Author: Erin Mayclim

On April 12th at 4:30-5:30 pm I attended Dr. Robin Wall Kimmer’s presentation on her work. Her lecture was based around “The Good Harvest. “This event took place in the Corey Union Function Room where many faculty members and students attended. Personally, I did not read her book; Braiding Sweetgrass but after attending this presentation it is a book that I want to read. Dr. Kimmer was an amazing speaker, everything flowed very nicely, and it amazed me how much she spoke from the heart. It seemed as if she didn’t even need the slides she prepared. Even when answering questions, there was nothing that Dr. Kimmer could not answer. She had a very detailed answer to every question that was asked. I feel her presentation told me a lot about her personality, I feel as if I really got to know her as a person. It was easy to see how caring, appreciative, and passionate Dr. Kimmer is. Her lecture opened my eyes to new ideas I have never been exposed to. I found the event to be very engaging and beneficial as I learned a lot from this.

One aspect of Dr. Kimmer’s presentation that I really enjoyed was the connections she made. She provided the audience with a lot of information on herself, allowing us to get to know her better.  She is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse. She is a MacArthur fellow, an author, and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She lives in Syracuse, although her home reservation is in Oklahoma. One story that I really appreciated showed Dr. Kimmers determination.  When she was graduating high school, she couldn’t decide between wanting to study science or to become a poet. Her guidance counselor told her she couldn’t do both and she decided to study plants. In her higher education, she was one of the only women and the only native person on campus. She did what she could to fit in. On her first day, she had an interview with her advisor where she told the advisor that she wanted to study the beauty of nature and plants. She wanted to answer questions like why the world is so beautiful and how do we keep it like that? Her counselor told her that’s not science and if that was her interest, she should go art school. It was obstacles like these that got her to where she is today. She clearly has developed a deep passion and genuine care for our earth. She is knowledgeable and strives to maintain the natural beauty of our planet. She speaks up for what she believes, encouraging others to help her take action to preserve the beauty of the earth. I found this to be very inspirational, as sometimes people doubt others, it shows how Dr. Kimmer did not let people stop her and followed her passion. Another part, of her lecture that stood out to me is the idea she called “two eyed seeing.” I found this to be a very eye-opening topic. This idea is to look through multiple lenses and view things from different perspectives. This idea will allow for a much better understanding and a better way of solving problems. She continued on to tell the audience, that ecologists have turned to the knowledge of traditional people for a deeper understanding and seeing of the natural world. In a time where climate change and global warning awareness is so advertised, I think it is important to look to the people who appreciate the world and know how to properly care for it.  She included the statistical detail that 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is safeguarded by indigenous places only 10% have protection. She says that we are not to go back in history but to go forward to a planet to live on in the future. These words stuck out to me because it is never too late to make a change and start caring. Her presentation showed me how we can help enhance and preserve the natural beauty of the earth we live on.  She finished off her lecture by saying that “an educated person knows their gifts and how to give them to the world.” As someone aspiring to be a teacher, these are words that will stick with me forever. This was a very powerful message and she clearly knows how to spread her gift with the world.

Overall, I enjoyed Dr. Kimmer’s lecture, her message was very powerful and moving. She really gave me insight to a perspective I had never thought about before. I learned a lot from what she had to say, and it left me, and I am sure the rest of the audience feeling very inspired. Although I had been worried that I would feel lost during this presentation since I did not read Braiding Sweetgrass, I gained a lot of valuable information from this event.

 I attended “The Sherlock Holmes You Never Knew: Black American Adaptations, Then and Now.” This event took place on Thursday, February 29th from 6 to 7 pm in the Old Main Colloquium. The presentation was delivered by Dr. Ann McClellan who is the Chief Academic Officer and a provost at SUNY Cortland. Many people attended the presentation including students, professors, and even President Bitterbaum! Her presentation focuses on Sherlock Holmes who audiences recognize as the founding father of all great (white) fictional detections. The presentation focused on the adaptations of Sherlock Holmes that people fail to acknowledge. Since 1903 there have been Black American Sherlock Holmes characters and her presentation covered the history of the Black Sherlock Holmes adaptations across genres.

Dr. McClellan began with a brief introduction of herself, she told the audience that her presentation is a part of a larger project she has been working on for several years. It wasn’t until 2014 on a research trip in London that she read a self-published pamphlet created by an American. The pamphlet had an entire history and connection of African American culture and Sherlock Holmes, it opened up stories, characters, narratives, and representations that she had never heard of or seen in her prior research. Before this presentation, I honestly didn’t know much about the character Sherlock Holmes, but Dr. McClellan told us that according to the Guinness World Records, Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed fictional character of all time. One thing that stands out about Sherlock Holmes is that he is known as a white man from England. Even his fan group is primarily white. She showed us a photo from the annual dinner in NYC of the Bakers Streets Irregulars, a worldwide fan society of Sherlock Holmes. The dinner is invite only and everyone in the photo is white and a male. We looked at a photo from 1986 and 2020; the only difference is that there is now one woman and one man of color. Other than that,  his fan base is predominantly white males and over the years, as the world has advanced not much has changed within the fan base. I found this to be very surprising and it also made me curious if this fan base also studies these different adaptations.

Dr. McClellan then defined the word adaptation which was very helpful as her presentation is focused on these different adaptations. She defines adaptation as another person’s take on a story or character, a different genre, a different period, or a completely new story. This simple definition she included, made it much easier to understand and connect to her presentation. She then began to discuss the first African American adaptation of Sherlock Holmes which took place in 1903. This was the first Broadway musical with an all-black cast which is not widely recognized due to racism. The play is titled “Dahomey” and it stars Bert Williams as the main character who plays Shylock Homestead. Although he was African American, he used burnt cork to make his skin look darker and outlined his lips in white makeup to exaggerate his characteristics. He felt that if white people could make money by doing blackface, he should be able to do the same. Dr. McClellan then began to discuss different genres like silent films and music which was centered around Sherlock Holmes. Something that stuck out to me was her explanation of whitewashing and colorblind casting. She spoke about how this still occurs in today’s society. Whitewashing is when characters who are created to be of a certain race, ethnicity, or culture are converted to be white in films, plays, etc. Colorblind casting states that race doesn’t matter and will instead be ignored. It was argued that colorblind casting makes racial identity invisible, but audience critics argued that the first thing people notice is racial and ethnic identities. They believed it influenced how viewers see and react to characters and their relationships with others. I connected this aspect of her presentation to our class discussions on color blindness.  Lastly, as Dr. McClellan concluded her presentation, she provided a great wrap-up and lasting impact. She stated how there have been several Sherlock Holmes adaptations, including stories of Sherlock Holmes being a woman, transgender, an alien, and an MLB player. All of these different things have nothing to do with the original story, yet audiences still struggle to imagine the character as a different race or ethnicity. She told the audience how this shows us the importance of fans of color and creating, collecting, and archiving diverse representations of iconic figures.

Overall, I enjoyed this event and took a lot of information away from it. It is clear to see how passionate Dr. McClellan is about her research.  Through her presentation, I learned about adaptations I did not know existed. This event sparked my curiosity and left me wondering about racism and biases that still occur in today’s society.  Her presentation was engaging and presented in an organized manner.