Monthly Archives: March 2011

Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir to visit Swarthmore

Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir

LPAC Theater, Swarthmore College

Saturday, April 2, 2011

7:00 PM

Join Reverend Billy’s Earthalujah! show on Saturday April 2 in LPAC . This is a show unlike any you’ve seen before, a hybrid sermon/song/carnivalesque extravaganza that you won’t soon forget. The show is family friendly but big bank deadly, especially the ones that finance CO-2 emissions through mountaintop removal, hydro-fracking, super malls and shipping sweatshop products long distances with fossil fuel-burning engines. In the Church of Earthalujah we escape the old fundamentalist god but find life itself funny, scary, and it makes the 35 voice Stop Shopping Gospel Choir want to sing and shout!

Reverend Billy is an internationally known anti-corporate and environmental activist. While he mimics the hyperventilating, white-suit, Elvis-hairdo televangelist persona, he preaches a message altogether different from your typical Reverend. Billy and his gospel choir perform street and traditional theater to communicate a positive message of community empowerment, environmental sustainability and social change. Reverend Billy crosses typical genre barriers and blurs the barriers between life, performance and activism in a way that has not been experienced on campus. The Church also stages spirited theatrical interventions to support creative campaigns for social justice, and has recently been pressuring banks to divest from Mountaintop Removal coal mining in Appalachia.

Presented by Mountain Justice with the generous support of the SBC Fun Fund, FFS, Drama Board, Cooper Serendipity Fund, Environmental Studies, Sociology/Anthropology, Peace and Conflict Studies, Music, Political Science and the Lang Center.

April 1 & 2: Honors Dramaturgy Thesis of Isa St. Clair

Please join us for a staged reading of Isa St. Clair’s mlle., directed by Rebecca Wright with Eva Amesse ’11, Nell Ban-Jensen ’11, Jessie Cannizzaro ’12, Nolan Gear ’12, and Ben Hattem ’12.  April 1st and 2nd at 7PM in the Frear Ensemble Theatre.

This play is an adaptation of Theophile Gautier’s 1834 novel Mademoiselle de Maupin and tells a story of disguise, desire, and a very tangled love triangle. The play explores gender, sexuality, Shakespeare, Romanticism, and the farce we all make of ourselves.

When Theophile Gautier published the novel Mademoiselle du Maupin in 1834, Paris flew into uproar. Polite society swiftly condemned the lascivious novel in public and eagerly devoured it in private. For though it was the height of the Romantic movement in France, no one had yet produced such an admixture of hedonism, romance, ars gratia artis, and a revolutionary treatment of gender and sexuality as Gautier did in Mademoiselle du Maupin. Throughout the novel (and the play), the multivalent characters discover and rediscover their own gender identities and sexual preferences/performances, displacing sexual norms and (self-) constructed identities. As reader or audience, we are never quite sure if we are seeing masks or faces, if we can access an essential truth regarding these characters and their desires, or if that truth exists at all.

The nimbus of controversy surrounding the novel persisted for decades; Mademoiselle du Maupin was the subject of an American lawsuit over its alleged obscenity as late as 1922. But its fame – or infamy – has waned in the intervening years, and Gautier is, in fact, little remembered outside of France. Indeed, the material that made the novel so shocking and forward-looking upon publication is no longer particularly progressive and actually somewhat problematic; Gautier was a revolutionary 1834, but is a little outmoded in 2011. If controversy stems from the piece today, it is because of the novel’s outdated attitudes regarding “acceptable sexuality,” its implicit reinforcement of the gender binary, and its inherent anxiety regarding issues and identities that have since gained more acceptance (though imperfectly) in today’s world. In this play, I have tried to access these issues through the Romantic vocabulary (linguistically and ideologically) in which they were written; the result for mlle. is a play in which the line between between performance and reality, masks and faces, then and now, is hopefully even more tenuous than it was in 1834.  –Isa St. Clair ’11 (April 2011)

Prof. Dominic Tierney on Radio Times: The Obama doctrine and Libya

This morning, after President Obama’s address to the nation last night, Swarthmore’s Prof. Dominic Tierney appeared on WHYY’s program Radio Times, to talk about the Obama doctrine and Libya. You can listen to the interview with the player at the bottom of this post.

From Radio Times:

The morning after President Obama’s prime-time speech about his decision to intervene militarily in Libya, we take stock of the emerging ‘Obama doctrine’ guiding U.S. foreign policy. Citing a controversial and new United Nations principle known as the “Responsibility to Protect,” advocates for military intervention on humanitarian grounds succeeded in reversing the Obama administration’s initial reluctance to get involved in a third military front in the Muslim world. Helping us make sense of the President’s speech, his foreign policy and its implications for the Middle East are Swarthmore political scientist DOMINIC TIERNEY, TOM MALINOWSKI of Human Rights Watch and AARON DAVID MILLER of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Singing Revolution film screening on March 30: Music as nonviolent resistance in Estonia

Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College is organizing a three-film series this semester based around the theme of Nonviolent Movements for Rights and Liberation. Our second film will be The Singing Revolution.

Music sustained the Estonian people during decades of Soviet and Nazi occupation and was a crucial part of their struggle for freedom  The Singing Revolution is the first film to tell this historical tale.

When: March 30, 2011 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Science Center Room 199 at Swarthmore College

This event is open to the public.

Refreshments provided.

Discussion to follow the screening.

Maps and driving instructions are available

Download a color flyer or a black/white flyer.

Contact: Lee Smithey (LSmithe1) or Anna Everetts (AEveret1) 610-328-7750

Co-sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies, History, Music, Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology, Dance

Coming soon … April 13: Iron Jawed Angels

At each event in the series, students from the course, “Peace Studies and Action,” will offer two brief tributes to influential peace activists and intellectuals who have passed away recently.

Professor Lee Smithey Reflects on Nonviolent Resistance Movements in Tunisia and Egypt

Swarthmore’s News and Information office recently posted a story on the emergence of mass nonviolent resistance in the Middle East.

Lee Smithey, associate professor of sociology and coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, recently published an article in The Atlantic regarding the revolutionary nonviolent resistance movement that toppled the long-established authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. The article addresses “a shared set of ideas about nonviolent resistance” from “a new generation of scholars and advocates” such as Gene Sharp, whose inspirational role in the Arab peace movement was featured in a widely-read article in the New York Times.

According to Smithey, successful nonviolent resistance can be attributed to the large-scale impact of regular citizens who withdraw from their daily activities and responsibilities, thus applying a range of economic, political, and social pressures to coerce a regime into complying.   Read the whole story.

Dr. Kristen Gwinn lecture on Emily Greene Balch and internationalism

Please join us for a lecture by Kristen E. Gwinn, Ph.D. about her book, Emily Greene Balch: The Long Road to Internationalism.

Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 4:30 p.m.

McCabe Library Popular Reading Room

Swarthmore College

Maps and driving instructions are available

Download flyers (keystroke Ctrl+S in Google Docs)

Visit the display of Balch’s books, letters, and artifacts just inside the front door of McCabe Library.

Emily Greene Balch was the second U.S. woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded in 1946.  Balch was a humanitarian, internationalist, and  professor of economics and sociology at Wellesley College.  She helped found the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom during World War I and served as president of the U.S. section of that organization in the 1930s.  With the rise of militarism in Europe and Asia in the 1930s, Balch wrestled with her beliefs in peace, and she focused on the fate of refugees and displaced persons from Europe and combined her ideas on internationalism, global citizenship, and cultural diversity.  Kristen Gwinn (visiting scholar at Northwestern University) has written the first scholarly biography of this fascinating woman.  Her talk will contextualize Balch’s leadership, intellectual role, and philosophy in the development of American attitudes toward war and women in the twentieth century.

Kristen E. Gwinn is a visiting scholar with the history department at Northwestern University. She holds a PhD in History from George Washington University and a Master’s Degree in International Peace Studies from Trinity College Dublin. She is the author of Emily Greene Balch: The Long Road to Internationalism, and served as a graduate editorial fellow for The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers: The Human Rights Years, 1945–1948. She believes that utilizing technology to educate one another about history is of vital importance. She builds technological components, such as web sites and databases, to further this mission through her consulting agency HistoryIT (www.historyit.com). She also contributes to and manages several historical web sites, including www.ja1325.org and www.herhatwasinthering.org.

Sponsored by the Peace Collection, the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and SwatFems.

Contact: Wendy Chmielewski (wchmiel1) or Lee Smithey (lsmithe1)

George Bernard Shaw s FARFETCHED FABLES opens 3/25

The Department of Theater presents George Bernard Shaw’s FARFETCHED FABLES, Directed by Lars Jan on March 25th and 26th, 2011 at 8PM and March 27th, 2011 at 3PM in the LPAC Cinema. The six-part FARFETCHED FABLES, an often dismissed and rarely staged late work by George Bernard Shaw, was penned in 1950, the playwright’s ninety-third year, and is radical in its anarchic interplay of ideas.

Eugenics, global chemical warfare, genetic engineering, the possibility of non-corporeal consciousness, and the fundamental problem of education all surface and sink in this complex, brief, and very messy “play.” Created in an era defined by the televised clowning of both Lucille Ball and Joseph McCarthy, FABLES has inspired the creative team to draw on these and other sources to construct a dramatic scaffold around Shaw’s off-kilter text. A teleplay by design, this production posits the FABLES as censored television broadcasts from back in the days when television was almost always live. Dramatically reenacted before our “live studio audience,” the FABLES are tested, framed and interpreted by a focus group team interacting directly with the audience.

Lars Jan, the director, is also a designer, writer, and media artist.  He is the founding artistic director of Early Morning Opera, a multi-disciplinary art lab based in Los Angeles that specializes in live performance. Lars is a 2000 graduate of Swarthmore College and completed his MFA in Directing and Integrated Media at CalArts with the support of a Jack Kent Cooke Fellowship.  Lars is the recipient of the 2008 Sherwood Award, granted by Center Theatre Group to an innovative theatre artist in Los Angeles.  He has created new work and taught in residence at Princeton University’s Atelier Program as well as at Mount Holyoke, Swarthmore, and Amherst Colleges.

Production Ensemble 2011 members perform in multiple roles, control the cameras, choreograph movement and otherwise conjure the world of the play both on “stage” and behind the scenes. Collaborators include:  Lori Barkin ’12, Sebastian Bravo ’13, Jessica Cannizzaro ’12, Ryane Disken-Cahill ’12, Michael Edmiston ’12, Michelle Fennell ‘12, Katie Goldman ’14, Jamila Hageman ’13, Jeannette Leopold (Haverford) ’13, Meryl Erica Sands ’13, Sam Shuker-Haines ’14, Marina Tucktuck ’13, and Elliot Weiser ’13. Scenic & Costume Design is by Laila Swanson, Lighting Design by James Murphy, and Sound Design by Louis Jargow ’10.

The performances are free and open to the public without advance reservations. For further information, contact Tara Webb at twebb1@swarthmore.edu call 610-328-8260.

Jasper Goldberg ’12 on his travels and peace and conflict studies minor

Jasper Goldberg ’12 has been commenting on his study abroad experience and his minor in peace and conflict studies on the college’s website.

Swarthmore has given me a solid background in peace and conflict studies, but I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of my minor and see the actual places that I read so much about. My semester away challenged many of the notions I had of the world and helped me to understand how incredibly nuanced this world is.  read more …

Beverly Naidus on campus April 6th

Beverly Naidus is an internationally recognized artist on the faculty at UW-Tacoma where she teaches courses in art for social change and
healing. Interdisciplinary to her core, she works in many mediums, allowing the content to determine the form. Themes in her work include
the ecological crisis, fear of difference, unemployment, nuclear nightmares and her dreams for a reconstructed world. She has displayed
her work on city streets, subways and buses, in major museums, libraries, hospitals, community centers, commercial and university galleries and alternative spaces.

For over three decades she has straddled the high art world and the activist art and community arts worlds, finding it important to share
ideas and art projects in all three, sometimes overlapping contexts. Her work has been discussed in books by Lucy R. Lippard, Suzi Gablik, Paul
Von Blum and Lisa Bloom, as well as in significant journals and newspapers. She is the author of Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the
Frame, New Village Press, 2009 as well as two artist’s books, One Size Does Not Fit All and What Kinda Name is That.

She has taught at Carleton College, Goddard College, Hampshire College, the Institute for Social Ecology and California State University, Long Beach. She shares a home and garden on Vashon Island, Washington with Bob Spivey(founder of SEEDS) and their teenage son, Sam.

Her websites are beverlynaidus.net and www.artsforchange.org and her blog for her current eco-art project is www.edenreframed.blogspot.com

Beverly will be joining us on campus April 5th and 6th.  Her public lecture will be April 6th at 4:15PM in the Keith Room of Lang Center.  She will share a slide presentation on aspects of contemporary activist art practice that have influenced her.

Beverly Naidus on campus April 6th

Beverly Naidus is an internationally recognized artist on the faculty at UW-Tacoma where she teaches courses in art for social change and
healing. Interdisciplinary to her core, she works in many mediums, allowing the content to determine the form. Themes in her work include
the ecological crisis, fear of difference, unemployment, nuclear nightmares and her dreams for a reconstructed world. She has displayed
her work on city streets, subways and buses, in major museums, libraries, hospitals, community centers, commercial and university galleries and alternative spaces.

For over three decades she has straddled the high art world and the activist art and community arts worlds, finding it important to share
ideas and art projects in all three, sometimes overlapping contexts. Her work has been discussed in books by Lucy R. Lippard, Suzi Gablik, Paul
Von Blum and Lisa Bloom, as well as in significant journals and newspapers. She is the author of Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the
Frame, New Village Press, 2009 as well as two artist’s books, One Size Does Not Fit All and What Kinda Name is That.

She has taught at Carleton College, Goddard College, Hampshire College, the Institute for Social Ecology and California State University, Long Beach. She shares a home and garden on Vashon Island, Washington with Bob Spivey(founder of SEEDS) and their teenage son, Sam.

Her websites are beverlynaidus.net and www.artsforchange.org and her blog for her current eco-art project is www.edenreframed.blogspot.com

Beverly will be joining us on campus April 5th and 6th.  Her public lecture will be April 6th at 4:15PM in the Keith Room of Lang Center.  She will share a slide presentation on aspects of contemporary activist art practice that have influenced her.