Author Archives: Lee Smithey

Decolonizing Education

From our friends in Educational Studies and the Native American Students Association

Discussion: Decolonizing Education

Educational Studies and the Native American Students Association present a discussion between Professor Edwin Mayorga and Dr. Sandy Grande on the role of education in colonialism and the process of decolonizing the education system.

November 19, 4:30-6PM, SCI 101.

Weblinks here: http://critedupolicy.swarthmore.edu/decolonizing-education/ or http://bit.ly/1Skb83V

sandygrandeSandy Grande is an Associate professor and Chair of the Education Department and the Director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Connecticut College. Her research and teaching are profoundly inter- and cross-disciplinary, interfacing critical Indigenous theories with the concerns of education. Her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) is currently being published in a 10th anniversary edition. She has also published several book chapters and articles including: “Accumulation of the Primitive: The Limits of Liberalism and the Politics of Occupy Wall Street,” The Journal of Settler Colonial Studies. ”Confessions of a Fulltime Indian,” The Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, “American Indian Geographies of Identity and Power: At the Crossroads of Indigena and Mestizaje,” Harvard Educational Review; and, “Red-ding the Word and the World” In, Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis. Bloomsbury Academic. New York, New York. Eds. Robert Lake & T. Kress. (2013).

Edwin MayorgaEdwin Mayorga is an Instructor in the Educational Studies Department and Latin American and Latino Studies (LALS) program at Swarthmore College. His research focuses on cultural political economy, U.S. Latinos and urban education & policy, racial/ethnic studies, teacher-lead social movements, and teaching for social justice. Much of his energies are focused on the Education in our Barrios Project, a digital, critical participatory action research (D+CPAR) project that centers on working alongside youth in Latino core communities in Philadelphia and New York City. He is co-editor of the book: What’s Race Got to Do with It? How Current School Reform Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality (Peter Lang; 2015; co-edited with B. Picower). At Swarthmore he is also co-leading the Critical Education Policy Studies group. Prior to Swarthmore, he was an elementary school teacher in New York City and was a member of the educator-activist group, the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE).

Lost Yiddish Songs of the Holocaust

From our friends in History and Music:

LOST YIDDISH SONGS OF THE HOLOCAUST

Tuesday, November  10
1:00 to 2:15
Lang Concert Hall
Lang Music Building

“Avant-bard” singer/songwriter/performer Psoy Korolenko and Professor Anna Shternshis of the University of Toronto bring to life lost Yiddish songs of the Holocaust in this combined concert and lecture.  Written and transcribed by surviving Ukrainian Jewish writers of the Kiev Cabinet for Jewish Culture after World War II as a testament to their struggle for survival, these rare Yiddish artifacts were confiscated and hidden by the Soviet government in 1949.  They have only recently come to light.  Come learn about the incredible stories behind these treasures, savor the music, and revel in the creativity of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors.

Korolenko_Yiddish

Sponsored by the Departments of History, Music and the President’s Office

Witnessing Palestine: Reflections of a Daughter of Holocaust Survivors

Witnessing Palestine: Reflections of a Daughter of Holocaust Survivors

Thursday, November 12, 2015
4:15 PM
Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall, Swarthmore College (directions)

Come hear Eve Spangler’s story as a daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors ) who became a scholar in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Dr. Eve Spangler

Eve Spangler, Assoc. Prof. of Sociology at Boston College.
Photograph Lee Pellegrini

Eve Spangler, associate professor of Sociology at Boston College, serves as a Human and Civil Rights Organizations of America board member, and is a founding board member of American Jews for a Just Peace. Spangler’s new book is Understanding Israel/Palestine: Race, Nation, and Human Rights in the Conflict. For more information, click
here.

sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies, The Cooper Fund, Arabic
Studies, Sociology and Anthropology, and Religious Studies

Sonia Sanchez on Social Movements such as #BlackLivesMatter

From our friends at the Black Cultural Center

Fall 2015 Special Lecture
An Evening with Poet and Activist Sonia Sanchez
Discussing Social Movements such as #BlackLivesMatter

Award-Winning Poet, Playwright, and Activist. One of the most prominent writers of the Black Arts movement, Dr. Sonia Sanchez speaks internationally on black culture and literature, women’s liberation, peace, and racial justice.

November 18, 2015
7:00PM
LPAC Pearson Hall Theater
Swarthmore College (Directions)
Book Sale & Signing *Cash Only

Co-Sponsored by: Office of the President, Black Studies Program, Dean’s Office, English Literature Department, Intercultural Center, LatinX Heritage Month Committee, Swarthmore African-American Student Society (SASS)

Sanchez Swat F2015

Shaanan Streett on Israeli Culture and Music

A discussion of Israeli culture and music with Shaanan Streett

Friday, October 30 at 4:00 p.m.
Kohlberg Hall 228
Swarthmore College (Directions)

Shaanan Streett is one of the most influential and respected cultural voices in Israel today. He is a singer and songwriter for Israeli band Hadag Nahash (“The Sticker Song”). Streett has released 7 albums with the band, as well as 2 albums of his own. He is a screenplay writer (“The Wonders”), a former columnist (Time out Israel), a peace and social activist (who founded The One Shekel Festival), and a lifelong Jerusalemite in a land where nearly the entire cultural scene has migrated to Tel Aviv.

As part of his talk, Shaanan will share with audiences what he sees as the strengths and flaws of Israel today. Through subtitled video clips he will go on to analyze and share the meanings of the lyrics and where he draws from in his writing. Following each clip, questions will be taken from the audience.

While Israel’s art and culture scene has largely moved to Tel Aviv, Shaanan remains one of the most recognizable faces in Jerusalem. Far from leaving, he owns a bar in the Shuk, has written about it for National Geographic and other publications, his children attend a joint Jewish-Arab school and, time and again, has chosen to stay in spite of the difficulties it brings. In the microcosm of Jerusalem, Shaanan will show and discuss where the lines are drawn and how culture crosses those lines. Shaanan will discuss his life as a member of Israel’s leftist political scene.

This event is organized by Swarthmore Students for Israel  and co-sponsored by the History, Political Science, and Peace and Conflict Studies Departments.

 

 

Ultra-Nationalism and the Divinity of Bureaucracy in Israel

Mizrahi Mothers, Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Ultra-Nationalism and the Divinity of Bureaucracy in Israel

ASmadar Lavie
Professor of Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley

Thursday, October 29, 2015
4:30 p.m.
Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall, Swarthmore College (directions)

LavieWrapped

Israeli-American anthropologist Smadar Lavie will discuss her new book, “Wrapped in the Flag of Israel: Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture.” The Mizrahim are the Jews from North Africa and the Middle East who comprise Israel’s majority Jewish population. They suffer from systematic discrimination by Israel’s Ashkenazi Jews who drive Israeli policymaking. Lavie’s is the first English language ethnography about single mothers in the Middle East. This is one of the very few ethnographies about single mothers outside North America. The book explores Israel’s intra-Jewish racial and ethnic conflicts from a feminist perspective. It analyzes how the plight of Mizrahi single mothers relates to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, as well as its tensions with Iran and other neighboring Arab countries. Lavie uncovers the conundrum of loving and staying loyal to a state that
uses its bureaucratic system to repeatedly inflict pain on its
non-European majority who, despite this pain, is willing to sacrifice
their lives for what they conceive of as the state’s security.

Equating bureaucratic entanglements with pain—what, arguably, can be seen as torture, Smadar Lavie explores the conundrum of loving and staying loyal to a state that repeatedly inflicts pain on its
non-European Jewish women citizens through its bureaucratic system. The book presents a model of bureaucracy as divine cosmology and posits that Israeli State bureaucracy is based on a theological essence that fuses the categories of religion, gender, and race into the foundation of citizenship.

SmadarLavie1

Dr. Smadar Lavie

Sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies

From Ferguson to San Francisco: Queer Liberation and Black Lives Matter

“From Ferguson to San Francisco: Queer Liberation and Black Lives Matter”
A conversation with Darnell Moore

Monday, October 5, 2015
7:00 p.m.
Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall, Swarthmore College (directions)

Darnell L. Moore is a Senior Editor at MicNews and Co-Managing/Editor at The Feminist Wire. Along with NFL player Wade Davis II, he co-founded YOU Belong, a social good company focused on the development of diversity initiatives. 

Darnell’s advocacy centers on marginal identity, youth development and other social justice issues in the U.S. and abroad. He has led and participated in several critical dialogues including the 58th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women; the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington National Panel on Race, Discrimination and Poverty, the 2012 Seminar on Debates on Religion and Sexuality at Harvard Divinity School, and as a member of the first U.S. delegation of LGBTQ leaders to Palestine in 2012.

A prolific writer, Darnell has been published in various media outlets including MSNBCThe GuardianHuffington PostEBONYThe AdvocateOUT MagazineGawkerTruth OutVICEGuernicaMondoweissThought CatalogGood Men Project and others, as well as numerous academic journals including QED: A Journal in GLBTQ World MakingWomen Studies QuarterlyAda: A Journal of GenderNew Media & TechnologyTransforming Anthropology, Black Theology: An International Journal, and Harvard Journal of African American Policy, among others.

Darnell has held positions of Visiting Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Yale Divinity School, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University and the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. He is presently Writer-in-Residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexuality, and Social Justice at Columbia University. He has taught in the Women and Gender’s Studies and Public Administration departments at Rutgers University, Fordham University, City College of New York City and Vassar College. Darnell has also provided keynote addresses at Harvard University, Williams College, Stony Brook University, New Jersey City University, Stanford University, and the New School.

Darnell received the 2012 Humanitarian Award from the American Conference on Diversity for his advocacy in the City of Newark, where he served as Chair of the LGBTQ Concerns Advisory Commission. He is the recipient of the 2012 Outstanding Academic Leadership Award from Rutgers University LGBTQ and Diversity Resource Center for his contributions to developing the Queer Newark Oral History Project. He received the 2013 Angel Award from Gay Men of African Descent and the 2014 Gentleman of the Year Award from the Gentlemen’s Foundation. He was listed as a one of Planned Parenthood’s Top 99 Dream Keepers in 2015 and was featured in USA Today’s #InTheirOwnWords multimedia feature on contemporary civil rights activists. He assisted in organizing the Black Lives Matters Ride to Ferguson in the wake of Mike Brown’s tragic murder.

Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and co-sponsored by the President’s Office, the Black Cultural Center, the Intercultural Center, Sociology/Anthropology, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Black Studies.

Darnell_Moore_F2015

 

 

All of Us or None: Responses & Resistance to Militarism

All of Us or None: Responses & Resistance to Militarism

Across the globe, militarism directly impacts all of our lives. The American Friends Service Committee’s new traveling exhibition, All of Us or None, examines the effects of militarism at both the foreign and domestic policy levels. It also highlights alternatives and positive nonviolent solutions.

Exhibition:  October 7–November 17, 2015
McCabe Libary Atrium, Swarthmore College

Panel Discussion and Opening Reception
October 8, 4:30 p.m.
McCabe Libary Atrium, Swarthmore College (directions)

Panelists: Sa’ed Atshan (Moderator), Nanci Buiza, Sharon Friedler, Keith Reeves, and Lee Smithey

Download a flyer and a postcard.

AFSC Exhibit Fall 2015

Sponsored by Peace & Conflict Studies and Swarthmore College Libraries.

Tweet your reactions to #HumanizeNotMilitarize.


 

Israel/Palestine Film Series – Fall Semester 2015

The Peace and Conflict Studies program invites you to an Israel/Palestine Film Series this semester.

All six screenings will be held on Wednesdays at 4:15pm in the Lang Performing Arts Center (LPAC) Cinema. (Directions)

The screenings are open to the public and faculty, staff, administrators, students, and local community members are welcome to attend. A brief moderated discussion will follow each film.

A trailer for each film is available below.

IsraelPalestine Film Series Fall 2015

September 16

Frontiers of Dreams and Fears

Palestinian filmmaker traces the pen-pal relationship between Palestinian teenage girls in Bethlehem and Beirut refugee camps.

https://vimeo.com/21738227

September 23

The Flat

Israeli filmmaker discovers the history of his grandparents who previously had a relationship with a high ranking Nazi officer.

September 30

The War Around Us

American filmmaker follows the only two international journalists who covered the 2009 Israel-Hamas War in Gaza.

October 7

Promises

Israeli filmmaker documents a group of Israeli and Palestinian children meeting for the first time in and around Jerusalem.

October 21

Paradise Now

Palestinian filmmaker produces this Academy Award-nominated fiction film examining the final hours before two Palestinian friends prepare to commit acts of violence in Tel Aviv.

https://youtu.be/Xi9yiGePxKw

November 4

Eyes Wide Open

Israeli filmmaker produces this breathtaking fiction film examining a love affair between two Orthodox Jewish men in Jerusalem.

Sponsored by Swarthmore Peace and Conflict Studies