is small-town America overwhelmingly white? While we know much about the history of Jim Crow in the South and increasingly in the urban North and South, we know little about the racial system that emerged in small towns outside the South. Focusing on towns in Indiana and Napa Valley, California, this talk considers how a culture of expulsion became a distinguishing feature of Jim Crow in small towns. Tensions related to migration, labor, and morality fueled racial discourses and practices as expulsion quietly and legally became part of the routine of daily life in small-town America.

Nearly eighty years have passed since the establishment of the Republic of Korea in the South and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the North in 1948. Presented in conjunction with Democracy Week at Michigan and in collaboration with the Nam Center for Korean Studies, this exhibition features selected library collections that trace the history and major milestones of Korean democracy, with particular attention to the vital role of student movements.

Artists often become the voice, memory, and visual language of a movement. When political expression is restricted, art can communicate ideas and emotions.

This month’s open house will feature literature, music, and visual art of political and social movements around the world, from the revolutionary poetry and anthems of Gaddar, to murals of the Arab Spring, and digital art in solidarity with the Woman, Life, Freedom movement of Iran.

The online exhibit "Soul of America: 250 Years Through Books" shares a personal perspective on American identity through the lens of University of Michigan Press books. Stop by the Press archive (never normally open to visitors) to view almost 100 years of original publications from the University of Michigan's publishing arm and to pick up a free copy of the exhibit catalog.

The United States’ founders looked to Rome as an ideal for their republican aspirations: institutions that tempered the excesses of the populus, statesmen like Cicero, and stories of strangers fleeing home to carve out a new community from the wilderness. But America also inherited another aspect of Rome that grew out of its rugged, founding stories: the physically imposing, violent, anti-intellectual, and brash gladiatorial body. This talk enters the worlds of gladiators and bare-knuckle boxers to understand their allure as images of the citizen body.

Join the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) for a lecture by historian Vanessa Holden, Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky and Director of the African American and Africana Studies Program. Holden's research examines slave insurrections and their impact on our understanding of the nation's founding, with particular attention to the experiences of women and children whose stories are often absent from traditional narratives of early American democracy.

Copies of Holden's work and the Summer 2026 special issue of Ms. Magazine, Feminism and the Founding, will be available while supplies last.

Since 1776, Americans have used major anniversaries of the nation’s founding to celebrate, debate, revise, and perform the story of the United States. For We Hold These Truths, her new exhibition opening at UMMA in October 2026, artist Holly Bass looks to three of those anniversary years—1876, 1976, and 2026 to explore how national ideals are staged in public, preserved in private, and passed down through generations.

In this talk, Bass will discuss the ideas behind We Hold These Truths, her process of transforming UMMA’s iconic Apse into an environment, and the role art plays in helping communities consider these varied histories. Drawing from her practice across performance, visual art, theater, writing, and engagement, Bass will offer a preview of the exhibition and explain how historic home museums inspired this new body of work.

Most Americans facing a legal problem navigate it alone. In three out of four civil cases in state courts, at least one side has no lawyer, and the judges and lawyers inside the system are burning out. Enter artificial intelligence. AI tools can now draft legal documents and guide people through procedures that once required years of training. But the same technology fabricates case citations, offers no confidentiality, and could flood overwhelmed courts with new filings, deepening the very crisis it promises to solve.
Drawing on their work leading Michigan Law's AI Law and Policy Clinic, where students build and test AI tools with real courts and legal aid organizations, Bridgette Carr and Vivek Sankaran explore what AI can genuinely fix in the justice system and what it might break.

Join us on the Diag for democracy centered film features this week!

The Words That Built America is a 2017 HBO Documentary Films special directed by Alexandra Pelosi and narrated by historian David McCullough. It features diverse Americans—including U.S. presidents, politicians, journalists, and school children—reading the text of three foundational U.S. documents.

Bring a blanket or a lawn chair. Popcorn and refreshments provided.

Historian and author of "Canal Dreamers: The Epic Quest to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific in the Age of Revolutions," Jessica M. Lepler walks us through the failed idea to build the world’s first interoceanic canal.

Although the idea of literally changing the world by connecting the oceans proved too revolutionary for the Age of Revolution, the quest itself changed history. Canal dreams prompted political transformations, financial crisis, recognition of new countries, concern about climate change, and more. Full of adventure, corruption, far-reaching consequences, and present-day parallels, Lepler’s absorbing narrative cuts through two centuries, revealing that dreams do not need to come true to make history.

In her relatively brief career, the Indian artist Rummana Hussain (1952-1999) straddled painting, drawing, performance, video, and installation. She turned to the latter three modes in the mid-nineties, following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya and the ensuing anti-Muslim violence in her adopted city of Bombay. This talk will analyze Hussain’s shifting approach to her artistic practice during this period, as her postmodernist allegories in paint gave way to feminist interrogations of identity, representation and signification using objects, language and the body.

The exhibition will be open from September 18 to October 7.

This photo exhibition features 90 curated images from the UNESCO-inscribed May 18 Archives. Documenting the May 18–27, 1980 democratization uprising in Gwangju, South Korea, the collection captures the shift from peaceful student protests to military violence and unified citizen resistance, carried out under a complete blackout as civilians and photojournalists risked their lives to photograph atrocities and smuggle film past cordons. Beyond serving as historical artifacts, these preserved visual truths offer a living blueprint for popular resilience against authoritarianism, transforming local trauma into a universal defense of human rights. Displaying these records at Michigan bridges 1980 Gwangju with our present moment, inviting viewers to engage past resistance in the ongoing effort to defend democracy today.