Monthly Archives: November 2018

Anti-Blackness as Latin American Nationalism

Zahira Kelly-Cabrera

Anti-Blackness as Latin American Nationalism

Time/Location: Monday, December 3rd from 4:30pm-5:30pm in the IC Dome (Sproul 201)

Description: You are all invited to Zahira Kelly-Cabrera’s talk on Anti-Blackness as Latin American Nationalism. Zahira Kelly-Cabrera aka @Bad_Dominicana is an AfroDominicana mami, writer, artist, mujerista, award-winning sociocultural critic, and international speaker. She is known for advocating for LatiNegra visibility and rights on social media, and unfiltered social critique, broken down in accessible language. She also aims to pick apart white supremacist capitalist hetero-patriarchy from an anticolonial AfroLatina perspective. The talk is open to the public.

Sponsors: The President’s Office, The Black Cultural Center, The Women’s Resource Center, The Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Development, Spanish Department, The Intercultural Center, Sociology & Anthropology Department, ENLACE, SASS, SOCA, Peace & Conflict Studies Department, Black Studies Program, Latin American & Latino Studies Program, The Interfaith Center, Educational Studies Program, and Religion Department.

CIL@SF trip to meet Swarthmore alums in Silicon Valley

CIL@SFCIL@SF 2.0 = CIL@SF trip + supplemental course to  
Please note that this supplemental course is open to all students.  While students enrolled in “PEAC049: Be the change! Principles in Practice” are encouraged to apply, it is not compulsory as part of the PEAC049 requirement, nor will places be reserved.
 
Check out how to apply below! 
INFO SESSION: Tuesday, November 27th, 12:30pm in Shane Lounge
APPLICATIONS DUE: Friday, November 30th by 11:59pm via Google Form below

Since 2015, the CIL has organized CIL@ SF, a trip for approximately 10 students to meet Swarthmore alums and tour tech related companies in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas. Students have had the opportunity to meet with entrepreneurial alumni who live and work in the region, to learn about their work and their workplaces, and engage with start-up, venture capital, and tech communities. In January 2018, CIL@ SF visited parents, alumni, and colleagues at Google HQ, Ancestry.com, Title Nine, DFJ Ventures, Stitch Fix, OpenTable, and Stanford University’s d.school.

This year the CIL@ SF trip has been redesigned to align more closely with current classes being taught in Swarthmore, and in 2019 will be delivered as a supplement course to PEAC049: Be the Change! Social Entrepreneurship Principles in Practice, delivered by Denise Crossan, Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change. 

The CIL@ SF trip and supplement course is delivered as an engaged scholarship class.  Preparatory classes and in-depth learning experiences combine to give students the opportunity to explore, examine and reflect on theory in practice.  The required class preparation will consist of 4 classes of 2 hours duration delivered prior to Spring Break 2019. Students will be required to work in teams and individually to write short reflective reports on the learning experience throughout the course.  PEAC049A is for zero credit as it is a supplement to PEAC049 for Spring Semester 2019. 

CIL@ SF 2019 Learning Goals:

  • Through case studies, examine a number of society’s “wicked problems”.  Explore the range of contributing issues to wicked problems and the methods employed to find solutions to seemly intractable issues.
  • Understand and explore the principles of social innovation as applied in a number of different scenarios.
  • Examine the knowledge base, experience and career paths of individuals who are social innovators across the public to private spectrum.

Who: 10 Swarthmore students
Where: Start-up, venture capital, and tech communities with a social entrepreneurship or innovation focus + more in San Francisco and Silicon Valley
When: March 10-16, 2019
Cost: $0. All travel, food, and accommodations are covered by the CIL

How to Apply

Registration for this supplemental class will be through a written online application and a short interview. Please note that this supplemental course is open to all students. While students enrolled in “PEAC049: Be the change! Principles in Practice” are encouraged to apply, it is not compulsory as part of the PEAC049 requirement, nor will places be reserved. To apply, students will be asked to submit:

  • A current resume (PDF)
  • An essay, no longer than 1,000 words, (PDF) answering the following questions
    • What do you think you’ll gain from the CIL@ SF Trip?
    • What would you most like to ask or learn from alumni working in social innovation and social entrepreneurship?  

Applications will be reviewed by a CIL panel, and on first round selection based on the essay, students will be asked to attend a short interview. Only 10 students can go on the trip and must confirm that they are available and committed to travel on dates between March10-16, 2019 (Spring Break week). Please note that this supplemental course is open to all students. While students enrolled in “PEAC049: Be the change! Principles in Practice” are encouraged to apply, it is not compulsory as part of the PEAC049 requirement, nor will places be reserved.

 Important Dates!

  • An Information Session on CIL@ SF will be held:  Tuesday, November 27th, 12:30pm in Shane Lounge  
  • Online applications should be submitted by:  Friday November 30th by 11:59pm via Google Form above
  • Interviews will take place: the weeks of December 3rd/10th, Social Innovation Lab
  • Notification by: No later than December 17th

 

Please contact Katie Clark at kclark2 if you have any questions!

Gamelan and Chinese Music Ensemble Perform in Joint Concert

When asked what they hope students get out of participating in their respective music ensembles, Professors Lei Ouyang Bryant and Tom Whitman both make reference to communal music-making as a way to escape the numerous pressures experienced by a typical Swarthmore student.  “I think it is great for Swatties to play music for two to four hours a week amidst the rest of their busy schedules,” says Bryant, co-director of the Chinese Music Ensemble (CME).  Whitman, co-director of Gamelan Semara Santi (Gamelan), which plays music from Bali, Indonesia, puts it a bit more bluntly: “It is my hope that students find in Gamelan a place to rid themselves of the stress that is endemic at Swarthmore.”

Beyond just stress relief, though, Bryant and Whitman hope that their respective groups provide space for community members to either explore a different music culture or celebrate and recognize their own.  Whitman runs Gamelan rehearsals “Indonesian style—without any notation, and with minimal talking or analysis. I’d like our sessions to create a safe space where students can learn about Balinese culture by doing, rather than by reading or talking.”  For her part, Bryant sees the CME “as a valuable site on campus where Asian students, Asian American students, and students interested in Chinese culture can work together and find community with each other.”

Enthusiasm for such a community is evident in the fact that enrollment in CME has more than doubled in its first three semesters.  The ensemble is open to all, although most of this semester’s 25 members came in with some musical training. However, few had experience with traditional Chinese instruments such the guzheng (zither), erhu (bowed fiddle), pipa (plucked lute), yangqin (hammered dulcimer) or dizi (flute).  Bryant’s co-director Guowei Wang, a Shanghai-born erhu artist, arranges folk songs and more recent Chinese and Taiwanese compositions to tailor them to the specific skill levels and talents of the current crop of students.  Bryant describes the CME as “so fortunate to have [Wang] co-directing the ensemble and developing repertoire that everyone, from beginner to advanced, can play within one semester of study.”

Gamelan is also open to students—and Swarthmore community members—regardless of musical background, and is perhaps slightly more accessible to newbies due to the percussive nature of its instruments, which consist of mostly bronze-keyed xylophones, gongs, and drums.  But while hitting a gong might as a technical act be a bit easier than playing a fiddle, for example, the overall musical product is quite complicated, with each person playing an essential rhythmic role. Says senior Aly Ye, who has been a part of Gamelan for all of her four years at Swarthmore, “I love the complexity of the music and the challenge of learning it together, part by part, as an ensemble.”  The tightly interwoven percussive parts result in a soundscape that is, according to Whitman, a “beautiful texture of different layers.”

Another non-sound layer is sometimes added to the mix when Gamelan pieces are accompanied by dance.  Whitman explains that, “in Bali, dance and music are two facets of the same coin,” and that “while there are many pieces of instrumental music that do not accompany dance, all are informed by the spirit and many specific techniques from Balinese dance.”  This close relationship has been evident to Ye, who will dance and play in the upcoming show. She says that “because the dance is so closely tied to the music, I feel like I’ve gained deeper insight into why the music moves and changes in the way that it does…. there are many times when something is emphasized in the music that, when I’m learning the dance, suddenly make more sense.”  Whitman states that his lack of dance training is “one of my biggest weaknesses as a gamelan director. But we are extremely fortunate that our co-directors, I Nyoman Suadin and Latifah Alsegaf, come to campus. They bring to our ensemble that dimension of dance that I am not competent to teach.”

Audiences can come experience this auditory and visual feast in person on Sunday, December 2nd at 3pm, in the Chinese Music Ensemble and Gamelan Semara Santi’s combined end-of-semester concert.  The performance will be held in Lang Concert Hall and is free and open to the public. Families are welcome!

Lydia Roe ’20

Opera, Jazz, Sonatas, and More Featured in Fetter Concerts

On Friday, November 30th at 8:00 pm in the Lang Concert Hall, the semester’s first concert of the Elizabeth Pollard Fetter Chamber Music Program will be held. The Department of Music and Dance has been supporting the Fetter Chamber Program for four decades, allowing student musicians to receive professional coaching. Students must audition in order to participate in the program. Student musicians are then divided into various groups that meet weekly for ten one-hour coached rehearsals, as well as a weekly one-hour self-directed rehearsal. This consistent rehearsal process culminates in a performance at the end of the semester.

Dr. Michael Johns is the current director of the Fetter Chamber Music Program. His role is to help set up the semester, put the programs together, pair groups with appropriate coaches, and monitor how the groups are progressing. In general, the selection of groups, performing partners, and repertoire are student-generated. “When someone expresses an interest in participating but does not have a partner, I help to build a group,” Dr. Johns said.

Although the Fetter Chamber Music Program was put in place to fund coaching for student musicians, the weekly self-directed rehearsal is what ultimately shapes the performance that the audience will see. “This is an important aspect because chamber music is a conversation among equals and members of the group must develop their own internal dialogue,” Dr. Johns said.

Eleven student groups will perform, including duos for flute/piano, violin/piano, two pianos, piano four-hands, and cello/piano; a piano/violin/cello trio; some late Middle Ages, gospel, and opera vocal selections; a jazz combo and an improvisation group. “As you can see it is an eclectic mix with, literally, something for everyone,” Dr. Johns said. “The concerts will span 700 years of musical history, from improv being conceived in the moment to works from the 14th century.”

This year’s preparation for the concert has been quite different than in previous years because some students expressed interest in mounting an opera.

“Preparing for the preview in this semester’s concert has been particularly unusual because we haven’t actually staged the opera yet,” Rebecca Regan ‘19 said. “We’ve had to be creative and put together a semi-staged performance, which communicates the theatricality of the piece in a way that’s presentable and dramatically effective, even in the absence of full blocking.”

Regan will be one of the six featured sopranos in The Audition, which is a one-act comedic opera conceived by Martha Collins. Collins wrote the libretto and arranged music that was originally composed by Franz von Suppé.

“The Audition is unequivocally an ensemble piece, but nevertheless as an opera it goes back and forth between choruses and solos/duets,” Regan said. “Hence, it required an extra degree of flexibility and independence in making sure to do the work we needed to do on our solo parts while working on the choruses together.”

“One lovely thing about this music — the opening number, ‘Audition Jitters,’ in particular — is that the six parts weave together in a number of different ways and each character interacts musically with multiple others,” Regan continued.

The other two pieces that will be performed in the concert had a more traditional preparation process. Berlin Chen ‘19 will be playing the violin in the Piano Trio in a Minor, which was composed by Joseph Maurice Ravel in 1914.

Piano Trio in a Minor follows the standard plan of a piano trio, with the first and fourth movements in sonata form surrounding a scherzo/trio and slow movement. The piece is dramatic in mood due to the many ebbs and flows, and to its large dynamic range.

“Ravel Trio is a tricky piece to play!” Chen said. “For example, there are places where the piano and the strings have different time signatures, so we had to count carefully to make sure we were playing together.”

“Also, the piece has many delicious chords and has interesting use of harmonics in the strings, so I think the performance will be colorful and refreshing.” Chen continued.

Because each semester’s rehearsals and concerts are all unique, student musicians who participate in the Fetter Chamber Music Program always have a chance to challenge themselves and grow.

“It is incredible to hear the amount of growth and maturation from the beginning of the semester to the performance,” Dr. Johns said. “Everyone, without exception, plays up to or exceeds their individual abilities and the students are justifiably proud of their accomplishment.”

Following the first concert on Friday, November 30th will be two more concerts. The second concert will be held on Sunday, December 2nd at 7:30, and the third will be held on Friday, December 7th at 8:00pm.

David Chan ’19

Profile of Dance Minor Ella Small ’19

Ella Small ‘19 is a physics major and dance minor at Swarthmore College. Initially Small did not consider minoring in dance, but she  took dance classes at Swarthmore to have fun and to challenge herself.

“I did not think about minoring in dance until this year (my senior year) when I realized how close I was to finishing the minor, just because I kept taking dance classes for fun,” Small said. “I knew coming into Swat my freshman year that I wanted to explore dance, but I never could have guessed how engrossed I’ve become with the sport through the years.”

Prior to Swarthmore, Small did not have a dance background. She only began taking up dance, specifically ballet, to engage herself in a similar activity as gymnastics.“Before coming to Swat, I was a high-level competitive gymnast for 15 years, but I had never actually danced until taking Ballet I here with Professor Olivia Sabee,” Small said.

Because ballet was unfamiliar, Small found the dance form demanding, but ultimately rewarding because she was able to push past her boundaries. “Dance gives me an opportunity to challenge myself physically and mentally,” Small said.  “Physically, because it is such a demanding sport, and mentally, because I’m a very shy person, and performing does not come naturally to me. Dance gives me the opportunity to be creative and push myself outside of my comfort zone,” Small continued.

Although Small did not possess previous knowledge about ballet, her transition into Swarthmore ballet classes happened smoothly due to the supportive nature of the Dance Program.“The professors in the Dance [Program] were so encouraging when I first started out, and they kept pushing me to take more challenging courses as I progressed,” Small said. “All of my teachers knew the perfect combination of pushing me to become a better dancer, while encouraging me and reminding me of the progress I’ve made.”

Small identifies one professor in particular whose classes were the most difficult for her. “Every class I take with Professor Chandra Moss-Thorne, I think about how those were [some] of the hardest dance classes I’ve ever taken, and I keep thinking that every week,” Small said.

As Small progressed in her dance classes, she learned much more than just technique. “Working my way from Ballet I to Ballet III and learning to dance en pointe, I’ve discovered so much about dance and performance, and also how my body moves in space,” Small said.

Small even took her dance outside of classes, and she joined the Swarthmore dance group Terpsichore during her sophomore year. By Small’s junior year, she began choreographing original pieces, which were performed in the combined Terpsichore/RnM (Rhythm ‘N Motion, a tri-co dance group) dance concert each semester.

“I remember a bit of a stunned silence after the first piece I choreographed went onstage, because the piece was so intense and unexpected, which encouraged me to keep choreographing for Terpsichore!” Small said.

This semester, Small is choreographing two pieces: a large group piece and an acrobatic piece drawing from her circus and gymnastics background for the upcoming Terpsichore/RnM dance concert on December 15th.

Currently, Small is finishing work for her physics major by taking electrodynamics. She is also amidst graduate school applications, applying to schools that offer a PhD in biomedical engineering. “After Swat, I’m hoping to receive a PhD using both my physics and dance knowledge to study human motion and biomechanics, with the eventual goal of perfecting human-robotic interfaces to help people who have lost mobility through stroke or accident move again,” Small concluded.

David Chan ’19

Pianist and Professor Returns to Swarthmore with Music and Monologues

Pianist Hans Lüdemann is returning to Swarthmore College to hold two performances in December. Previously, Lüdemann taught at Swarthmore as a Cornell Visiting Professor during two academic years: 2009-2010 and 2015-2016. In his first year at Swarthmore, Lüdemann taught “Jazz Today” and “African Music,” while in his second year, he taught “Improvisation” and “Jazz History.” One of the reasons why Lüdemann was invited to teach at Swarthmore was his connections to other artists.

“I was able to invite several of the artists I collaborate with to Swarthmore for concerts and workshops such as the TRIO IVOIRE with Aly Keita, singer Chiwoniso, violinist Mark Feldman and the trio ROOMS,” Lüdemann said. “The final performance was a collaboration between the TRIO IVOIRE, saxophonist Andrew Neu, and the College Jazz Ensemble.”

Currently, Lüdemann is not teaching regularly, except for occasional guest lectures and workshops. Instead, he is touring as a solo pianist in China, playing concerts in four cities—Shenzhen, Ruijin, Guangzhou, and Beijing. Furthermore, Lüdemann is associated with an artist with the record labels BMC and Intuition, and with publisher Schott (the original publisher of Beethoven). He is expecting two new releases next year. For 2019-2020, Lüdemann will be very busy working on solo recitals, touring South Africa, and composing an opera to premiere in 2020.

Although Lüdemann is currently stacked with various projects, his main desire in music has never changed. “My main interest always was, and still is, to invent and to create original music and to follow an artistic path of my own,” Lüdemann said. “I have also always been interested in exploring different musical sources and to draw from those sources.”

On Wednesday, December 5th at 12:30pm in Parrish Parlors, the Department of Music and Dance with the Departments of German and Media Studies will present a special lunch hour concert featuring Lüdemann and saxophonist Andrew Neu, who is also director of the Swarthmore College Jazz Ensemble.

Neu is looking forward to reconnecting with Lüdemann and anticipates a spontaneous concert. “We performed together several times during his tenure here, and we always had very natural chemistry,” Neu said. “We haven’t planned what we’re going to do yet, but that’s not unusual for jazz artists.”

For Lüdemann, he does not know what to expect for his upcoming performance because he never performs twice in the same way.

“There will be improvisation with emotional and atmospheric depth and there will be composed pieces and parts that are very melodic and concentrated,” Lüdemann said. “At times the music can be meditative and introspective, in other moments very lively and expressive.”

“It certainly should be an intense, fun, entertaining, and hopefully also moving experience, and the concert will also depend on the communication between artists and public, that plays an essential part in the creative process,” Lüdemann continued.

In addition to the lunch hour concert, Lüdemann will have a performance incorporating Swarthmore student monologues on Thursday, December 6th from 7:00-8:00 pm at Parrish Parlors. This performance originates from a collaborative project between Lüdemann and German writer Antje Ravic-Strubel. “The intention is to develop ideas in a workshop situation that combine the declamation of texts with musical concepts,” Lüdemann said. “It is a new project initiated by German professor Ute Bettray, and I am very curious myself if it will evolve into something very precise and composed, or if the formats we develop will be more of an improvised nature.”

“I always found that Swarthmore was an inspiring place to be, and a great place to develop and sharpen one’s senses and skills, while being embedded in a very cooperative and social environment. I hope Swarthmore still is and will continue to be this kind of a place, and I am glad to become part of that again, even if it is just for some days this time,” Lüdemann concluded.

David Chan ’19

Orchestra Features Amy Barston in Upcoming Concert

As the end of the fall semester approaches, the Swarthmore College Orchestra is preparing for its fall concert, featuring renowned cellist Amy Barston. Barston is one of the Department of Music and Dance’s Featured Artists for the 2018-19 year.

Barston is an incredible musician who has played as a soloist with a number of prestigious orchestras, including a performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of seventeen. She’s also a Juilliard graduate and a cello teacher for the Juilliard Pre-College program, and held a master class for musicians at Swarthmore earlier this month.

The Swarthmore College Orchestra will be playing the Dvorak Cello Concerto with Barston. “When Amy Barston agreed to be one of our Featured Artists this season, we started to talk about what concerto she might play with the orchestra,” recounts orchestra director Andrew Hauze ‘04. “The Dvorak was at the top of both of our lists: not only is it an exquisitely beautiful piece, but it is really symphonic in conception, with a breadth and variety in the instrumental writing that shows Dvorak at his most orchestrally inventive.”

Dvorak was noted to have been originally reluctant to write a concerto for cello, arguing that the cello’s range was utterly unsuited for solo playing with orchestral accompaniment. However, it is now hailed as perhaps one of the greatest concertos of all time, full of beautiful melodic interplay and compelling themes.

Hauze explained his thought process for why he found the Dvorak particularly well-suited for the Swarthmore College Orchestra.

“In an academic setting it’s always best if we can find concerti that will be fulfilling for the orchestra to rehearse alone (without the soloist) for most of the semester, and, in my opinion, the Dvorak has one of the most interesting orchestral parts of any concerto in the standard repertoire. The first movement is on a grand and dramatic scale; the second movement is almost like a wind serenade, filled with prayers, laments, tender beauty, and a funeral march; and the last movement seems to evoke Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances, eventually melting into a ‘long goodbye’ when Dvorak lands in B Major and seems to just want to linger, finding new and ever more beautiful ways to reaffirm our ‘home’ key.”

The other feature for the fall concert is Schumann’s Symphony no. 3. However, this was not the original plan for the fall semester.

“For most of the summer I had planned to pair the Franck D Minor Symphony with the Dvorak concerto,” said Hauze. “I was all set to program it until we had some changes in our personnel: fewer low brass players and not quite as many woodwinds, but lots of new string players! The Franck was no longer as good a fit for our instrumental makeup, and so I decided just before our first rehearsal to substitute Schumann’s Third Symphony.”

Schumann’s Third is a personal favorite of his. “It has magnificent passages for each section of the orchestra. It is also a tremendously life affirming piece and, despite being at times very tiring for the orchestra (as Schumann loves for lots of people to be playing at once), its extraordinary energy and variety of moods make it a deeply satisfying musical experience for player and listener alike. I particularly love the solemn and somewhat creepy fourth movement (a memory of a religious procession outside the majestic Köln Cathedral) that is answered by a jolly and bubbling Finale.”

The Swarthmore College Orchestra’s fall concert is December 1st, at 8:00 pm in Lang Concert Hall.

Andy Zhang ’22

Profile of Dance Major Rachel Isaacs-Falbel ’19

Rachel Isaacs-Falbel, a senior Dance and Anthropology special major, describes herself as “very much a planner.”  Her ultimate career goal has been consistent since high school; she wants to be executive director of a dance company someday.

Isaacs-Falbel has a long relationship with dance.  When she was a young kid, ballet was offered as a consolation after her mom refused previous requests for figure skating or gymnastics lessons.  It ended up sticking, in large part because she loved being onstage, describing herself as “a huge ham, and a huge drama queen.” It wasn’t until junior year of high school that she began to really enjoy ballet not only as an avenue through which to perform but also as a technique itself.  Her appreciation of regular ballet classes deepened as she embraced the practice “as a learning process within [herself],” and not just to achieve an external goal.

And then, she says, “when I came to Swarthmore and became part of the dance department, that’s when it all really hit me.”  Even more so than in high school, studying ballet and other dance forms proved to be a continuous challenge and avenue for personal growth, as teachers and other students here pushed her to be technically better than she ever thought she could be.  “If someone had told me arriving at this school that I would have the control and technique that I have now,” says Isaacs-Falbel, “I would have been like, ‘you are lying, and I can’t do that.’”

But although she was taking technique classes and had “always sort of thought about majoring in dance,” she didn’t seriously consider it as an academic focus until enrolling in The Arts and Social Change with now-retired Professor Sharon E. Friedler.  Having previously thought that studying movement theoretically would be boring, Isaacs-Falbel found that in fact the class “was amazing, and it changed my life.” She continued with Dance and Diaspora, taught by Professor Pallabi Chakravorty, which “touched on the interest I’ve always had in other cultures and learning about the world and the way that people interact.  I saw that I could do that through studying dance.” After a heart-to-heart with professor and mentor Olivia Sabee in her sophomore year, she decided to combine her interests via a special major in Dance and Anthropology.

It’s proven to be a fruitful choice.  Since then, Isaacs-Falbel has studied dance technique and theory abroad in Nice, France, interned at Boston Ballet School, and is currently at work on her thesis, which focuses on diversity initiatives in pre-professional ballet programs.  Ballet companies are overwhelmingly white, and, she explains, “one of the main things that [they] say when they’re asked about this lack of representation is that they just can’t find good dancers. So it’s important to look at what the schools are doing.”  Although she hasn’t finished her research, Isaacs-Falbel suspects that those schools’ efforts aren’t as sincere as they could be and is exploring in part the “idea of diversity as a commodity” and “the way the term has sort of lost all of its civil rights meanings and has been rearticulated to just mean ‘there’s some black people there,’ not that any structural change has been made.”

While she jokes that someday such a critical analysis will automatically disqualify her “from all the jobs I’ve ever wanted,” she plans to stay immersed in academia for a few more years at least, with the hope of going directly to graduate school for dance studies in France.  There, she’ll continue on the trajectory launched by Swarthmore’s program, using dance as a lens through which to investigate both herself and the broader world.

Lydia Roe ’20

No Empires, No Dust Bowls: Lessons from the first Global Environmental Crisis with Dr. Hannah Holleman

Announcing an Upcoming Lecture!

Download and share a flyer.

No Empires, No Dust Bowls: Lessons from the First Global Environmental Crisis

Dr. Hannah Holleman
Assistant Professor of Sociology at Amherst College

Monday, December 3, 2018 from 4:15 pm – 5:30 pm in the Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall, Swarthmore College
This event is free and open to the public. (Campus map)

The 1930s Dust Bowl has become one of the most prominent historical referents of the climate change era amongst scientists and writers. This lecture offers a significant reinterpretation of the disaster with implications for our understanding of contemporary environmental problems and politics. Based on award-winning research and theoretical development, Prof. Holleman reinterprets the Dust Bowl on the U.S. southern Plains as one dramatic and foreseeable regional manifestation of a global socio-ecological crisis generated by the political economy and ecology of settler colonialism and the new imperialism.

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 new threats of dust-bowlification.

Hosted by Peace and Conflict Studies with Co-Sponsorship from the Lang Center for Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility, Environmental Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology

Contact: Molly Lawrence at mlawren1@swarthmore.edu, 610-328-7750