Artis Filips

After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises. The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles.

It is 1939. Despite a law banning him from performing surgery, Ravic, a German doctor and refugee living in Paris, has been treating some of the city's most elite citizens for two years on the behalf of two less-than-skillful French physicians.

Before blacks were enfranchised in the 1990s, South Africa was the world's symbol of racism. From the moment the Dutch colonists set foot on the Cape in 1652, this nation steered a straight course toward apartheid, resulting in consistent civil unrest. This presentation explores the economic and social forces that brought South Africa's troubles into the international spotlight.