Award-winning film directed by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee. The film tells the story of the aftermath of the shocking deaths of 30-year-old Shamony Gibson and 26-year-old Amber Rose Isaac due to childbirth complications. The film follows the two surviving families as they become activists in the maternal healthcare space, seeking justice through legislation, medical accountability, community, and the power of art. We meet a growing brotherhood of surviving Black fathers, along with midwives and physicians fighting together for institutional reform.

Valkyrie International Film Festival (VIFF), a new annual event spotlighting films directed by women, has announced its first-year Official Selections. Altogether, 63 films have been selected. 10 of those films were created by local artists. From Friday, March 24 to Tuesday, March 28, the broad-ranging films will be screened at the Screening Room Cinema and Arts Café in Amherst. Film categories include short and feature-length documentaries, experimental, and narrative films, with domestic, local, and international divisions. VIFF was founded by Tamar Lamberson and her daughter, Kaelin Lamberson, and is scheduled to run during Women's History Month (March) each year.

Join the award-winning author-photo journalist of My Beautiful Black Hair: 101 Natural Hair Stories from the Sisterhood, St. Clair Detrick-Jules, as she discusses the struggles, beauty, and joy of Black hair.

Her book offers an uplifting message to empower any woman looking to love herself just the way she is as well as a love letter to Black women everywhere navigating their relationships to their own hair.

For more information or questions, please contact: Amani Johnson, PhD: amanijoh@buffalo.edu or Frankie Kraft, LCSW: frankiek@buffalo.edu.

Abstract: Professor Holleman will discuss the vital lessons we can learn from one of the first global environmental problems of modern capitalism, which reached its apogee in the "dust-bowlification" of agricultural lands in the 1920s and 1930s. Based on award-winning research, Prof. Holleman explains that the regional crises of soil erosion in this period as dramatic and foreseeable manifestations of a global social and ecological emergency generated by the racialized political economy and ecology of white settler colonialism and the new imperialism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She establishes key antecedents to present-day ecological developments and brings the narrative forward to today, explaining the persistent consequences and important lessons of this era for our current struggles to address the planetary challenges of climate change, environmental injustice and racism, and new threats of dust-bowlification. In the end, Prof. Holleman argues, we are confronted with the necessity of breaking with the white man's burden version of environmentalism and building a deeper ecological solidarity in order to heal the life-threatening, interrelated social and ecological rifts of our day.

Hosted by the UB Critical Ecologies Research Collaborative, Funded by UB Office of International Education, Co-sponsored by UB Department of Sociology and Geography, and UB Humanities Institute Science Studies Workshop.

Directed by Michael Barnett, this film takes us into the lives of three high school athletes – all at different stages of their athletic seasons, personal lives, and unique paths as transgender teens. Their stories span across the U.S.; from Sarah, a skier and teen policymaker in New Hampshire, to Andraya, a track star in Connecticut openly transitioning into her authentic self, and to Mack Beggs, who made headlines last year when he became the Texas State Champion in wrestling.

Written by an interdisciplinary collective of authors, this powerful book documents the largely unknown histories and politics of trans lives, activisms, and culture across the post-Yugoslav states. The volume sheds light on a diversity of gender embodiments and explores how they have navigated the murky waters of war, capitalism, and transphobia while forging a niche for themselves within the regional and transnational LGBTQ movements.

The book launch is part of the symposium, Queer and Feminist Yugoslav Diaspora: Art, Film, and Activism, taking place from April 24-April 27, at UB, co-organized by Dr. Jasmina Tumbas (Dept. of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies, UB), Dr. Dijana Jelača (Film Dept., Brooklyn College), and Sarah JM Kolberg (Visual Studies, UB). The masterclass and symposium are co-sponsored by the UB Office of International Education; the Visual Studies PhD Fund; Diversity, Equity, and Belonging’s 2023 Commemorative Observances and Heritage Months, April: Campus Pride, CAS Office of Inclusive Excellence; the UB Gender Institute; the HI QSRW; Hallwalls; the Dept. of Media Study; the Center for Global Film/Global Film Studies Program, Department of English; Department of History; and the Dept. of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies.