Author Archives: Lee Smithey

Theatre of Witness: Bearing Witness to Stories of Suffering, Transformation, and Peace

Theatre of Witness: Bearing Witness to Stories of Suffering, Transformation, and Peace

A Public Presentation by Teya Sepinuck
Monday, February 9th, 7 pm
Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema
Swarthmore College (directions)
Free and Open to the Public

Join Teya Sepinuck, founder and Artistic Director of Theatre of Witness for an inspiring multi-media program of films and life stories from her work creating original testimonial theater with those whose stories haven’t been heard in society. For the past 29 years, Teya has created Theatre of Witness productions in the US, Poland and Northern Ireland with ex-combatants, victims and survivors of war, prisoners and their families, refugees, and asylum seekers, and those affected by inner city violence, poverty and homelessness. Teya will speak personally about the power of bearing witness and using personal and collective story to inspire healing and peace building both for the performers as well as audiences.

Teya is the founder and artistic Director of Theatre of Witness – a form of performance in which the true life stories of those who haven’t been heard in society are performed by the people themselves as a way for audiences to bear witness to issues of suffering, transformation and peace. She is recently back from Northern Ireland where The European Union awarded two multi-year Peace grants for her work with former soldiers, security forces personnel, and victims and witnesses of the more than 40 years of violence from the ‘Troubles’. The productions have since been made into film documentaries for ongoing dissemination in workshops, and one of her most recent productions has aired on the BBC. Her work humanizes the other and is founded on the premise of ‘finding the medicine’ in stories of deep suffering. Teya’s book, Theatre of Witness, Finding the Medicine in Stories of Suffering, Transformation and Peace was published by Jessica Kingsley Press. Teya taught at Swarthmore College from 1974-2002.

Sponsored by: SWARTHMORE COLLEGE Departments of Music and Dance and Theatre, Programs in Black Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies, the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility and the William J Cooper Foundation

Radical Democracy and Humanism: Intersections between Performance and Action

It is our privilege to be a co-sponsor of events in the David Dorfman Performance Residency!

RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND HUMANISM: INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND ACTION

WITH DAVID DORFMAN DANCE AND OTHERS

Swarthmore College (Departments and Programs of Music and Dance, Black Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Theatre, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility) and the William J. Cooper Foundation present a three-week performance residency RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND HUMANISM: INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND ACTION. Conceived by Professor Sharon Friedler and led by Swarthmore graduate Kate Speer ‘08, the residency centers around engagements with David Dorfman Dance (DDD), a leading American modern dance company known for politically relevant works centered on community responsibility. From February 9 to February 27, 2015, workshops, classes and lectures will address a spectrum of positions and assumptions regarding intersecting issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, politics and the environment.

Participating facilitators include the following scholars and artists: Kate Speer ‘08, who has written and delivered papers on Dorfman’s dances, creative processes, and their connection to radical democracy, Teya Sepinuck, the founder and director of the Theater of Witness model of performance, David Kyuman Kim, a Connecticut College scholar of race, religion, and public life and George Lakey, visiting professor, non-violence advocate and civil rights activist. In the lectures and workshops, selections of David Dorfman’s repertory works will be taught as aids in broadening individual performing range and exposure to these processes will provide a common basis for the study and discussion of different aspects of performance. Discussions will delve into multiple opinions and perspectives in order to encourage participants to begin dialoguing about the questions at stake, effectively employing democratic practices within the concert stage environment. The residency will seek to explore how Dorfman creates dance that de-stigmatizes the notion of accessibility and interaction in post-modern performance and how dance can add a positive challenge to engage audiences in action.

The residency schedule of events free and open to the public at Swarthmore College will be as follows:

1st Week

February 9, 7-9PM, Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema
Presentation:“Theatre of Witness” with Teya Sepinuck

February 12, 4:30 – 6PM, Lang Performing Arts Center Troy Dance Lab (LPAC 2)
Movement Workshop: David Dorfman and the Active Citizen with Kate Speer

February 15, 1-5PM, Lang Performing Arts Center Boyer Studio (LPAC 3)
Workshop: “Theatre of Witness” with Teya Sepinuck

2nd Week

February 19, 4:30 – 6PM, Lang Performing Arts Center Troy Dance Lab (LPAC 2)Master Class in dance: David Dorfman and company

February 19, 7-9PM, Kohlberg 116
“Engaging Human Differences: Teaching Dialogue and Discourse about Race, Religion and Public Life”
Teach-in with David Kyuman Kim

February 20, 8PM, Lang Performing Arts Center, Pearson-Hall Theatre
DDD, PROPHETS OF FUNK

Final Week

February 24, 2:40-4PM, Lang Music 407
Lecture/Discussion: “Between Apathy and Action” with Kate Speer

February 26, 7-10:30PM, Keith Room, Lang Center for Social Responsibility
Workshop:“Get on Your Feet: Organizing for Peaceful Protest” with George Lakey

All events are free and open to the public without reservation. Seating may be limited for some events and is first come, first served.

The central performance event, David Dorfman’s PROPHETS OF FUNK, is on Friday, February 20 at 8PM is in the Lang Performing Arts Center’s Pearson-Hall Theater. DDD celebrates the band’s groundbreaking, visceral, and powerful visions of prophetic love that continue to shine on despite everyday struggles. PROPHETS OF FUNK lifts up the spirit of Sly: that in the face of the funk of life, there are still hopes and aspirations that reside in all of us. The production of PROPHETS OF FUNK was made possible by generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, The New England Foundation for the Arts, National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, and Friends of David Dorfman Dance. Choreographic material for PROPHETS OF FUNK was developed, in part, during residencies at the Tisch Dance Summer Residency Program at New York University and as company-in-residence at Connecticut College.

For further information about these events, contact Tara Webb at 610-328-8260 or lpacevents@swarthmore.edu. These events are free and open to the public without reservations, but space is limited for some of the smaller lectures and workshops. More details about the schedule of events available at: http://www.swarthmore.edu/dance-program and on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Swarthmore-College-Dance-Program/200840063275757

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Black/Latin@ Identity and Solidarity in #Blacklivesmatter Organizing

Rosa Alicia Clemente
Grassroots Organizer, Hip-Hop Activist, Journalist

February 19, 7-8:30pm (ending time subject to change)
Location: Science Center Room 101

Rosa Alicia Clemente is a Black Puerto Rican grassroots organizer, hip-hop activist, journalist, and entrepreneur. She was the vice presidential running mate of 2008 Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. Rosa Clemente

Clemente’s academic work has focused on research of national liberation struggles within the United States, with a specific focus on the Young Lords Party and the Black Liberation Army.While a student at SUNY Albany, she was President of the Albany State University Black Alliance (ASUBA) and Director of Multicultural Affairs for the Student Association. At Cornell she was a founding member of La Voz Boriken, a social/political organization dedicated to supporting Puerto Rican political prisoners and the independence of Puerto Rico.

[Click on the image below to see a larger image of the flyer.]

Deadline for Davis Projects for Peace applications extended!

The deadline for applications for the Davis Project for Peace competition has been extended!

Proposals now due: February 9, 2015, Noon

Open to students from any class year as well as individuals or groups of students, the Davis Project for Peace grant seeks to fund student initiative, innovation, and entrepreneurship that focuses on conflict prevention, resolution, peacebuilding, or reconciliation in the U.S. and around the world.

Questions? Contact Jennifer Magee (jmagee1).

Black History Month – February 2015

Let us draw your attention to this announcement about Black History Month from our friends in The Black Cultural Center

Black History Month – February 2015

The events below are a part of the Black History Month series of events for 2015, sponsored by The Black Cultural Center, Black Studies, The Dean’s Office, The Office of the President, and The Student Budget Committee. We are grateful to the many programs and departments who contributed to the funding of these events.

Black History Month Kickoff Luncheon: Student, Faculty, and Staff Meet and Greet

February 4, 12:30-2pm
Location: Black Cultural Center (BCC)

Join the BCC Community by networking and mingling with faculty, staff, and students. Celebrate with great conversation, a delicious lunch and good tunes.

Kevin Snipes: Uncontained

Exhibition of approximately 16 recent ceramic works

January 22 – February 26

Kevin Snipes embellishes his unconventional ceramic forms with an
inventive array of drawn and painted imagery. Using traditional pottery surface techniques such as mishima and sgraffito, both of which involve carving away part of the surface of the porcelain clay body, he suggests multi-layered narratives. His animated drawings, implied narratives, humorous juxtapositions, and complex surfaces explore the concepts of identity and otherness. Like contemporary artists such as Aaron MacGruder, creator of /The Boondocks /comic strip and British artist, Grayson Perry, Snipes inscribes the rarified medium of porcelain with a vernacular language that is at once confessional, urban, idiosyncratic, and ironic.

Snipes was born in Philadelphia and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He
received a B.F.A. in ceramics and drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1994. After pursuing graduate studies at the University of Florida in 2003, Snipes participated in numerous artist residency programs, including at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia; Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, in New Castle, Maine; Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis; and A.I.R. in Vallauris, France. He received a Taunt Fellowship from the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana in 2008. In 2014, he was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including a at the Society of Arts and
Craft, Boston; AKAR Design, Iowa City; and Duane Reed Gallery, St.
Louis; and Jingdezhen, China.

Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People

Film by Thomas Allen Harris

February 4, 4:30pm
Kohlberg Scheuer Room

Screening followed by panel discussion.Panelists:Deborah Willis, NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Ron Tarver, Swarthmore College

“1969: The Revolutionary Spring of Black Students”

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

February 5, Kohlberg Scheuer Room 4:30pm

From 1965 to 1972, Black students and their allies waged the most transformative antiracist social movement in the history of U.S. education. They organized, demanded, and protested for a relevant learning experience at more than five hundred colleges and universities in every state except Alaska. They pressed for a range of campus reforms, including an end to campus paternalism and racism, and the addition of more Black students, faculty, Black Cultural Centers, and Africana Studies courses and programs. The spring of 1969 was undoubtedly the climax semester of this social movement. From Swarthmore to Cornell, from Duke to Wisconsin, from UCLA to UC Berkeley, Black students and their allies revolutionized the course of higher education for decades to come.

BIO: Dr. Ibram X. Kendi [KEN-DEE] is an assistant professor in the
Department of Africana Studies at the University at Albany — SUNY. He authored the award-winning book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972, the first national study of black student activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His second book is entitled Dead Letters: A Narrative History of Racist Ideas, 1453 to the Present, published by Nation Books. Dead Letters chronicles the fierce, complex, multi-century clash between racist ideas as well as between racist and antiracist ideas, sometimes within one piece of literature. /Dead Letters/ is unique among histories of racist ideas through its use of intersectional theory. It consistently portrays the intersections of racist ideas with notions of gender, class, ethnicity, place, culture, sexuality, and immigration. Dead Letters is also the first transnational history of racist ideas to span from their origination in fifteenth century Portugal, their travel to England by the mid-sixteenth century, their settling in America in the seventeenth century, the blossoming of racist ideas in the United States from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, to their persistence in the twenty-first century.

Dr. Kendi has published twelve essays on the Black Campus Movement, black power, and intellectual history in books and referred academic journals. He has earned research appointments, fellowships, and grants from the American Historical Association, National Academy of Education, Chicago’s Black Metropolis Research Consortium, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Lyndon B. Johnson Library & Museum, Princeton University, Brown University, University of Chicago, Emory, Duke, and UCLA. Currently, Dr. Kendi is working on the first national study of
the origin of Black Studies, Black Students and Black Studies: A
Founding History, 1966-1970.

Student Panel – Black Liberation 1969

Students will present their research on Swarthmore’s Black Student Movement, 1968-1972.

February 10, 4:30-6pm
Kohlberg, Scheuer Room
reception immediately following discussion.

Leandre Jackson Photo Exhibit: Proof of Black Life:The Photography of Leandre Jackson

February 17 – March 15
McCabe Lobby

“Black/Latin@ Identity and Solidarity in #Blacklivesmatter Organizing”*

Rosa Alicia Clemente
Grassroots Organizer, Hip-Hop Activist, Journalist

February 19, 7-8:30pm (ending time subject to change)
Location:SCI 101

Gospel Choir Concert: Make a Joyful Noise

February 21, 4-6pm
Location:Friends Meeting House

Come have your spirits lifted at the Gospel Choir concert! Enjoy songs, dancing and fun. Reception immediately following concert.

“The Black Revolution on Campus: Black Students and the Transformation of Higher Education”

Martha Biondi**

February 26
LPAC Cinema
4:30pm, reception immediately following talk

Activism rocked American campuses in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Black students were at the forefront of this nationwide youth uprising, and they helped push the Black freedom struggle to embrace the radical transformation of higher education. The students faced strong resistance but they won many demands, leaving a legacy that profoundly reshaped campus life in the 1970s and beyond.

Martha Biondi is a Professor of African American Studies and
History at Northwestern University where she currently serves as Chair of the Department of African American Studies. Her book, The Black Revolution on Campus, won the Wesley-Logan Prize for an outstanding study of African Diaspora history from the American HIstorical Association as well as the National Book Award from the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis. She is also the author of the award-winning /To Stand and Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City/, the first book-length study of the civil rights movement in the North.*__*

Black Love Formal

February 28
6pm
Location:Upper Tarble

Join Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges at the annual Black love Formal banquet: A night of mingling, dinner, and dancing.

Contact Louis Laine ’16 at llaine1 for more information.

Prof. Dominic Tierney and Nell Bang-Jensen ’11 Discuss Media and War

Political Scientist Dominic Tierney and Nell Bang-Jensen ’11 recently led a discussion on the media’s responsibilities in times of war.

The discussion followed The Body of An American, which explores the friendship of photojournalist Paul Watson and playwright Dan O’Brien (played by Harry Smith and Ian Merrill). Photo by Alexander Iziliaev.

Swarthmore’s zeal for interdisciplinary studies and collaboration took center stage at the Wilma Theater earlier this month, when Associate Professor of Political Science Dominic Tierney and Nell Bang-Jensen ’11 guided a lively discussion on the media’s responsibilities in times of war.

The discussion followed a performance of The Body of an American, which explores the international repercussions of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. The image skewed the perception of the U.S. intervention in Somalia and may have dissuaded its leaders from intervening in catastrophes such as Rwanda, Tierney says.

Nell Bang-Jensen ’11 cites collaborating with Dominic Tierney and other Swarthmore community members as “a wonderful melding of worlds.”

“The play deals with important issues about the power of photographs in wartime, which resonates with my teaching and research,” says Tierney, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an official correspondent of The Atlantic. “I was excited to participate.”

Prof. Dominic Tierney

One of the actors in the play, Harry Smith, is a friend of Tierney’s. He recommended him as someone who had researched the events in Mogadishu and could lend context to the performance. In what Bang-Jensen deems a “funny coincidence,” it was she who called Tierney to arrange the collaboration.

“I sent him the script in advance so he could get a feel for it and see the connections to his own work,” says Bang-Jensen, who works in the Wilma’s artistic department. “There are different levels on which to interpret the play: How do we come to terms with the idea that war lives inside all of us, and how can we solve these internal wars before we can solve global ones?”

The play centers on photojournalist Paul Watson, who is haunted by what he believes he heard the soldier say right as he took the prize-winning photo: “If you do this, I will own you forever.” Playwright Dan O’Brien, also obsessed with the notion of hauntings, heard Watson tell the story on the radio in 2007, and a friendship bloomed between them. Written by O’Brien and directed by Michael John Garcés, the production runs through February 1.

Tierney’s appearance followed the January 16th performance, which drew a young and socioeconomically diverse audience (thanks partly to the WynTix program that offers $10 tickets to students and theater employees). With the Charlie Hebdo attack in France fresh on everyone’s minds, the audience pondered the media’s obligation to citizens.

“It’s the constant question of how the media can give outsiders a more nuanced view of what’s happening,” says Bang-Jensen, “going beyond these images that often only tell one part of the story.”

Also lending context to the performance was an exhibit of wartime photography in the lobby. It included the work of David Swanson, an embedded correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer in Iraq in 2004 and the husband of Laila Swanson, assistant professor in set and costume design for Swarthmore’s Department of Theater.

Swarthmore’s connections to the Wilma don’t end there, however. Madeline Charne ’14 has been an intern at the theater since June, and Matt Saunders, assistant professor of design and resident set designer, has designed sets for its productions such as Age of Arousal and Angels in America.

“I feel very lucky to be a part of this wonderful melding of worlds,” says Bang-Jensen, who majored in English literature with a theater minor at Swarthmore and then traveled for a year as a Watson Fellow. “It’s so exciting to engage these fellow artists at the professional level, and for these academic conversations to carry beyond the classroom and manifest as art.”

New Spring 2015 Course on South American “Dirty Wars”

A new history course this semester can be counted toward a minor in Peace and Conflict Studies! The course is slated to be offered again during the fall semester 2016.

Digging Through the National Security Archive: South American “Dirty Wars” and the United States Involvement

Professor Diego Armus
History 090o
Mondays 1:15 pm – 4:00 pm in Kohlberg 230

This course offers a critical examination of 1970s Southern Cone Latin American military dictatorships focusing on the making of coups d’état; the successful imposition of neoliberal economic agendas by military-civilian alliances; daily life under state terrorism; national security doctrines; and memories of the so-called “Dirty Wars”. As a research oriented course, the second half of the semester will be devoted to a rigorous exercise of investigation focused on the relations between those Latin American dictatorships and the United States using the National Security Archive and other primary sources.

Martin Luther King Collection and Choir tomorrow

Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection & Gospel Choir performance with violinist Patrick Desrosiers

Friends Meeting House
12:45 p.m., Friday, January 23, 2015

Please join together with faculty, staff, and students for a campus-wide community collection and a special performance from the Gospel Choir and violinist Patrick Desrosiers.

Reception immediately to follow in the Whittier Room.

1969: The Revolutionary Spring of Black Students by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

1969: The Revolutionary Spring of Black Students by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is Professor of Africana Studies at University at
Albany, SUNY

February 5, 2015
4:30-6:00 p.m.
Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall
Swarthmore College (directions to campus)

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is Professor of Africana Studies at University at Albany, SUNY.

Reception to follow.

This is a part of the Black History Month series of events for 2015. Please see The Black Cultural Center’s website for more information on this and other events.

Contact: history@swarthmore.edu

Omar Offendum: hip-hop, poetry, and peace

Omar Offendum will be coming to Swarthmore on Thursday, November 20th to give a hybrid performance/lecture.

In addition to performing some of his songs, he will speak about connections between the artistic community and the Arab uprisings, with a special focus on hip hop. Omar will also discuss his efforts to use art and music to raise humanitarian relief funds for Syrian refugees. Opening performance by OASiS.

Thursday November 20, 2014
4:30-6:30 p.m.
Science Center 101
Swarthmore College (directions)

Omar is a Syrian American hip-hop artist, designer, poet and peace activist. He was born in Saudi Arabia, raised in Washington, DC, and now lives in Los Angeles, California. He tours the world performing at international music festivals, lecturing at major academic institutions, and fundraising for humanitarian relief organizations. Most recently, Offendum has been involved in creating several critically acclaimed songs about the popular democratic uprisings throughout the Middle East & North Africa. He is also working on several new collaborative projects while touring to promote his solo work.

This event is sponsored by the Arabic Section (MLL), the Intercultural Center, the William Cooper Foundation, the Islamic Studies Program, the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, the Department of Music and Dance, and the Muslim Students Association.