Gordon Parks, “Mrs. Jefferson,” from the series Fort Scott Revisited (Photo courtesy of The Gordon Parks Foundation)

“Homeward to the Prairie I Come” features more than 75 of Parks’ images, examining his wide-ranging artistic ideas. The exhibition not only includes Parks’ documentary photography such as the series Paris Fashions, Fort Scott Revisited and The Redemption of the Champion��(featuring images of Muhammed Ali), but also his thoughts on photography as a fine art medium and his engagement with celebrated paintings and sculptures.

Most significantly, the photographs instigate cultural change by challenging viewers to imagine a more inclusive culture than the one they know: a world where Black skin represents ideal beauty, where an African American athlete embodies the exemplary hero and where an artist of African heritage has a place within the lineage of excellent artists in Western art history.

“This exhibition leverages the power of art to catalyze dialogue about the wide range of issues that Parks engaged with in his photography, from systemic racism to the labor and ethics of the global fashion industry to ideas of celebrity and home,” says Melissa Yuen, the ���ܲ���ܳ�’s interim chief curator.

Interim director of the museum Emily Dittman says, “Gordon Parks was a visionary interdisciplinary artist whose work had a lasting impact on the world. His dedication to continually tell the stories of individuals that were—and still are—too often hidden and overlooked is clearly evident and inspiring throughout his artistic work.”

In this spirit, the museum is taking steps to creating an accessible, diverse and multilingual space for all communities and families. The interpretive text in the exhibition is bilingual, providing both English and Spanish text for visitors, large-type text will be available and a family guide is provided to help youth and families explore the exhibition. An open access digital exhibition catalog for the exhibition will be available for visitors in the reflection area, as well as reading materials on Gordon Parks and his multifaceted career. The exhibition will be accompanied by a dynamic slate of public programming, all free and open to the public.

Co-curated by Aileen June Wang, Ph.D., curator, and Sarah Price, registrar, at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, the tour is organized by Art Bridges. The exhibition and related programs have been made possible by generous support from Art Bridges, the Wege Foundation and the Humanities Center (Syracuse Symposium).

About the Artist

Parks, one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, was a humanitarian with a deep commitment to social justice. He left behind an exceptional body of work that documents American life and culture from the early 1940s into the 2000s, with a focus on race relations, poverty, civil rights and urban life. Parks was also a distinguished composer, author and filmmaker who interacted with many of the leading people of his era—from politicians and artists to athletes and celebrities.

Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912, Parks was drawn to photography as a young man when he saw images of migrant workers taken by Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographers in a magazine. After buying a camera at a pawn shop, he taught himself how to use it. Despite his lack of professional training, he won the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942; this led to a position with the photography section of the FSA in Washington, D.C., and, later, the Office of War Information (OWI). Working for these agencies, which were then chronicling the nation’s social conditions, Parks quickly developed a personal style that would make him among the most celebrated photographers of his era. His extraordinary pictures allowed him to break the color line in professional photography while he created remarkably expressive images that consistently explored the social and economic impact of poverty, racism, and other forms of discrimination.

Featured Events

• Opening Reception and Keynote—Sept. 6, 4-6:30 p.m.; keynote: 4-5 p.m., 160 Link Hall; reception: 5-6:30 p.m., Syracuse University Art Museum
• The Duke Ellington Orchestra presented in partnership with the Malmgren Concert Series—Sept. 22, 4 p.m.; Hendricks Chapel, with reception to follow at the Syracuse University Art Museum
• Community Screening of “Shaft” (1971), directed by Gordon Parks—Oct. 4, 7 p.m.; The Westcott Theater, 524 Westcott St., Syracuse
• Community Day—Oct. 5, noon-4 p.m.; Syracuse University Art Museum
• Art Break: Gordon Parks with Nancy Keefe Rhodes—Oct. 16, noon;��Syracuse University Art Museum
• Celebrating the Legacy of Gordon Parks—Nov. 9, noon-4 p.m.; Syracuse University Art Museum;��1 p.m.: Art Break with contemporary photographer Jarod Lew; 2:30 p.m.: screening of “A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks” (2021)
• Gordon Parks Community Gathering/Showcase—Dec. 7, timing TBD;��Deedee’s Community Room, Salt City Market, 484 S. Salina St., Syracuse

Visit the for event information. Members of the media may contact Emily Dittman, interim director of Syracuse University Art Museum, for more information or to schedule a tour.

[Featured image: Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks, “Mrs. Jefferson,” from the series Fort Scott Revisited, 1950, printed in 2017, gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches. Kansas State University, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, gift of Gordon Parks and the Gordon Parks Foundation, 2017.373. Image courtesy of and copyright by The Gordon Parks Foundation]

When students in the College of Arts and Sciences enroll in Associate Professor class on writing and rhetoric, they likely think, correctly, that they will learn the foundations of good writing across various genres. However, they may not imagine that Berry’s vision for the class involves a less tangible side effect: building community. And that community fostered through the experience of writing and sharing work inspired Berry to found .

This year, for the second time, Berry will be awarded a $25,000 to fund his work with Project Mend, an online and print magazine of works by people impacted by the criminal justice system. This grant recognizes that virtually every participant at Project Mend, including Berry himself, has had their life touched by incarceration.

Project Mend team members (from left) Katherine Nikolau ’24, Michael J. Willacy and Patrick W. Berry giving a lecture at Syracuse Stage.

“We don’t always acknowledge family members in the equation of justice-impacted people, but we have to when we’re talking about impact,” says Berry, whose father was incarcerated while he was growing up. “Project Mend brings a group of people together to work on a national publication called “Mend,” but also, as a part of that, to engage in humanities-based programming.”

“Mend,” whose second issue is currently underway, exists as both a print and open-source publication. Participants, all formerly incarcerated or from incarcerated-impacted families, come to campus weekly to work on it. “We do a range of activities, from reading manuscripts to designing layouts,” says Berry. Activities include meeting publishing professionals, learning how to edit documents, how to work with images and how to make pages. The year ends with a published issue. “It’s gotten popular, so now I have more manuscripts coming in from around the country,” says Berry.

Crucially, the grant funds stipends for all the participants. In addition, the money allows Berry to bring in speakers and guests from the field, and also to offer refreshments—something that he finds to be key for fostering community. The group marks the publication of an issue with a large launch party, both virtual and in-person. “We just had a launch event in February, with a great turnout—even [New York State Senator] Rachel May was there—and it was at the Central Library in downtown Syracuse. People bring their families and friends and it’s really a celebration.”

Project Mend team members at the journal launch party in February.

Notably, this is not your typical prison publication. “You won’t see bars on the cover,” says Berry. There is no prison theme; writers are not required to talk about their experiences in prison or the problems of the criminal justice system. “Those pieces are in here, and they’re welcome,” says Berry, “but for example, one person wrote a love poem. One person wrote a sci-fi piece that’s a little out there.” Beyond pushing participants to stretch their writing skills, Berry says, “People are writing themselves into new identities. We wanted to create a space for that, to not always have their identity trace back to prison.”

In the same vein, Berry insists on the importance of separating the value of each individual’s experience from simple job training. “Sometimes the liberal arts seem like something that only the elite get access to. I think that is problematic,” he says. “We all need to take advantage of the rich opportunities that are available through learning, whether you’re a formerly incarcerated person or a Syracuse student.”

Project Mend is made possible through collaboration with the Center for Community Alternatives and from an HNY Post-Incarceration Humanities Partnership, which is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation. Additionally, the project has been supported at Syracuse University by the Engaged Humanities Network, the Humanities Center, the SOURCE, the Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, and a CUSE research grant.

This story was written by Lesley Porcelli.

A one-day symposium April 19, supported by the Central New York Humanities Corridor, will explore how philosopher Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Toward Perpetual Peace” can help lay the foundation for lasting peace.

Philosopher Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Toward Perpetual Peace” still holds significant relevance even now more than two centuries after it was first published. With ongoing wars across the globe, securing peace remains elusive.

An upcoming will explore how Kant’s principles can help lay the foundation for lasting peace. The symposium is supported by the , whose administrative home is based at the . The event, “” will be held Friday, April 19, at Cornell University, with a symposium and workshop on one of Kant’s most widely read essays, Zum ewigen Frieden (“Toward Perpetual Peace”).

The symposium, as part of the , is organized by , Dean’s Professor of the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences and a founder and co-director of the Perpetual Peace Project, and , director of the Institute for German Cultural Studies and associate professor in the Department of German Studies and Graduate Field of Comparative Literature at Cornell University.

The Perpetual Peace Project, an ongoing international forum on the concept of peace, began as an initiative of the Humanities Center in 2008.

Gregg Lambert

“The purpose of the project is to raise awareness and attention to the fact that war is not one regional issue,” Lambert says. “It is a global issue, and the number of wars only seems to increase each year.”

Open to the public, Friday’s symposium, which also is a celebration of Kant’s 300th birthday, will begin with three individual papers that examine different aspects of Kant’s treatise and its contemporary relevance.

“Kant’s popular essay was reviewed and cited as an inspiration by numerous thinkers from the start,” Gilgen says. “Anyone thinking about peace and what it means and implies had/has to take Kant’s profound remarks into account.”

The treatise served as an inspiration for the League of Nations, the first worldwide intergovernmental organization, founded in 1920, as well as its successor organization, the United Nations, in 1945.

“At the symposium, we hope to draw on a wide audience interested in Kant’s political philosophy as well as the theory and practice of peace—a topic that could not be more timely in light of the many ongoing conflicts in different parts of the world,” Gilgen says.

Peter Gilgen

The second half of the event is dedicated to a workshop on the Perpetual Peace Project.

Lambert, who is also founding director of the Syracuse University Humanities Center in the College of Arts and Sciences, and , associate professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering, Arizona State University, and co-director of the Perpetual Peace Project, will present the workshop, which will launch the Perpetual Peace Academy. The academy will feature a curriculum created by faculty from all over the world, contributing designs of courses that they would teach in a virtual setting.

“We are really trying to engage students on all campuses and other participants in talking about the Perpetual Peace Project, and then we’re going to inaugurate the Perpetual Peace Academy,” Lambert says. “The academy will be driven by international faculty who want to contribute their ideas from across the disciplines.”

Along with his presence at the symposium, Nocek also joined Lambert in Lambert’s undergraduate seminar, , Tuesday for a discussion with students, and other participants, about the Perpetual Peace Academy. Nocek’s time at the symposium and in the seminar is supported as part of Syracuse University’s Distinguished Visiting Collaborator (DVC) initiative of the CNY Humanities Corridor.

Adam Nocek

Vivian May, director of the SU Humanities Center and lead director of the CNY Humanities Corridor, says the scholar mini-residency bridges the Syracuse University campus with another corridor campus, a model that deepens collaborative networks.

“In conversation with Lambert, Gilgen, and a range of other interlocutors over the course of his visit,��, founding director of the Center for Philosophical Technologies at Arizona State University, will discuss the importance of philosopher Immanuel Kant’s yet-to-be-realized concept of ‘perpetual peace,’” May says. “I encourage everyone who can to engage with this year’s DVC events and activities, as they offer an important opportunity for us to step back, refuse broad acceptance of violence and devastation, and actively pursue planetary peace—a peace that centers climate justice and holistic thriving.”

Since its start in 2008, the Perpetual Peace Project, structured around Kant’s six preliminary articles, has gone through three phases, with the first at Syracuse University and the United Nations in New York. This first phase included a co-edited and re-issue of a new book publication of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” and several different events.

In partnership with the Humanities Center and the Centre for Humanities at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the second phase from 2013-15 included a series of events commemorating the Treaty of Utrecht and a documentary film.

Vivian May

This latest phase has reinaugurated the project following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. Lambert partnered with Nocek to kick off this latest phase, including a launch event conference at the University of Warsaw, Poland, followed by conferences at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy and the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, both in the Czech Republic.

Friday’s symposium features a presentation by Gilgen, moderated by Elke Siegel, German studies, Cornell; a presentation by Patchen Markell, associate professor, government, Cornell, and moderated by , Renée Crown Professor in the Humanities and assistant professor, College of Arts and Sciences, Syracuse University; and a presentation by Neil Saccamano, associate professor, literatures in English, Cornell, and moderated by , associate professor, philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, Syracuse University.

For this latest phase, Lambert edited a new version of Kant’s original treatise, which has been published and is available for event participants.

Krushil Watene, Peter Kraus Associate Professor in Philosophy, University of Auckland, New Zealand

This spring, the welcomes a visit by renowned Māori scholar, moral and political philosopher, Krushil Watene. She is a member of the Māori tribal communities of Ngāti Manu, Te Hikutu, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and the Pacific Island of Tonga (Hunga, Vava’u). Watene is the Peter Kraus Associate Professor of Philosophy, and associate professor, faculty of arts, at the University of Auckland/Waipapa Taumata Rau, Aotearoa New Zealand. She will be in residence on campus as the .

The center provides major support for a faculty member to organize the Watson Professorship. This year, two College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) faculty members are partnering to host Professor Watene, each bringing distinct expertise and leadership capabilities: Professor , associate professor of philosophy, and , assistant professor of Native American and Indigenous studies and environmental justice.

Watene’s scholarship draws on Indigenous philosophies to address climate change. For example, she suggests that people can transform how they think about the environment by looking through the lens of “kaitiakitanga,” the Māori concept of stewardship of the sky, sea and land. This mindset, rooted in a deep connection to history, ancestors and the environment, offers valuable wisdom for informing policy and law and helping cultivate a healthier, more reciprocal relationship between humans and the environment.

, the title of Watene’s residency, will address fundamental questions in ethics, politics and Indigenous philosophy. In particular, Watene will explore various philosophical traditions, emphasizing the essential contribution of local communities to achieve global change. Watene’s areas of expertise include mainstream theories of well-being, development and justice, intergenerational justice and Māori philosophy.

“We are honored to welcome Krushil Watene as the Watson Professor this spring,” says , director of the Humanities Center and professor of women’s and gender studies, both in the College of Arts and Sciences. “At a time when we are confronting environmental crises on multiple fronts, we need solutions to climate change that draw from diverse knowledges and experiences, and that foreground the humanities’ important role in our collective future. Watene brings a depth of expertise grounded in Māori philosophy and in her own community engagement and climate justice work in Aotearoa New Zealand.”

Professors Erlenbusch-Anderson and Huambachano collaborated to host Watene for the Watson Professorship because of her important contributions to contemporary Western philosophy and scholarship on intergenerational justice. They agree that her body of work provides crucial guidance in finding solutions to environmental degradation and climate change by robustly embracing Indigenous philosophies that consider obligations to future generations, as well as ancestors.

“Professor Watene’s work exemplifies the social and political urgency of philosophy and shows how transformative philosophy can be when it is grounded in a commitment to justice, connected to local Indigenous communities and in dialogue with other disciplines,” says Erlenbusch-Anderson. “Her work provides a striking contribution to contemporary philosophy by foregrounding Indigenous values as an innovative way to ensure a sustainable future.”

“From a local to a global scale, Professor Watene’s research highlights the valuable role that Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies and ethics play in improving planetary health,” says Huambachano. “Her work urges humanity to listen to and learn from Indigenous philosophies about our responsibilities to build resilient communities in which both human and non-human entities, like rivers, forests and the Earth itself, can thrive in unison, paving the way for present and future generations to live in flourishing communities.”

Watene will headline six public scholarly events. These will draw on her research on Indigenous conceptions of well-being and sustainable development, including insights from Māori tribal communities and how these are influencing policy and law.

Her two-week residency includes the following opportunities to engage:

Wednesday, March 20, 4-5:30 p.m.

Watene discusses how Indigenous philosophies are inherently good for equitable social, economic, environmental and cultural development. Also, she shares insights on sustainable development, achievable through the proven methods of Māori communities.

Thursday, March 21, 4-5:30 p.m.

Faculty working in the fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies and Philosophy join Watene to discuss reconciliation, transitional and Indigenous justice.

Friday, March 22, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. (Space is limited, registration required.)

A three-part interdisciplinary graduate student workshop on reclaiming Indigenous philosophy, including the Māori philosophy of kaitiakitanga (stewardship), and how these philosophies are transforming policy and law. Interested students should follow the link for all details and requirements.

Public lecture: Monday, March 25, noon-1:30 p.m.

Watene highlights key Māori concepts for intergenerational justice, showcasing how Indigenous philosophies foster relationships, regeneration and innovation. She suggests that applying these perspectives to policy-making can empower communities and cultivate lasting collective responsibility for climate justice.

Public dialogue: Friday, March 29, 3-4:30p.m.

Kyle Whyte from the University of Michigan and Syracuse University’s Mariaelena Huambachano will join Watene to discuss the impact of Indigenous philosophies, leadership and diplomacy on global justice and policy development. They draw from Whyte’s experience with the White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, Watene’s service on the UN Human Development Reports and International Science Council’s Committee, and Huambachano’s work with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the UN High-Level Panel Experts on Food Security and Nutrition.

A closing reception will be held on Friday, March 29 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at Hendricks Chapel.

All events are free and open to the public. Read all the details about these events, including date, time and location on the .

About the Watson Professorship

The Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professorship in the Humanities is a distinguished lectureship founded by the Watson family with the aim of fostering on-campus residencies for distinguished scholars, writers, and artists in the humanities. Individuals who have previously held this professorship include Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis and Toni Morrison.

Those appointed as Watson Professors actively participate in the University community through various means, such as delivering public lectures, conducting mini-seminars, engaging in readings or performances, and more. Their residency extends over a significant duration within a semester, or they may opt for a series of brief visits throughout the academic year. Starting this year, the Watson Professorship will be awarded biennially to maximize its funding and potential for collaboration. The center’s next call for Watson Professor proposals will be in fall 2024 for a spring 2026 mini-residency.

Additional Syracuse University departments and centers that are supporting this year’s Watson Professors residency with Watene include anthropology, the Engaged Humanities Network, Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics’ food studies, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs’ geography and the environment, Hendricks Chapel, the Native American and Indigenous Studies program, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, philosophy, religion and sociology.

�ճ����, in the (A&S), offers key grants and fellowships to graduate students that allow them to advance their projects and share their ideas beyond the walls of the University. Two such opportunities include�������Ի���

“Advancing graduate student research is so important. As the work of this year’s dissertation fellows and public humanities grantees amply illustrates, graduate students are pushing the boundaries of their fields and advancing the humanities in new ways for the 21st century,” says��, director of the Humanities Center. “Their projects explore how we think about transnational and cross-cultural solidarity movements to address legacies of settler colonialism; how we experience and navigate linguistic interactions; how we think about visual, photographic and historical archives—and address absences within them; and how we can use photography and literature to foster a positive transformation in ourselves and wider communities. We invite the broader community to join us for conversation and engagement with these cutting-edge scholars this spring.”

Humanities Center Dissertation Fellowship Recipients

The Humanities Center Dissertation Fellowships are competitive one-year awards in the form of stipends that allow the awardees, who are in their final year of their doctoral programs, to focus on completing their dissertations and immersing fully in their research without the demands of teaching.

To be eligible, students must be completing dissertations in Ph.D. programs at A&S in English, philosophy, religion or writing. (.) Selected fellows benefit from a support system within the Humanities Center, camaraderie with one another and the opportunity to present their work to an interdisciplinary audience.

The Humanities Center will hold a virtual��, where this year’s cohort will engage in dialogue and Q&A about their respective projects on Friday, Feb. 16, at 10:30 a.m. To register, visit the .

Çağla Çimendereli,��Ph.D. candidate, philosophy

Çağla Çimendereli

Çağla Çimendereli’s dissertation,��, identifies a new aspect by adopting an existentialist approach to spoken language, shifting the focus from the goals of speaking to the act of speaking itself.

As a native of Turkey, when she came to the U.S. to earn a Ph.D., she started noticing that occasionally using a foreign language for basic communication and academic discussion was quite different from existing in a foreign language while trying to be a free and authentic person. After discussing her experience with other nonnative speakers at the University, she realized there was a common lack of understanding of the phenomenon.

Çimendereli noted that speaking a foreign language was often considered a privilege or additional power, and that linguistic norms and practices help determine what language is spoken, often oppressing nonnative speakers in ways that have been ignored. Her experiences led her to question how these two simultaneous modes in nonnative speaking can be reconciled, which became the focus of her dissertation.

“It seems clear to me that there are many people who experience agency-restrictiveness of nonnative speaking, but the traditional frameworks for understanding language speaking do not allow for open discussion,” says Çimendereli. “Exposing the structural/systemic aspects of these experiences helps those affected better understand that if they are feeling powerless and inauthentic, there are reasons, and that is not simply their own failure. I’m hoping to initiate a new way of discussing linguistic agency in philosophy, which I believe will better guide the linguistics justice debates in political theory, sociolinguistics and language education.”

Florencia Lauria,��Ph.D. candidate, English

Florencia Lauria

Florencia Lauria’s dissertation,��, puts Indigenous and Latinx studies in dialogue by examining border narratives in contemporary novels and films. Her research looks at reading borders as sites of profound tension for Latinx migration and Indigenous sovereignty and addresses materials that range from novels and fantasy and science fiction to historical archives and climatology reports.

The project examines settler colonial histories and environmental injustices in the Americas from Argentina to Canada. Her dissertation aims to refocus the conversations about Latinx and Indigenous contemporary literatures around borders that are not places for comradery and healing but instead unresolvable “unfriendliness” between contested positions. She poses what kind of shared political future is possible for migrant and Indigenous subjects given the turbulent landscapes in which they meet.

“Literature can highlight important inter- and intragroup relations, establishing common ground between different justice movements and providing avenues of collective resistance against colonial racial capitalist structures,” she says. “In some cases, it can also elude important differences between justice projects, such as land back campaigns or anti-deportation campaigns. My project is interested in challenging easy connection, which I argue do disservice to these relations in the long run. My hope is that by highlighting difference and non-equivalence, my work will contribute to more profound solidarities between justice projects.”

Humanities New York Public Humanities Grants Awardees

A joint initiative between the Humanities Center and the��, these competitive grants are awarded by Humanities New York (HNY) to support publicly engaged humanities projects that foster meaningful public partnerships and strengthen the role of the humanities across New York state communities.

Recipients of the Humanities New York Public Humanities grants also have the chance to take part in various networking events and workshops designed to develop greater skillsets and expertise. (.)

The Humanities Center will host a virtual��, where this year’s cohort will engage in dialogue and Q&A about their respective projects on Wednesday, April 10, at 10 a.m. To register, visit the .

Chelsea Bouldin,��University Fellow, Ph.D. candidate, School of Education

Chelsea Bouldin

Chelsea Bouldin, who was recently awarded an��Imagining America Publicly Active Graduate Education fellowship, was selected for a Humanities New York grant for her work, So be it; See to it: An Archiving Project.

Bouldin’s interest in this topic comes from her understanding that elitist, exclusionary institutions often house the archives of public figures whose insights offer potential frameworks for a fuller understanding of people’s histories, present and future—something particularly true for marginalized communities with less access to these institutions and whose histories have been disproportionately subject to being erased from mainstream education.

With this understanding, Bouldin has combined her work in archival research on Octavia E. Butler, one of the first African American female science fiction writers, with her commitment to public-oriented scholarship to explore how she could extend her project beyond academia to include public influence. Curating Butler’s work to form a Black women-centered community-based project in Syracuse, Bouldin aims to showcase how their respective histories in particular offer transformative tools to engage the present for those who have limited “windows and mirrors” to see themselves through literature.

“It is my deep hope that this project will impact my area of research by widening our consideration of archives as sites of epistemic resources and as a model of expansively ‘doing’ scholarship,” Bouldin says. “I also hope this exemplifies the ways that singular academic projects can be creatively shared in a multiplicity of iterations across difference. This project verbalizes imagination, which is critical to my area of research.”

Caroline Charles,��Ph.D. student, English/film and screen studies

Caroline Charles

Another Humanities New York grant was awarded to Caroline Charles for her project,��Family Pictures Syracuse/Turning the Lens Collective. Charles’ inspiration comes from research done for her dissertation,��Practices of Black Visual Archive in Film, which examines how Black filmmakers utilize archival materials inside their work, as well as from her work co-curating an archival exhibition,��A Love Supreme: Black Cultural Expression and Political Activism of the 1960s and 1970s, inside Syracuse University Libraries Special Collections Research Center.

As part of her dissertation research, she encountered the work of����and his own community engagement project, which encourages local communities to share stories through their family photographs. This motivated her to collaborate with The Family Pictures Institute, as well as students and staff at Syracuse University, to create a Syracuse community-based project around family photographs. A native of Syracuse, Charles hopes her work might inspire others to do a dissertation project, thesis or other form of scholarly research that involves the greater Syracuse community.

“The photographs we take, display in our homes or keep in family albums are sites for public memory—windows into stories that too often go unseen and underwritten,” she says. “My hope is that this project will allow participants to see the value in their own photo archives, and that will inspire the community to narrate the stories behind their photographs to ensure that our histories are not lost or overlooked. Finally, I hope that the project will be an opportunity to connect the community to our local archives and learn more about the services and resources they provide.”

The lineup features lectures, art exhibitions and conversations that invite us as a community to immerse in art, narrative and architecture to raise our awareness about the environmental impacts of chemicals, mass extinction and colonialism. The events invite us to deepen a sense of ecological care, unpack environmental ethics and explore reproductive justice issues in a post-Roe world.

Contemplating Syracuse Symposium’s earlier this year, , director of the Humanities Center and of the Central New York Humanities Corridor, noted that the annual series is core to the center’s mission to advance humanities research, showcase the humanities as a public good and enhance our sense of shared community by bringing people together to confront some of the most pressing issues of our time.

“Connecting humanistic inquiry and expertise with broad questions of social justice and public welfare is fundamental to the Syracuse University Humanities Center’s mission,” observes May. “This spring, Landscapes explores complex global and local issues tied to our natural and built environments, but also our cultural and political landscapes. Whether through art, by learning from ancient trees, or by listening to reproductive justice advocates and health care workers on the ground, Landscapes examines the complex interplay of politics, histories and memories in shaping the diverse environments around us.”

Spring Symposium Events

The 2024 Spring Symposium kicks off on Feb. 13 with . Landscape architect Julie Bargmann (FASLA) will discuss imaginative strategies in architecture and design that reveal rather than conceal the chemical aspects and physical legacy of the built environment and post-industrial sites.

On Feb. 22, a lecture, , by philosopher Timothy Morton from Rice University will explore how art provides a model for ecological ethics in a time of mass extinction. A gallery reception for the Syracuse University Art Museum’s spring exhibition, “Assembly,” will follow.

Historian and author Jared Farmer from University of Pennsylvania will give a talk on March 4, , to discuss how ancient trees, regarded as cultural and religious symbols, are under threat due to climate change.

On March 7, Environmental Storytelling CNY welcomes Susanna Sayler and Edward Morris, both of Syracuse University, for a conversation, . They will discuss how art in the “Assembly” exhibition at the Syracuse University Art Museum deepens ecological understanding of the places we share.

, on March 26, will feature a series of multi-disciplinary panels over the course of the afternoon focused on navigating the post-Roe landscape, followed by a closing reception. Speakers include SeQuoia Kemp (Syracuse doula and birth-worker), Lori Brown (School of Architecture), Shoshanna Ehrlich (UMass Boston), Kimala Price (San Diego State) and Melissa Shube (Planned Parenthood Federation of America).

On April 4, artist Sophia Chai will talk about her current exhibition at Light Work, “,” featuring a collection of photographs centered on the Korean alphabet and ideas of language, optics and photography. A reception will follow.

Anna Arabindon Kesson from Princeton will lead a discussion on April 11 titled , exploring the representation of plantations in 19th-century British colonial art and how contemporary artists work with these histories to reimagine forms of care for each other and the environment.

Read more about the , including all event details, times and locations.

“Assembly: Syracuse University Voices on Art and Ecology’ features artworks made by faculty and recent alumni that contribute to emergent forms of ecological understanding. By placing these works in dialogue with objects from the ���ܲ���ܳ�’s permanent collection, the installation considers a broad cultural evolution from an environmentalism of the sublime to an ecology of intimacy.

Sarah McCoubrey, “Floating Oil,” 2012. Courtesy of the artist.

The exhibition is curated by Sayler/Morris (Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris, co-directors of The Canary Lab at Syracuse University), with Mike Goode, William P. Tolley Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences and Melissa Yuen, the art museum’s interim chief curator, assisted by Jeffrey Adams (Ph.D. Candidate in English), Jeanelle Cho ’24 (architecture and art history) and Abi Greenfield�� ’25 (history and political philosophy).

As stated by Sayler/ Morris, “The theme of this exhibition is ecology and any ecology properly regarded is an assembly of disparate beings, each with a distinct voice. We like the word assembly in this context
because it connotes more than a mere collection of voices; it implies that each voice will be heard and given space. Beyond this general meaning, we also intend the title to stand for the specific assembly of artistic voices all working within the Syracuse community that we have brought together here.”

In correlation to the exhibition, and in partnership with Goode, the museum will launch the Art,
Ecology and Climate Project, composed of 15 online galleries highlighting works from the collection,
each devoted to a different ecological topic, idea or issue. A general instructor’s guide offers
assignments applicable to any of the e-museums, and detailed guides to individual e-museums offer
additional tools for teaching ecology and climate through art, as well as instructional techniques for
approaching art in the classroom–or on your own–through the lenses of ecology and climate.

“I have focused my Tolley Professorship on helping create tools for Humanities courses to
engage more with ecological and climatological issues, and Sayler/Morris have been working tirelessly
for years to foster ecological thought and activism through their amazing art and their connections to
other ecologically minded artists,” says Goode.�� “It made perfect sense to partner with them to curate an exhibit whose cross-artwork dialogues could at once anchor courses and foster greater ecological mindfulness in museum visitors more generally.”

Robert Rauschenberg, “Calf Startena,” 1977. Gift of Mr. Gerald B. Cramer,’52, H’10, 1978.

The exhibition and related programs have been made possible by generous support from the Humanities
Center (Syracuse Symposium); Department of English; The Canary Lab; College of Engineering and
Computer Science; Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Undergraduate Program in
Environment, Sustainability and Policy; and the Environmental Storytelling of Central New York.

Featured events accompanying the exhibition include:

Art Break: ‘Assembly’ gallery tour with Melissa Yuen
Jan. 31, 12:15 to 1 p.m.
Syracuse University Art Museum

All Art is Ecological
Feb. 22, 4 to 8 p.m.
Syracuse University Art Museum and Shemin Auditorium
Art and Ecology Teaching Guides Launch (4 to 5 p.m.)
Gallery reception (5 to 6:30 p.m.)
Public lecture by Timothy Morton from Rice University (6:30 to 8 p.m.)

Environmental Storytelling CNY: Forging Ecological Awareness Through Art
March 7, 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Art Break: Bird Collisions in the Anthropocene with Holly Greenberg
March 19, noon to 4 p.m.
Syracuse University Art Museum

Community Day
April 13, noon to�� 4 p.m.
Syracuse University Art Museum

Visit the ���ܲ���ܳ�’s for more public programs surrounding the exhibition.

Douglass Day celebrates Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), a leader of the American abolitionist movement, on his chosen birthday. The pop-up exhibition will showcase a selection of materials pertaining to Douglass and his life, including his three autobiographies, speeches and a selection of letters in Douglass’s own hand from the and .

Attendees will have the opportunity to view and engage with the items on display. This event is open to the public, and SCRC staff will be on hand to answer questions about the materials on view and the Center.

The same day, the Syracuse Humanities Center will be hosting the on the first floor of Bird Library, in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons (Room 114) from noon to 3 p.m.

Organizers of the community photographic project, “,” want to visualize just that and are asking Syracuse families to share their family photos and stories on camera to create a living photo archive. Community members—particularly those whose histories have been marginalized—are invited to talk about their family histories at a recorded interview station, digitize their family photos for later exhibition and have new portraits taken with their family photographs.

Thomas Allen Harris

The project is designed to build a more inclusive history of the city. It takes place Oct. 13-15 through a��series of activities and events with Yale University artist and filmmaker and his . The initiative is being coordinated by students and faculty in the University’s Turning the Lens Collective. The group is composed of , associate professor of English; , a Ph.D. candidate in English; , a Ph.D. candidate in history; Sarhia Rahim ’26, a policy studies major and Aniyah Jones ’25, an English and textual studies and psychology major.

Three Weekend Events

Events include a film screening and discussion of “: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People,” with Harris (, from 6 to 8 p.m.). The with community members takes place , from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. A to celebrate the archived images and oral storytelling is planned on , from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., and includes music, poetry and special guests. All events take place at the Everson Museum at 401 Harrison St. in downtown Syracuse.

Hallas says the project will build a testament to marginalized families from across the city, cultivate a more inclusive archival history of Syracuse and recognize the people suppressed, forgotten or lost to a highway (the I-81 viaduct) that created a decadeslong economic and racial barrier in Syracuse.

“Syracuse is experiencing significant transformation and renewed hope for economic progress spurred by Micron’s multi-billion-dollar investment in a semiconductor megafacility, the city’s decades of commitment to refugee resettlement and the redevelopment of housing, transportation and industry when a community grid replaces the I-81 viaduct,” Hallas says. “Yet, in moving forward equitably, it’s necessary to remember and document the past. Syracuse remains one of the most impoverished and segregated cities in the nation, specifically for its Black and Latinx communities. In its redevelopment of housing, transportation and industry, the city must not repeat the systemic violence of the past.”

Community members shared treasured photos with Jessica Terry-Elliot, right center, along with their memories of family.

Jessica Terry-Elliott, a project co-organizer, researches the application of various methodologies that comprise what scholars call “Black archival practices.”��She says Family Pictures Syracuse will use oral history methods��coupled with the captured moments of Black life in photographs that are��often held in domestic��repositories.

“Using these methods to develop this project��is an actual application of Black archival practices,” Terry-Elliot says. “It will reveal the complexities of how Black life in Syracuse was and is documented and remembered,��while at the same time constructing pathways to engage with memory for��the future.”

Collective member Charles is writing a dissertation on the Black visual archive in film. “I’ve discovered that family photographs play a tremendous role in shaping our identity and history beyond the purview of our institutional archives,” Charles says. “The photographs we all keep in our homes—hanging on walls or tucked inside family albums—contribute to a larger story. Yet, those items are not always seen as important historical knowledge. This project affirms our photographs are themselves invaluable archives that should be studied and celebrated as such.”

Collective member and undergraduate student Aniyah Jones ’25 looks over a collection of family photos.

Undergraduate students Jones and Rahim have supported the initiative through their Syracuse Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE) appointments as research assistants on the project. A team of undergraduate students from the department of film and media arts and the Orange Television Network will staff the photo-sharing event and students in Hallas’ upcoming “Everyday Media and Social Justice” and Jessica Terry-Elliott’s “Public History” courses in spring 2024 will further the project after its launch.

��The collective is also coordinating with the Network’s WriteOut Syracuse, a youth afterschool program designed to get students Interested In writing and storytelling, and Black and Arab Relationalities, a Mellon Foundation-funded research project led by College of Arts and Sciences faculty members and .

Wide Community Connections

Organizers are working with the Community Folk Art Center, Onondaga Historical Association and the North Side Learning Center and are collaborating with several other Syracuse community organizations for future programming.

Many sources of funding have made the project possible, including the University’s departments of African American Studies; anthropology; communication and rhetorical studies; English; film and media arts; history; Jewish studies; Latino/Latin American studies; LGBTQ studies; policy studies; religion; sociology; television, radio and film; visual communications; women’s and gender studies; and writing. External funding has been provided by Humanities NY and the Allyn Family Foundation.

Also sponsoring the project are the Democratizing Knowledge project; Engaged Humanities Network; SOURCE; Special Collections Research Center; Syracuse Humanities Center; The Alexa; Lender Center for Social Justice; Light Work and Orange Television Network.

In November, the Special Collections Research Center at Bird Library will host “Family Pictures in the Archive” (, 5 to 7 p.m.). The exhibition displays Black photographs from the University’s collections along with community photos archived during the Family Pictures Syracuse events.

Mary Schmidt Campbell

The Wali Lecture is an annual event where the sciences and humanities converge, fostering dialogue and new perspectives on current topics for all who attend. The on Thursday, Oct. 5, will honor the life, work and legacies of Professor Emeritus Kameshwar C. Wali and his wife Kashi. The program will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Watson Theater, featuring distinguished alumna Mary Schmidt Campbell G’73, G’87, H’21 as speaker.

Schmidt Campbell’s lecture, “,” considers the expectations, assumptions and practices that she and her husband, George Campbell G’77, encountered at Syracuse University influencing their academic success.

“The Kashi and Kameshwar C. Wali Lecture in the Sciences and Humanities is a unique and truly interdisciplinary event that represents the spirit of the teacher-scholar model we seek to embody in the Syracuse University physics department,” says Jennifer Ross, professor and chair of the Department of Physics. “We are excited to welcome Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell and highly anticipate her talk, which will be especially informative given recent changes in the higher education landscape.”

Mary Schmidt Campbell was the tenth president of Spelman College from 2015 to 2022. She received a B.A. in English literature from Swarthmore College and earned a master’s in art history, as well as a Ph.D. in humanities from Syracuse University. She was also a curator at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse and an art editor at the Syracuse New Times. She holds numerous honorary degrees, including one from her alma mater, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Schmidt Campbell is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was elected to the Unity Technologies Board in September 2020. She served as a member of the Alfred P. Sloan Board from 2008-2020, and she currently sits on the boards of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, as well as on the advisory boards of the Bonner Foundation and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.

Notably, Schmidt Campbell is an expert on Afro-American artist Romare Bearden, known for his large-scale public murals depicting the black experience in America. In the 1970s Bearden mentored her as she entered the art world at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which during her time there she nurtured from a struggling organization into one of the nation’s premier black fine arts museums. She went on to write about him in both her doctoral dissertation at Syracuse University, and a book, “” (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Vivian May, director of the Syracuse University Humanities Center, explained how Schmidt Campbell’s scholarship on Bearden is one of the many accomplishments that influenced the selection of her as speaker. “Through her multifaceted contributions, as a renowned scholar of Romare Bearden, as a visionary leader in higher education, and as a tireless advocate for the arts and humanities as core to any pursuit of justice and equity, she has transformed a range of educational, cultural, and institutional landscapes to be more inclusive and equitable for all,” says May. “We are so delighted to partner with physics and the Wali family to welcome Mary Schmidt Campbell back to campus. Her participation directly supports the Humanities Center’s mission to advance humanities research, showcase the humanities as a public good and enhance scholarly community by bringing people together to confront some of the most pressing issues of our time.”

Schmidt Campbell is a contributor to several publications, including Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis; “New York Reimagined: Artists, Art Organizations, and the Rebirth of a City” (Oxford University Press, 2016); and many others.

Kameshwar C. Wali was the Steele Professor of Physics Emeritus in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). He was internationally recognized as a theorist for his research on the symmetry properties of fundamental particles and their interactions and as an author. One of his books, “Cremona Violins: A Physicist’s Quest for the Secrets of Stradivari“(World Scientific, 2010) examined the world’s most valued violins through the lens of physics to discover how and why they produce their treasured sound—an example of his work at the nexus of the sciences and humanities.

Wali became a Syracuse faculty member in 1969. He had previously held positions at Harvard and Northwestern, the University of Chicago, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France and the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, whose India Chapter named him Scientist of the Year in 2022, along with receiving Syracuse’s Chancellor’s Citation for exceptional academic achievement. He was one of the founding members of the .

The Wali Lecture was established by his daughters, Alaka, Achala and Monona, to commemorate his vision and leadership and as an expression of admiration and gratitude for their parents’ dedication and contributions to the University and the greater community. The lecture began in 2008 and has been held annually, except in 2020.

This lecture is produced by the in partnership with the . Generous support is provided by the Wali Endowment Fund, with additional support from the Office of Academic Affairs; Office of Diversity and Inclusion; the College of Arts and Sciences | the Maxwell School, including the departments of African American studies, art and music histories, English and history; Syracuse University Art Museum and Syracuse University Libraries.

To honor the late professor, donations can be made to the Wali Endowment Fund at Syracuse University through an or mailed to the Office of Advancement and External Affairs, 640 Skytop Road, 2nd Floor, Syracuse, New York 13244.

“The film festival provides a space for faculty, students, staff and community members not just to view impactful films, but more importantly have a space in which we can share our reactions to them, ask questions of their filmmakers and learn more about the situations, people and events they depict,” says Roger Hallas, associate professor of English and director of the festival. “This is how films can change the world, one conversation at a time.”

“When Spring Came to Bucha”

Founded by Tula Goenka, professor and graduate director of television, radio and film in the Newhouse School, the festival has consistently engaged the urgent issues of our time, from climate change to institutional racism to ongoing wars. Two films about the current war in Ukraine, to be presented Saturday, Sept. 23 at 1 p.m., were made by filmmakers with Syracuse connections. Shashkov Protyah’s short film��“My Favorite Job”��offers an intimate look of Ukrainian volunteers rescuing civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol. “I was struck by how powerfully this short film conveyed the courage and resilience of the rescuers,” says Hallas. Protyah is a member of��, a film collective from the city, whose members include Oksana Kazmina, who is also a current graduate student in the M.F.A. film program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

“My Favorite Job” is paired with the feature film��“When Spring Came to Bucha,” directed by Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz, which follows the lives of the Ukrainian village outside Kyiv after liberation from Russian occupation as the full extent of the atrocities committed there come into full view. Photographer and filmmaker Teshaieva was an artist in residence at Light Work in 2016. Teshaieva, Protyah and Kazmina will all participate in the post-screening discussion.

The film festival is part of Syracuse Symposium, which is marking its 20th anniversary. The Symposium theme of “Landscapes” weaves throughout the films. “The film festival’s 2023 lineup takes up diverse meanings of the concept, from the politics of memory to questions of grief and trauma to human trafficking to war, traversing national boundaries and engaging in different genres and visual technologies,” says Vivian M. M​ay, director of the University’s Humanities Center. “Juxtaposing local and global human rights issues and weaving questions of justice across contexts is what SUHRFF does best.”

Opening the festival on Thursday, Sept. 21 at 7 p.m. is “North by Current,” a searing look at family trauma, grief, addiction and transgender identity captured by the filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax when he returns home to rural Michigan after the death of his niece. Minax will introduce the film and participate in post-screening discussion.

The dual national landscapes of Greenland and Canada are featured in “Twice Colonized” by Lin Alluna, featuring the lifelong struggle for the rights of Indigenous people by Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter who will be available for Q&A after the film screening on Friday, Sept. 22 at 7 p.m.

Similarly, director Sanjeewa Pushpakumara will discuss his film “Peacock Lament” that closes the festival on Saturday evening, Sept. 23, at 7 p.m. Hallas calls the film an “enthralling drama” into the corrupt world of trafficking babies from unwanted pregnancies in Sri Lanka.

Aaju Peter appears in “Twice Colonized” by Lin Alluna, an official selection of the World Documentary Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute | Photo by Angela Gzowski Photography.

Festival founder Goenka remains both engaged and enthusiastic about this year’s screenings. “Collaborating with Roger on SUHRFF since 2010 has been one the most professionally rewarding and inspiring experiences I have had in all my years on campus,” says Goenka. “I am extremely thankful that he has now taken over as its sole director. The 2023 program is stellar and topical as always, and I am very excited about it.”

The festival also includes a new collaboration with the�� (UVP), another program at Light Work, which presents��large-scale architectural projection of the artist’s work onto I. M. Pei’s Everson Museum building in downtown Syracuse. “UVP’s director Anneka Herre suggested that our shared commitment to social justice and art would provide a strong opportunity for collaboration,” says Hallas. On Saturday afternoon, Sept. 23 at 4 p.m. there will be an artist talk with which presents an Afro-Surreal poetic virtual reality experience featuring 3D renderings of objects from Afro-diasporic culture in local archives.

May points out that the film festival helps advance the mission of the Humanities Center, “showcasing the humanities as a public good, and enhancing the scholarly community by bringing people together to confront some of the most pressing issues of our time.”

All screenings are free and open to the public (no tickets are required). The has more details describing each screening with specific dates and times. All films are closed-captioned or subtitled and audio described in English. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is available during all Q&A sessions. For other accommodations, contact Jacqulyn Ladnier (humcenter@syr.edu) or 315.443.7192.

Even if you haven’t participated in Syracuse Symposium offerings yet, the intriguing and provocative annual themes still may have caught your eye. Topics like Justice (2007-08), Identity (2011-12), Repair (2022-23) and this year’s Landscapes, offer a kaleidoscopic platform for timely and urgent discussions held in a variety of immersive formats. Returning for its 20th anniversary season, , a public event series organized by the (SUHC) in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), is composed of performances, exhibitions, films, lectures, workshops and readings.

This series is core to the center’s mission to advance humanities research, showcase the humanities as a public good, and enhance the scholarly community by bringing people together to confront some of the most pressing issues of our time.

“The humanities provide important conduits for imagining a more just world and addressing inequity,” says Humanities Center Director . “Shared experiences in film, music, fiction, philosophical pursuits, or the visual arts, for example, can immerse us in new perspectives and open up space to engage in critical, even difficult dialogues.”

To commemorate the milestone, we sat down with May to reflect on the symposium’s origin, evolution and future.

What is the significance of Syracuse Symposium within the context of the Humanities Center’s mission?

Vivian May (VM): The series, which pre-dates the center’s founding in 2008, originated as a significant collaboration between A&S and the Chancellor’s Office to bring the University community together to examine the world of ideas via keynote speakers and diverse events proposed by teams of faculty. Nearly all Syracuse University schools and colleges have partnered with us over the years. Maintaining that Universitywide lens, and strengthening longstanding alliances, the series continues to break down institutional silos to engage our wider community. Syracuse Symposium plays a role in fostering inclusive, engaged intellectual spaces for diverse publics.

Originally, Symposium was contained to one semester but has grown into a series of events held throughout the year. Can you share why you and your team expanded the format and how it has changed the outcome of the event?

Vivian May

VM: In many ways, we expanded out of necessity. Interest in collaborating with the center has grown, so widening the season’s timeframe allows us to support more partners. Shifting to an annual lineup has also allowed for pivotal collaborations in spring tied to Black History Month and Women’s History Month. We are always fine-tuning our offerings to meet the needs of our scholarly community. This format enables us to engage across the academic year for a range of curricular tie-ins and community engagement.

The themes change each year and shape the narratives and conversations of the event series. What factors and considerations guide the annual theme selection?

VM: We’re grateful to have a humanities-passionate composed of faculty and academic staff from across campus. We solicit concepts from the board, which are then evaluated and voted on, up to two years in advance. We aim for concepts with multi-faceted, relatable connotations across disciplines and for diverse publics. A strong theme tends to have nuanced valences, and by this, I mean room to riff on possible interpretations. To flesh out its full potential, it should be broad enough for different genres, disciplines and audiences. For instance, most Symposium themes evoke both positive and negative aspects—including recent themes such as Silence, Futures and Repair. The ambiguity leaves room for interpretations through many lenses.

How have 20 years of symposium enhanced the Syracuse experience for students and faculty?

VM: Through symposium, faculty and students have access to intimate, curated opportunities to engage with renowned authors, musicians and filmmakers, to dive into a hands-on workshop or immersive experience. They can connect across disciplines to take up the big questions of our day. There have also been symposium themes woven into courses and first-year experiences. For A&S faculty, one of the center’s annual faculty fellowships ties into the annual theme, helping to support cutting-edge research in different areas each year.

Also, student work is frequently showcased. For example, this fall one of the films to be screened at the (SUHRFF), Fracture, on Sept. 23, is by a doctoral student in literacy education, Evan Starling-Davis. Sometimes graduate students partner with faculty to propose and host symposium events—this year, activities on Oct. 14 and Nov. 15 are being organized by the Turning the Lens Collective, which has student, faculty, staff and community members in the mix.

Syracuse Symposium is known for its public engagement. Can you elaborate on how the series bridges the gap between the University and the community, making humanities topics accessible and compelling for a non-academic audience?

VM: We are proud to support a range of thought-provoking programming that’s free and open to all—students, staff, faculty, and community members. One of our longest-standing partners, SUHRFF, taking place from Sept. 21 to 23 this year, offers a clear, visible example of broad community engagement. Where else can colleagues, friends, family and neighbors gather, at no cost, to see a weekend’s worth of acclaimed films, and oftentimes chat directly with the filmmakers afterward?

The Engaged Humanities Network’s Environmental Storytelling Series, in spring 2024, is another example of strong public-facing offerings. In partnership with SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, the series has an inclusive, multi-generational approach to addressing the climate crisis.

Looking ahead to the next 20 years, how do you envision further evolution of the series?

VM: Syracuse Symposium will, I think, have a certain constancy—the humanities shall always lie at the heart of the series and evolving research will shape new questions, genres, formats and solutions to help address the key questions and problems of the day.

Importantly, symposium’s kaleidoscopic lens—from theme generation to lineup—means it is a collective vision and shared endeavor. It will continue to pivot, take up new technologies, and unpack hidden narratives or silenced histories. No matter how our knowledge landscape changes, however, I do believe that keeping an eye on how to pursue a more just world, together, will always be core to what Syracuse Symposium is about.

This year’s theme, Landscapes holds significance on multiple levels—personal, societal and environmental. What will the lineup delve into and, for someone who’s never attended, tell us something that will entice them to check it out.

VM: In addition to the many examples cited above, this year’s Symposium partners explore everything from the Constitution, immigration, border politics, environmental justice and reproductive rights. One of the first events, on September 14, showcases the . His work has revived traditional Haudenosaunee pit firing, hand-built coiling and slab construction, via an exhibition at the . Another on Oct.r 4 brings together educators and STEM scholars who use to highlight minoritized youth as knowers. We are also excited to be partnering with YMCA Arts to host poet and essayist Camille Dungy on Nov. 16 and 17, author of “Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden.” I encourage everyone in the greater Syracuse community, the University and beyond, to check out the and connect!

Likewise, humanities scholars benefit from cross-pollinating their ideas. Working with colleagues within and beyond their home institutions and across disciplines helps researchers identify new lines of inquiry and develop projects that can be richer and more wide-ranging than they might otherwise be. In addition to fostering innovation, collaboration deepens intellectual community and widens scholarly impact.

Gail Bulman

Thanks to the , Gail Bulman and fellow humanist faculty have access to a vibrant network of potential partners throughout the region. The corridor is an 11-institution endowed research consortium supported by an award from the : its administrative home is at the . The consortium supports a robust roster of working groups and provides seed funding to encourage collaborative activities among researchers pursuing similar interests.

For Bulman, in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, the corridor and its ALACI (Afro-Latin American, Latinx, Caribbean, and Indigenous) working group enabled her to take the PICS theater project—a festival of 10-minute performances on thought-provoking topics—beyond Syracuse University to new audiences, performers and partners.

Vivian May

“ALACI-PICS 2023 blends research with performance to invite audiences to reflect on a range of lived experiences across cultural and national boundaries,” says Vivian May, professor of women’s and gender studies and director of the Humanities Corridor and of the Syracuse University Humanities Center. “This year’s ALACI Signature Event builds on layers of collaboration, enhances networks around questions of performance, race, and place, and focuses on interactivity and engagement. These collaborations are having important curricular and scholarly impacts across the region.”

A Fulbright Global Scholar

Bulman specializes in Latin American theater and literature. This semester, she is traveling on a Fulbright Global Scholar award to Argentina, Peru and Spain, researching the community-based artistic form (“micro theater”), founded in Madrid in 2009 and now expanded to Argentina (pictured), Peru, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Colombia and Miami.

Microteatro offers a unique approach to theater: its productions are works of 15 minutes for audiences of 15 spectators, conducted in multiple theater spaces of less than 15-by-15 square meters. The rooms are grouped together with a central area for socializing. Plays are presented several times each evening for rotating audiences, and each performance focuses on a topic of concern, such as the environment, migration or discrimination. By viewing many short performances on the same topic in small quarters, audiences are encouraged to reflect more deeply and encounter more diverse perspectives on the topic—and potentially find a way forward for that issue.

This theatrical form’s capacity to educate and catalyze social action is what Bulman and other Corridor colleagues are trying to recreate in Central New York through ALACI-PICS.

“Performance is something people experience and enjoy together as a community, and it can be a less threatening way to talk about challenging topics,” Bulman says. “The intimacy created through impactful performances staged in close quarters can inspire spectators to reflect on, discuss and move toward action on important community matters.”

Bulman’s research on Microteatro was the seed of a collaboration closer to home.

Joining Forces, Seeing Results

Bulman wasn’t the only one interested in examining the power and potential of this form of theater.

Several scholars from different institutions had already known each other from conferences or had been working together through the CNY Humanities Corridor in the working group, which focuses on Latin American and Latinx literatures and cultures.

Two years ago, Bulman—a member of other corridor working groups—joined with some of those individuals to create a new working group, (Afro-Latinx, Latin American, Caribbean and Indigenous Performance), with co-organizers at Colgate University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Cornell University. Working group participants came from Syracuse University, Colgate, Cornell, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, SUNY Oswego, SUNY Albany and the University of Rochester.

Their shared vision was to explore theater and live performance as a tool for equity and social justice, especially in the diversity of productions emerging from Spanish-speaking regions.

Being part of the MP7: ALACI Corridor group has helped to expand collaborations across the region, enhance creativity and deepen diversity in PICS productions.

“I love the expansion of possibilities in, for instance, our multi-year discussion of microteatro as a concept and performance form,” says working group organizer Debra Ann Castillo, the Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Emerson Hinchliff Chair of Hispanic Studies, professor of comparative literature, and director of the migration studies minor at Cornell. “Personally, it’s great to hang out with smart, positive people who always make me think more deeply!”

Since 2021, the ALACI working group has implemented a new vision of the Microteatro model—PICS (Performing Identities Across Cultures)—throughout Central New York and beyond. For example, previous PICS performances were by students and faculty from Colgate, Cornell, University of Rochester, SUNY Oswego, Penn State University and Syracuse University.

ALACI’s work is garnering recognition at the national level, with the group being selected in 2021 and 2022 to present its work at the National Humanities Conference. Bulman and Syracuse University professors , and presented “Performing Identities Across Cultures (PICS): A Collaborative Arts Model to Expand Dialogues on (In)justice” at the National Humanities Conference in Los Angeles in November 2022.

“The corridor broadens and deepens our collective knowledge base,” says Bulman. “Not just for faculty, but also for graduate students and undergrads too.”

Working group organizer Osvaldo Sandoval-Leon, assistant professor of Spanish at Colgate University, notes, “This group has led me to rethink certain aspects of my research and teaching. I found valuable sources that I could incorporate not only in my academic articles, but also in the classroom. At the personal level, being able to participate in this diverse group has…created a sense of belonging and community.”

Alyeska Reimer, a senior double major in Spanish and theater management at Syracuse University, has worked on PICS for three years, advertising and promoting the event and participating on the selection committee and with operations. “PICS has opened my eyes about finding different perspectives and taking different approaches,” says Reimer. “I’ve been able to meet new people and keep my mind open to new experiences. It’s made me see art in a new way.”

Working with PICS helped Reimer win a , which she used to travel to Chile in January 2023 to do research on the Santiago a Mil International Theater Festival, now in its 30th year.

“Moving Forward”: ALACI-PICS as Corridor Signature Event for 2023

PICS, an annual performing arts festival, showcases diverse perspectives and encourages new dialogues around themes such as “Recharging Home (2022), “Together-Apart” (2021) and “We are Orange” (2020). It began four years ago at Syracuse University and is part of the , funded by a CUSE grant for Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research.

The 2023 PICS festival, now ALACI-PICS thanks to CNY Humanities Corridor support, takes place Thursday, April 13, from 3-6:30 p.m. in tents on the Syracuse University Quad. This year’s performances will center on the theme of Moving Forward to explore questions such as, how do we move forward as individuals and as communities in the face of a global pandemic, racial violence and unprecedented human-caused and natural disasters? Students and faculty from across Central New York applied to be part of the event earlier this year, and winners will each receive a $500 award to support their performance.

“Moving Forward involves the reconstruction and redefinition of a past that might be painful and uncomfortable, but necessary to reevaluate its effects on our communities,” says Bulman. “It ties to questions of migration, mobility, unrest, belonging and change.”

Performance Highlights

Diverse topics and approaches are reflected in ALACI-PICS 2023. Some performances are bilingual in Spanish, Igbo or Greek. Others reflect Latin American and/or Latinx experiences, examine gender violence or highlight autism. Given ALACI’s focus, several performances will highlight African cultures and Indigenous cultures, such as:

• “Reflejo,” about South American Indigenous roots
• “N’ihu, N’ihu” reflecting on Igbo spirituality
• “122 Rows” highlighting and mourning violence toward African Americans in the U.S.

What to Know About ALACI-PICS

Check the full for specific events.

All are welcome to attend ALACI-PICS 2023, including Syracuse students, faculty and the surrounding community. A series of short, original pieces will be performed live on the Syracuse University Quad on April 13, 2023, beginning at 3 p.m. Additional video performances will be shown on the big screen in Schine Center student atrium from noon to 3 p.m. that day.

PICS plays, organized around the theme Moving Forward, are 10 minutes each, staged in tents for up to 25 spectators, and repeated four times to maximize engagement. Socializing, reflection, and discussion—key to the experience—are encouraged!

Check the full and the for specific events.

Language Matters

ALACI-PICS 2023 is part of a larger, CUSE grant-funded , April 13-14, also thematically organized around the concept Moving Forward. Scholars, artists and community experts will present work focused on cultures and languages across the curriculum, in particular questions of “language in action” in the community; language and human security; performance, cultures and identity; and digitally open borders.

Notably, many Language Matters’ research strands had their origins, inspiration, and some funding from engagement with other CNY Humanities Corridor working groups, specifically Amanda Brown’s and Stefano Giannini’s work with , Rania Habib’s collaborations in and Maria Emma Ticio Quesada’s work with .

The Language Matters conference is free and open to the public and will culminate with a keynote presentation by journalist Stephen Marche, who will speak about “The Chatbot Problem: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Language” on Friday, April 14, at 3 p.m. in Room 001 of the Life Sciences Building.

Check the full and the for specific events.

How can everyday people make sense of climate change’s effect on the planet and human life? Through creative outlets like storytelling, interpretation and art, the humanities can demonstrate how environmental concerns are intertwined with social, economic and cultural issues. Addressing the climate crisis through a humanistic lens is a guiding principle behind the Environmental Storytelling Series of CNY, says co-founder , Dean’s Professor of Community Engagement and associate professor of writing and rhetoric in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S).

“Oftentimes when people think of environmental justice they think of carbon emissions, ocean acidification, melting icecaps, deforestation and other incredibly important causes and consequences of climate change,” explains Nordquist. “What they don’t often consider are the ways that environmental justice is intertwined with social justice and racial justice.”

Coordinated by A&S’ (EHN) and , the (ESSCNY) is an initiative of community-based arts and humanities programs geared toward the pursuit of environmental justice. This year’s series, “Environmental Storytelling and the Collective Work of Repair” is part of the 2022-23 on Repair. Programming throughout the year has featured photography, poetry, readings, talks and film screenings by different environmental storytellers.

As the climate crisis worsens, research has shown that low-socioeconomic communities are often disproportionately affected. Factors such as education, political power and access to resources play key roles in climate vulnerability. As climate change becomes more widespread, existing inequalities can become exacerbated, which is why collective organizing–coming together to share information and act– is critical at this particular time.

Connecting With Local Youth through Artistic Expression

Engaging youth across the city and region is an important facet of ESSCNY. Last December, the series welcomed poet , whose award-winning “ecopoetry” challenges readers to reckon with the colonial legacies which have shaped people’s relationships with the environment. Francis was also a featured presenter during the Department of English’s

Lauren Cooper

Lauren Cooper, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English, helped organize Francis’s visit and curated a learning guide on . Her work on that project was supported by a from the Humanities Center and the .

As a scholar who specializes in the climate history of the Romantic period and its relationship to Romantic literature, she says artistic forms such as poetry offer new ways of thinking about, interacting with and living with the environment.

“The way we’re taught to think about the environment matters for climate action and it comes from inherited legacies of humanist thought. The poems we read in school, the landscape postcards we buy, the places we think are valuable and worth saving for aesthetic reasons and the human/nature binary all have their roots in older European humanist traditions,” says Cooper. “If we want to change how we think, we need to first come to terms with those legacies and look to the writers, like Vievee Francis, who are trying to teach us new ways of orienting ourselves.”

To put this in perspective, Cooper points to Banff and Yellowstone–the first national parks in Canada and the United States–which reflect Romantic ideas about pristine uninhabited wilderness and its value for humanity. Each feature massive snowcapped mountains, beautiful lakes, towering forests and thundering waterfalls. But what Cooper explains is often forgotten are the stories of those who lived there before those lands were turned into national parks.

“They were home to Indigenous populations who were forcibly kicked off their land in order to create this version of ‘wilderness,’” says Cooper. “Environmental storytellers and poets like Francis allow people to recognize the myths they’ve been told about the environment—many of which elide violent legacies of colonialism and racism—in order to transform their ecological relationships.”

Students from Write Out participated in a writing workshop with poet Vievee Francis at the Salt City Market as part of the Environmental Storytelling Series of Central New York. Photo credit: Katie Zilcosky

During Francis’s visit, ESSCNY hosted a writing workshop with Write Out, a community-based creative writing collective for middle and high school students in Syracuse. Francis shared her poetry, which draws on histories of slavery, Blackness, intergenerational trauma, family history, personal history, literary history and environmental history, and the students wrote responses inspired by Francis’s work.

“In Write Out we try to impress upon the students that poetry is a living thing; people are still writing it, it still matters and their voices are unbelievably important,” Cooper says. “Seeing Francis read in-person to a crowded room of intent listeners brought that point home more effectively than we could ever have done otherwise.”

Cooper, who plans to become a professor of English after she defends her dissertation, says one of the most rewarding aspects of being a part of the ESSCNY team is getting to think and talk about the environment in a manner that is distinct from her own research.

“Academia so often cordons us off into our own specialties, to think and learn individually or with a community of people who are trained to think and learn just like you,” notes Cooper. “This series is a chance to do interdisciplinary work that is vital, timely and engaged in a meaningful way with the community around us.”

Collective Action

Central to the mission of ESSCNY is developing an ongoing exchange among people in the city of Syracuse, the broader Central New York area and Syracuse University, says Nordquist. One example of this was a program in the spring which brought attention to reproductive justice within the city of Syracuse.

SeQuoia Kemp, founder of and founding member of , an organization providing perinatal care to Black, African and Indigenous communities in Syracuse and CNY, led an event titled “Environmental Justice is Racial Justice is Reproductive Justice.” The program traced out the relationship between environmental racism and reproductive justice, highlighting how the health of mothers is a key barometer of community health.

ESSCNY hosted SeQuoia Kemp for an event bringing awareness to reproductive justice. Photo credit: Jason Kohlbrenner

Kemp’s event brought attention to Maternal Toxic Zones–areas deemed unsafe spaces for maternal health. Her work raises awareness on how factors such as air pollution, food insecurity and housing insecurity are tied to the conversation of environmental justice. Events like Kemp’s allow community collaborators to educate members of the University on the environmental challenges that are most pressing to individuals living in the city of Syracuse, from home environment to neighborhood environment to natural environment.

“Our intention is to bring about ongoing discussion across ages and across community spaces,” says Nordquist. “Instead of a standard speaker series, we’re pursuing an ongoing exchange among people across the city and the region around these important issues.”

A Helpful Guide to Learning

To engage communities in continuing dialogue, each event is accompanied by a learning guide, developed by faculty, staff undergraduate and graduate students at Syracuse University, SUNY ESF, and local secondary schools. The idea is based off of Kettering Foundation Issue Guides, which frame public concerns in a manner that positions options for action in a clear and meaningful way. Similar to the Kettering guides, ESSCNY learning guides provide a brief overview of an environmental issue, an introduction to the storyteller, helpful terms to know, discussion questions, writing prompts and calls to action. They are then shared around the community at schools, libraries, community centers and online.

Winston Scott

Winston Scott, a Ph.D. student in sociology in the Maxwell School, was awarded an Engaged Humanities Fellowship over the winter to lead the coordination effort of a . Scott, who is also an operations coordinator for Sankofa Reproductive Health and Healing Center, collaborated with Kemp to produce components for that guide, including calls to action for individuals who are lacking adequate access to perinatal care.

Documentarian Jason Corwin spoke with students about how he uses digital media in his environmental justice initiatives. Photo credit: Jason Kohlbrenner

Nahar says working with the series has allowed her to tap into her identity as both a scholar and an activist, aligning with her long-term goals of being an advocate for climate justice.

“Since I am in the religion department in A&S and the environmental studies department at ESF, it was a good fit to work on something related to the stories we tell ourselves and each other about what life feels like at this moment of the climate crisis, and how we replenish ourselves, our communities and find the stories that give us hope,” says Nahar. “As humans, it is important to learn from and cherish each other and other species with whom we share this planet.”

Looking Forward

The series will wrap up with two more anchor events this spring featuring on April 13 and 14. Lakey, who co-founded the Earth Quaker Action Team, will discuss that organization’s pursuit of ecojustice as it relates to race, class, queerness and the climate crisis. He will also speak with university and community members about crafting nonviolent social change campaigns to be inclusive, powerful and successful.

Looking to the future, EHN was recently awarded a $40,000 grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, which will support ESSCNY for several years to come, says Nordquist. Next academic year, activities will focus on the intersections of housing and environmental justice. Events and learning guides will explore the relationship of racial segregation, discriminatory land use practices and environmental exposures such as lead, superfund sites, asthma risks and substandard living conditions.

Through increased support and participation, Nordquist expects ESSCNY to grow in both scope and impact in the coming years. Through its diverse mix of events, programs, workshops and courses, which connect local community members and members of the university with the region’s and world’s leading environmental storytellers, ESSCNY will remain an important space for individuals to tell their stories and advocate for environmental equity.

“This effort is inspired by a sense of urgency around climate crisis,” says Nordquist. “The series offers an opportunity to mobilize more people across the region so we can invest together in better understanding and acting in response to ecological issues.”

The workshop will examine food culture, production and consumption through the interrelated lenses of diaspora and rice, a staple food around the globe. Along with staff from the museum, participants will examine and discuss Shih’s ceramic rice bag sculptures and related objects associated with rice culture from the ���ܲ���ܳ�’s permanent collection. The workshop also includes a hands-on art-making activity.

Participants are invited to join the larger community for a public reception at 3 p.m. featuring rice snacks and tea immediately following the workshop. This program is generously co-sponsored by the and the in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

About Stephanie H. Shih

Shih

Shih’s painted ceramic sculptures explore the way cultural identities transform as they migrate with a diaspora. She has had solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco and at the Syracuse University Art Museum. Her practice has received support from the American Museum of Ceramic Arts, Lighthouse Works and Silver Art Projects. Activism is central to Shih’s practice, and since 2017 she’s raised over $110,000 for marginalized communities experiencing instability related to home through her art and platform.

About Lily Wong

Lily Chishan Wong joins the School of Architecture at Syracuse University as the 2022-23 Harry der Boghosian Fellow. As a transplant between Asia and America, she is interested in how global systems shape building cultures and vice versa.

Wong

Her project “Producing Nature” explores the use of plants in architecture and its planetary effects. It considers vegetation as atmospheric design—grown, stored and shipped globally—and charts the spaces and species involved in the production of “nature.” Inherently interdisciplinary, this exploration seeks to foster cross-pollination between architecture and other fields and to speculate on new environmental engagements.

Wong received a master of architecture from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and was nurtured with the Kohn Pedersen Fox Traveling Fellowship, Award for Excellence in Total Design, Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Prize, William Kinne Fellows Travelling Prize and Fred L. Liebmann Book Award. She cofounded : (pronounced “colon”), a publication and workshop dissecting the rhetoric and media that are rooted in the field of architecture.

For additional information or images, please contact Emily Dittman, interim director, at 315.443.4097 or ekdittma@syr.edu.

David Crane L’80

The 2023 Atrocity Studies annual lecture—presented by the —will address how war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocities are documented across the globe and the implications of this evidence for international courts and justice. The lecture features Ewa Schaller, senior program officer, , and David M. Crane L’80, Syracuse University College of Law Distinguished Scholar in Residence.

“” takes place in person on Thursday, March 23, at 5:30 p.m. in 107 Hall of Languages. The lecture also will be live-streamed. For those participating via Zoom, .

Ewa Schaller

Ewa Schaller has participated in Yahad-In Unum’s investigative work in Ukraine, Poland, and Latvia. She holds a Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Torun, Poland. Deeply interested in the Holocaust history that has marked so much of her country’s history and identity, she joined American Friends of Yahad-In Unum in 2015.

David Crane L’80 was the founding chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone and former director of the Office of Intelligence Review and assistant general counsel of the Defense Intelligence Agency. As a College of Law faculty member, he founded , an online student-run review and public service blog, and the , which documents war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Syrian Civil War and other conflicts, including Ukraine.

“I am happy that this lecture will set out the methodologies through which Yahad-In Unum documents atrocities,” says Professor Julia M. White, director of the School of Education’s . “We often hear about the causes of, responses to, and aftermaths of atrocities, but we don’t often get insight into what happens on the ground to build cases for prosecuting perpetrators of atrocities and how to use the documentation to understand how genocides and other atrocities are committed in order to prevent future crimes.”

Supported by Lauri ’77 and Jeffrey Zell ’77, the annual spring atrocity studies lectures convene speakers from disciplines at the intersection of history, memory, and international human rights. The lectures fundamentally ask how we can use the lessons of the past to inform and improve our world.

The 2023 lecture is co-sponsored by the following Syracuse University schools, colleges, departments, and programs: College of Law , ; ; ; Maxwell School , , , , , , , ; and .

The humanities are pivotal to examining historical trajectories, understanding the pressing issues of our times and forging a more just world. As the next generation of scholars, graduate students are at the forefront of identifying and pursuing new questions in their research.

Each year, the����awards highly competitive�������Ի�����to support outstanding graduate students as they advance humanities research.

Three doctoral students in English and one in history have received fellowships and grants as part of the Humanities Center’s signature focus on enhancing research support and building scholarly community.

“We are so pleased to support cutting-edge graduate researchers at the Humanities Center,” says Vivian May, director of both the Humanities Center and��. “This year, the Dissertation Fellows’ timely projects each use interdisciplinary approaches to literature to illuminate heretofore under-theorized lived experiences and histories. The Humanities New York grant awardees’ projects advance our understanding of race and place, through poetry and writing as well as civil rights and school desegregation.”

Humanities Center Dissertation Fellowships

:

El-Eid

El-Eid is a doctoral candidate in English with a concentration in 20th- and 21st-century transnational American literatures and cultures. A first-generation Lebanese American Druze woman, El-Eid lives in the United States, but identifies Beirut as home. Her dissertation expands and reshapes critical scholarship across literary, trauma and memory studies by centering on the often invisibilized Druze, a transnational ethnoreligious group with origins in the Arab world. Her interdisciplinary work transects literature, film, online culture and self-conducted oral interviews with Druze people with a focus on the implications of the group’s belief in reincarnation. El-Eid’s examination of Druze and Druze reincarnation draws new lines of connection between these multiple fields of thought.

“My dissertation employs methodologies from trauma, memory and transnational anti-racist feminist studies to examine literature, media and personal accounts of the Druze community, in particular their central religious and cultural beliefs in reincarnation,” El-Eid says. “By amplifying and examining testimonies from this understudied and undertheorized group, my dissertation interrogates established relations of power in terms of whose stories are (un)heard, and illuminates how highlighting invisibilized voices is not just additive in critical scholarship but is transformative.”

:��Ecologies of Writing

Cooper

A doctoral candidate in English, Cooper is focusing on a project designed to generate humanities-based responses to environment, nature and place within the context of climate change. Much of her current work revolves around the��, where students, ages 7 to 15, from community centers within the City of Syracuse participate in youth-focused weekly writing workshops. The program encourages students to express their environmental experiences and understanding through reading, creative writing and scientific inquiry.

A highlight of the group’s activities was a recent visit from poet��, who shared her work with these budding writers. The students, in turn, wrote and shared responses to what they heard.

“I am always so amazed with what these young students come up with,” says Cooper of the touching poems students wrote across different levels of experiences and interests. “The event couldn’t have gone better, as students had the opportunity to engage with .”

Cooper’s work will continue with Write Out during the Spring 2023 semester, along with plans to create a public art installation that reflects the students’ writing.

: A Children’s Story: School Desegregation in Syracuse, NY, 1960-1970

Terry-Elliott

A doctoral student in history in the , Terry-Elliott is working on a project illuminating the experiences of children and teachers during the period of school desegregation in Syracuse from 1960-1970. These participants are contributing to American history by giving their stories to future generations. The project is part of her larger examination of the Black Arts and Black Power movements of this era, particularly as questions of Black education have yet to be fully explored in these contexts.

Terry-Elliott has a special connection to this project, as she is not only a graduate of the Syracuse City School District but also taught there for 10 years. She hopes the oral histories she collects will be a starting point to contribute to a larger archival space about the history of African Americans in the City of Syracuse—containing not only her work but that of others.

“That is the ultimate goal,” she says. “Oral histories are a valuable medium of understanding the past and must be valued before we don’t have our elders to tell their stories first-hand anymore. This award has positioned me to be able to ask for help in furthering my research.”

Terry-Elliott is currently co-curating “” in collaboration with the Libraries’ staff. The exhibition is on display Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., on the sixth floor of Bird Library.

Graduate students working on dissertations or projects can apply for support from the��, in the form of competitive dissertation fellowships and����Public Humanities Graduate Project awards.

Dissertation fellowships are one-year stipends that allow awardees to focus on finishing their writing without the demands of teaching, while also receiving research funds while in residence.

Public Humanities Graduate Projects, a joint initiative between the Humanities Center and the��, are grants offered by����to support emerging scholars as they engage members of the public or partner with community groups in New York State on initiatives related to equity and social justice.

The play tells of two women of vastly different backgrounds who meet by chance at a wedding in Cancún when a torrential downpour forces each woman to consider their personal storms and the potential for change. The work is part of the Syracuse University Drama Department presentations at Syracuse Stage.

These events are scheduled:

Thursday, Feb. 16

• A of the playwright’s newest work, “El Terremoto,” at 6:30 p.m.

Sunday, Feb. 19

• 1 p.m. – A pre-show discussion about cultural representation and cross-collaboration will be moderated by the play’s director and Associate Artistic Director for Syracuse Stage Melisa Crespo. Participants will include playwright and author of “Espejos: Clean” Christine Quintana; La Casita’s Community Engagement Coordinator Catalina Niño Cordero G’21; and Rita Paniagua, who is a City of Syracuse councilor-at-large and board president of CNY Arts. The event takes place at Syracuse Stage, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse.
• 2-4 p.m. – Matinee performance, “Espejos: Clean” at Syracuse Stage
• 4-6 p.m. – La Casita Cultural Center co-hosts an after-show reception at its 109 Otisco St., Syracuse, headquarters. Guests are expected to include the play’s director, Melissa Crespo, its playwright, Christine Quintana, and some cast members. The reception is sponsored by the . Admission is free and open to the public; refreshments will be served.

Artist Rina Banerjee, with her artwork “Viola from New Orleans” (Photo courtesy of William Widmer)

While the world comes to terms with the profound impact of a global pandemic, it simultaneously continues to grapple with race, migration and climate change.��, associate professor in the Department of Art and Music Histories (AMH) in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), says one of the ways people can engage in important conversations about these pressing issues is through the power of art.

This semester, Ray opens “Take Me to the Palace of Love” at the , an exhibition she has curated of acclaimed artist��’s work, in consultation with Banerjee and Melissa Yuen, the museum’s interim chief curator. She will also host Banerjee as the Syracuse University Humanities Center’s in collaboration with students, faculty, curators and staff across the University.

Born in Kolkata, India, and having lived briefly in Great Britain before growing up in the United States, Banerjee has lived with the challenges of ethnicity, race and migration. Not surprisingly, her work examines how diasporas and journeys can affect one’s sense of place and identity.

Banerjee’s colorful sculptures feature a wide range of globally sourced materials, textiles, colonial/historical and domestic objects. Her previous experience as a polymer research chemist informs her unique style, as she received a degree in polymer engineering from Case Western University and worked in that field for several years before receiving an M.F.A. from Yale University.

She was recently appointed the inaugural Post-Colonial Critic at the Yale School of Art. Banerjee’s works have been displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and she has held a prestigious artist’s residency at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Banerjee’s exhibition and an upcoming residency at Syracuse University are supported by the , the Syracuse University Art Museum, the CNY Humanities Corridor, over 30 University departments and units, and Todd Rubin ’04, president of The Republic of Tea, who is providing tea for Banerjee’s different residency activities.

In addition, Ray was recently awarded a Grants for Arts Projects award from the (NEA), in support of “” and Banerjee’s public art-making project which will take place in the City of Syracuse on Feb. 25. Notably, this is the first NEA grant for an exhibition at Syracuse’s art museum.

NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson says, “the National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide. Projects such as this one at Syracuse University strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.”

“Take Me to the Palace of Love” on Display Through May 14

Banerjee’s exhibition includes one of her noted installations, a re-imagined Taj Mahal made out of pink plastic wrap. Officially titled “Take Me, Take Me, Take Me…To the Palace of Love,”��this artwork is based on the famous Mughal monument in India, which also inspired the exhibition’s title.

“The ‘pink Taj,’ as it is affectionately known, is testament to Banerjee’s background as an artist and a polymer scientist,” says Ray. “It also evokes her birthplace, India, while reminding us of the consumerist culture of America in which she grew up—a culture reliant on the global economies of trade and exchange.” Ray notes that the sculpture is a portable object which, like the artist herself, is diasporic.

“Viola, from New Orleans” by Rina Banerjee, 2017 (Photo courtesy of Lily LeGrange)

“It has traveled from museum to museum, across oceans, not unlike the very image of the Taj which emerged a cherished souvenir from the 19th century onwards,” says Ray.

The installation is accompanied by examples of early 20th-century images of the Taj and Mughal architecture from the Syracuse University Art Museum and Bird Library, as well as from the (Cornell University). A chair designed by American furniture designer Lockwood de Forest, on loan from the , greets visitors to the exhibition. A key figure in the Aesthetic Movement, de Forest was influenced by Mughal architecture and design.

Two additional critically acclaimed art installations by Banerjee in the exhibition alongside African, American and Indian art from the ���ܲ���ܳ�’s collections include “Viola, from New Orleans” (2017), a multimedia work that explores interracial marriage in America, and “A World Lost” (2013), another multimedia installation that critiques climate change.

“I hope exhibition visitors will be struck by Banerjee’s intricate constructions that remind us that beauty can reside in the most mundane objects and materials,” says Ray. “Most of all, I hope we can find our own stories to connect with her art installations and drawings, which are powerful, spectacular and thought-provoking.”

Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professorship in the Humanities

The University community will have the unique opportunity to interact with and work alongside Banerjee during her residency as the Humanities Center’s 2023 Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities from Feb. 20-March 3. Banerjee will engage with faculty, students and members of the Syracuse and Central New York communities during a .

, director of the Humanities Center and the CNY Humanities Corridor, is delighted to welcome Banerjee to campus and invites everyone to engage with the residency’s layered series of events. “Professor Ray’s interdisciplinary vision, combined with the scope of Rina Banerjee’s oeuvre, has resulted in an exciting, robust array of opportunities to interact with Banerjee’s ideas and work, from large-scale lectures to intimate dialogues,” May says.

Banerjee’s residency has been designed as a series of interactive conversations led by faculty and students from African American studies, architecture, English, geography, law, South Asian studies and Women in Science and Engineering. Banerjee’s residency also involves curators from the , which houses a unique����as well as a growing archive of artists of color.

“A World Lost” by Rina Banerjee, 2013 (Photo courtesy of Lily LeGrange)

Banerjee’s residency begins with a virtual talk titled�� on Feb. 20 at 5:30 p.m. ET. Graduate students ��(AMH) and����(Newhouse) will introduce Banerjee as the 2023 Watson Professor in a Zoom conversation moderated by��, assistant professor of art history. Arora has curated a wall of Mithila paintings from India, in response to Banerjee’s drawings displayed in the exhibition.

Next, Banerjee will give a public lecture on Feb. 23, which will be followed by a reception at the museum. Her residency will conclude on March 4 with a public (in-person) dialogue with internationally acclaimed scholar , University Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Spivak’s event is supported by an award from the CNY Humanities Corridor to the�� working group, whose work focuses on public-facing humanities research, teaching and collaboration.

With support from the NEA grant, the CNY Humanities Corridor and an��, “Take Me to the Palace of Love” will be extended into the City of Syracuse, allowing new American and underrepresented communities to document their own stories about identity and place—individually and collectively— with Banerjee. The program, titled “,” is co-organized by��, Dean’s Professor of Community Engagement in A&S.��, students, faculty and community members will be invited to collaborate on a public art installation with Banerjee.

“As a resettlement city with several new and older generations of immigrants and asylum-seekers, Syracuse is uniquely positioned to serve as a source of everyday stories of resourcefulness and resilience,” says Nordquist, who is also co-founder of the Narratio Fellowship.

Rooted in cultural memory and storytelling, Nordquist notes that the public art-making project will foster a shared understanding of the diverse communities that make up the City of Syracuse. This event is Feb. 25 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Community Room at .

Four current Syracuse University students and Narratio Fellowship alumni will also compose poetry and create a film in response to Banerjee’s art installations and public art-making project. The poetry and film will be revealed during a March 30 event titled ��organized by Nordquist and����(Newhouse) at the Nancy Cantor Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse.

Post-residency, the exhibition’s events will end with a chant performance by museum studies graduate student Amarachi Attamah. An online catalogue featuring essays and community responses to Banerjee’s art installations and the public art-making project, will also be published following the exhibition.

Collaborators who contributed to Banerjee’s exhibition and residency include Brice Nordquist, Dean’s Professor of Community Engagement (A&S); former Syracuse University Art Museum director Vanja Malloy; Vivian May, director, and Diane Drake, assistant director, Syracuse University Humanities Center; Sarah Workman, proposal development; Emily Dittman, Melissa Yuen, Kate Holohan, Dylan P. Otts, Jennifer Badua, Victoria Gray and Abby Campanaro, Syracuse University Art Museum; Pastor Gail Riina, Hendricks Chapel; Danielle Taana Smith, director, Renée Crown University Honors Program; Joan Bryant (A&S); Sascha Scott (A&S); Lawrence Chua (Architecture); Timur Hammond (Maxwell); David Driesen (Law); Mike Goode (A&S); Shobha Bhatia (Engineering); Nicolette Dobrowolski and Courtney Hicks (Bird Library); Mark Cass, Northside Learning Center; Susan Wadley, professor emeritus, anthropology; and students Ankush Arora (AMH), Natalie Rieth (Newhouse), Samaya Nasr (Museum Studies) and Julia Neufeld (AMH).

Curated by , associate professor of art and music histories in the College of Arts and Sciences, the exhibition features three monumental sculptural works by Banerjee, as well as works from the ���ܲ���ܳ�’s permanent collection, and loaned artwork from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and the artist’s personal collection.

Rina Banerjee, “Take me, take me, take me…to the Palace of Love,” 2013 (Photo courtesy of the artist)

In conjunction with the exhibition, Banerjee is the 2023 Jeanette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University. Banerjee’s two-week residency, “Diaspora, Displacement and the Science of Art,” will take place from Feb. 20-March 3.

The exhibition and Banerjee’s residency is generously supported by the Syracuse University Humanities Center, the Department of Art and Music Histories, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Art Museum, along with 33 departments and units at the University and The Republic of Tea.

“We are delighted to bring Rina Banerjee’s creative spirit to Syracuse University,” says Ray. “’Take Me to the Palace of Love’ is not just an exhibition; it is fundamentally a love letter to nature, community and identity.”

About the Exhibition

“Can we rescue love?” is the fundamental question at the heart of “Take Me to the Palace of Love,” which includes Banerjee’s drawings and three critical art installations. It is through the nourishing power of love that we define our sense of place in our communities and on our planet.

Yet love, as Banerjee’s work discloses, has been distorted to create inequity and destroy our relationship with the natural world. The exhibition urges us to restore our social and planetary connections with love. Rooted in cultural memory and storytelling, it invites us to ask: Does love play a role in how we view ourselves and shape our sense of place? Has climate change been shaped by a loss of love? How does love shape or resist gendered and racialized identities? As we come to terms with a global pandemic, these questions grow sharper and more relevant than ever.

About the Artist

Now based in New York City, Rina Banerjee was born in Kolkata, India, and lived briefly in Manchester and London before arriving in Queens, New York. Drawing on her multinational background and personal history as an immigrant, Banerjee focuses on ethnicity, race and migration and American diasporic histories in her sculpture, drawings and video art. Her sculptures feature a wide range of globally sourced materials, textiles, and colonial/historical and domestic objects, while her drawings are inspired by Indian miniature and Chinese silk paintings and Aztec drawings.

Artist Rina Banerjee, with her artwork “Viola from New Orleans” (Photo courtesy of William Widmer)

In 2018 the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the San José Museum of Art co-organized Banerjee’s first solo retrospective, “Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World,” featuring 60 works, including sculptures, paintings and video. The retrospective’s North American tour included exhibitions at the San José Museum of Art and the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles before ending at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2020.

Banerjee has exhibited internationally, spanning 14 biennials worldwide, including the Venice Biennial, Yokohama Triennale and Kochi Biennial. Banerjee’s works are included in many private and public collections, including the Foundation Louis Vuitton, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, San José Museum of Art, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

Banerjee returned to teaching in 2020, as a critic for the Yale School of Art Graduate Program. Between September 2021 and January 2022, she served a prestigious artist’s residency at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Featured Events

• , Feb. 20 from 5:30-6:30 p.m. ET, virtual
• , Feb. 23 from 5:30-7:30 p.m., Life Sciences 001, followed by a reception at the Shaffer Art Building
• , March 3 from 3-5:30 p.m., Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3

for more public programs surrounding the exhibition and Banerjee’s two-week residency.

Members of the media, please contact Emily Dittman, interim director of Syracuse University Art Museum, at ekdittma@syr.edu, for more information or to schedule a tour.

iSchool associate professor sees SJSA as a perfect fit for this year’s symposium because of the way it combines art and activism in an environment carefully designed to create positive social change.

“When I think of repair, I immediately think of textiles, like sewing torn seams or darning socks” says Clarke. “SJSA shows us that textile arts can repair more than clothing—they can also work toward repairing injustices in our society. The City of Syracuse consistently has some of the highest rates of poverty, segregation and redlining in the country. Efforts to repair these issues continue to be stalled in legal bureaucracy instead of moving forward toward reparative justice. We need to harness all the ways we can use our voices, talents and skills to communicate information about these issues, from formal data-driven reports to emotionally resonant art, if we want to have real change.”

SJSA’s founder Sara Trail has been an artist, activist and entrepreneur since an early age. She first started sewing at 4 years old and in her early teens she had already written a nationally published sewing book, was featured in a series of sewing videos and had designed two of her own textile patterns. After earning an undergraduate degree at University of California, Berkeley, and completing a graduate program in education at Harvard, Trail founded SJSA to get youths involved in art projects that engage and educate their communities.

Trail concedes that sewing and similar skills are being lost in younger generations. Relevant coursework (i.e., home economics) has been cut from many secondary schools, the cost of materials is prohibitive in many cases and fewer young people are exposed to textiles as a legitimate and modern art form. Aside from the expression of art and opportunity to actively pursue social justice, SJSA workshops also teach the skills necessary to sew, mend, darn and embroider.

“The goal is to create an intentional brave space to give people the opportunity to have their voices heard through textile art. They can talk about issues from Syracuse to New York as a state, to a critique of America as a whole. What is going well, what is getting better, and how can we all participate in being socially active citizens” says Trail.

Having taken this workshop all around the country, Trail has heard about a variety of social issues affecting communities. Sometimes they overlap, but sometimes they are local/regional problems. No matter what issues come up, Trail is prepared to tackle them through her thoughtfully constructed exhibitions and workshops.

A self-proclaimed “artivist,” Trail explains her professional identity as “a hybrid of artist, activist and educator—and more than that, a forever student. I’m always learning. As much as I go and facilitate conversations, I leave the space learning as much as I bring into the space, because other people’s lived experiences and narratives are so important.”

Her approach to educating and her hunger for learning are evident in the way she runs her workshops. Wherever she is working, Trail leans on the community to deeply explore the issues they face. She intentionally creates room for community members to express themselves and encourages their agency and participation to help lead and guide the scaffolded discussions. After all, they are the experts on their own lives.

. There will be deeply meaningful conversations, opportunities to raise important social issues and at the end, a commemorative art piece built collaboratively by the community. Come for the art, stay for the activism!

The celebrates 19th year with a diverse selection of public events exploring “repair” in the context of medicine, religion, the environment and more. Through a lineup that includes a film festival, lectures, workshops, exhibitions and readings, programming will consider whether and when “repair” is possible, and encourage ethically based action. Symposium’s annual theme is chosen by the , whose members review proposals and select each year’s events and activities.

According to Humanities Center Director , this year’s season will examine the concept of repair through different historical, political and cultural lenses. She notes that while for many, repair signifies healing, mending or fixing, or bringing together (re-pairing) or restoring, it can also reference questions of restitution and reparations.

“Repair, as a verb, entails action—and the concept touches on key questions about what’s possible to repair, how, and by whom” says May, who also directs the Central New York Humanities Corridor. “For instance,” she asks, “who/what is seen as in need of ‘repair’ or as broken? How might repair and justice be ‘stitched’ together?” Furthermore, she notes, as much as repair can signal healing (in a positive sense), it can also reinforce prevailing ideas about health, cure and able-bodied norms.

This year’s Syracuse Symposium kicks off with the . Presented by the Humanities Center and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, the three-day festival features a line-up of award-winning films addressing social justice issues around the globe with ties to the symposium theme of “repair.” All films listed below will be screened on the Syracuse University campus.

Thursday, Sept. 22

• “” – Investigating what happened in the Palestinian village of Tantura in 1948, director Alon Schwarz explores Israeli society’s taboo on discussing the Nakba (Catastrophe) that displaced an estimated 700,000 Palestinians.

Friday, Sept.23

• “” – This collaborative reimagination by Chase Joynt breathes new life into long-lost medical archives, revealing the never-before-seen histories of transgender people in 1960s Los Angeles.

Saturday, Sept. 24

• “” – In this film by Violet Du Feng and Zhao Qing, a centuries-old secret text created by Chinese women promises modern female empowerment, but also commercial exploitation by the government.
• “” – This documentary by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee highlights the dangers Black mothers face as they give birth in the U.S., and how their grieving families try to heal and change society.
• “” – A young female doctor fights to bring justice for a student sexually assaulted by one of her senior colleagues in this Bangladeshi drama by Abdullah Mohammad Saad.

Other Symposium Highlights:

The Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival (SUHRFF) celebrates 20 years of programming with outstanding films about human rights and social justice from around the world. SUHRFF takes place Sept. 22-24, and is part of 2022-23: REPAIR. It is presented by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Tula Goenka

“When I started the Human Rights Film Festival 20 years ago, I never imagined that we would sustain the energy and momentum over two decades, or that it would become an eagerly awaited annual event for our Syracuse University campus community,” says festival founder , professor of television, radio and film at the Newhouse School.��, associate professor of English and SUHRFF co-director, ascribes the festival’s staying power to a combination of factors. “We’ve been able to build an audience among students, faculty, staff and the Syracuse public by consistently programming what we believe to be the most interesting, stimulating and vital films to emerge from the international film festival circuit.”

Adds Goenka, “Roger and I have programmed several films for the University community before they’ve gained wider recognition or success, such as Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated ‘The Act of Killing’ (2012) or Rudy Valdez’s ‘The Sentence’ (2019), which won an Emmy for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking.”

Hallas also points out that he and Goenka work hard to build enriching experiences for students and visiting filmmakers, who interact with one another during post-screening Q&As and smaller special events where they discuss social justice storytelling in greater depth.

Roger Hallas

“The Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival is a prime example of the important work of our faculty,” says Newhouse dean . “It builds community and provides our students with the opportunity to view and understand the world in new ways. Kudos to Professor Goenka for creating this initiative and sustaining it for 20 years.”

Syracuse University faculty also praise the festival for providing students with intellectual and social engagement both in and out of their coursework. While many instructors incorporate the festival’s films into their course syllabi, others appreciate the festival’s capacity to broaden campus discussions of major issues.

Vivian May, director of the Humanities Center, says, “We are delighted to once again partner with SUHRFF to celebrate its 20th year as part of our��annual��Syracuse Symposium��public event series. Film is an important medium for forging dialogue, offering an immersive experience and bridging divides. Social justice storytelling is essential in our collective pursuit of a more just world for all, locally and globally.”

SUHRFF began as “Illuminating Oppression” in 2003, when Goenka collaborated with the international social justice organization Breakthrough to program a series of films focused on human rights issues in South Asia. The program was broadened to showcase films from across the world in 2007. Mallika Dutt, founder and former president and CEO of Breakthrough, says, “It has been an honor and delight for me to collaborate with my genius friend Tula to create the first South Asian human rights film festival in the United States in 2003 as a partnership between Breakthrough and Syracuse University. As the festival celebrates 20 years of highlighting multiple forms of justice, I want to congratulate everyone involved for their ongoing commitment to global social change.”

When Hallas joined Goenka as co-director in 2010, they collaborated with the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor to organize the first Digital Witness Symposium as part of the festival. The symposium, which ran for five years, invited scholars, media makers and human rights leaders to discuss how the digital revolution was transforming human rights media.

The 2022 Syracuse Symposium theme of “Repair” proved a powerful inspiration for this year’s program, according to Goenka. The opening film, “Tantura,” investigates how difficult the repair work of peace building becomes when one side refuses to recognize the historical trauma endured by the other. The film will be screened on Thursday, Sept. 22, at 7 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in Newhouse 3. Israeli filmmaker Alon Schwarz will introduce the film and participate in a Q&A session following the screening.

SUHRFF continues with “Framing Agnes,” Chase Joynt’s playful but deeply moving documentary about the everyday lives of trans people in mid-century Los Angeles. Joynt uses inventive formal devices to repair trans histories so long beholden to the power of medical science. The film will be screened on Friday, Sept. 23, at 7 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in Newhouse 3. Joynt will introduce the film and participate in a Q&A session following the screening.

SUHRFF concludes on Saturday, Sept. 24, with three films: “Hidden Letters,” “Aftershock” and “Rehana Maryam Noor,” which explore the necessary work of repair in the process of empowerment against diverse forms of gendered and racial discrimination in China, the United States and Bangladesh.

Festival co-sponsors are the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics; Atrocity Studies and the Practices of Social Justice Minor; Department of Anthropology; Department of Film and Media Arts; Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics; Department of Political Science; Department of Religion; Latino- Latin American Studies Program; Jewish Studies Program; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Studies Program; Renée Crown University Honors Program; Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC); Hendricks Chapel; Lender Center for Social Justice; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Resource Center; Office of Diversity and Inclusion; and South Asia Center.

Festival supporters are the Department of Art & Music Histories; Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies; Department of English; Department of History; Department of Women’s and Gender Studies; Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition; Asian/Asian American Studies Program; Disability Cultural Center; and South Asian Student Association (SASA).

All films are closed-captioned or subtitled and audio described in English. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is available during all Q&A sessions. If you require other accommodations, contact Amanda Lerch at alerch@syr.edu or 315.443.2150.

Free parking is available to the public on Thursday and Friday at the University Avenue Garage, and on Saturday at either the College Place or Women’s Building lots. Drivers should indicate to the attendant that they are attending the film festival.

Full information is available online at . Follow on social media at #SUHRFF.

Since opening its doors in 2008, the Syracuse University Humanities Center has supported faculty and graduate student research that highlights the humanities’ relevance within and beyond the academy. Graduate students may apply for competitive Dissertation Fellowships and��Humanities New York��Public Humanities Graduate Project awards.

Dissertation Fellowships

Dissertation Fellowships allow recipients to focus on finishing their writing without the demands of teaching. Fellows benefit from a support system within the Humanities Center, camaraderie with one another and presenting their work to an interdisciplinary audience. “Our support helps doctoral students complete their dissertations and succeed in the job market, whether in academia or applied settings,” says Vivian May, Humanities Center director.

This year’s Dissertation Fellows are Deyasini Dasgupta and Stephanie Jones.

Deyasini Dasgupta (left) and Stephanie Jones

Dasgupta is earning a Ph.D. in English. Her dissertation, “(Re)-Negotiating Monstrous Bodies: Reading Embodiment through Race, Affect��and Disability in Early Modern England,” bridges disability studies, premodern critical race theory, gender studies and historical phenomenology. In examining various “monstrous” bodies in Shakespeare, Spenser and others, Dasgupta asks: What does it mean to be��human��in the premodern world? What does it mean to be��excluded��from the domain of the human? What does it��feel��like?

“I am truly grateful for the sense of community, financial security and professional support provided by this Fellowship,” says Dasgupta. “Because of this generous program, I have been able to present at multiple conferences, purchase research materials and focus all my time and attention on my research and writing. I have also benefited from Humanities Center Director Vivian May’s kind guidance and from conversations with the brilliant Stephanie Jones, my fellow dissertation fellow.”

Jones, the first Black woman awarded a Humanities Center Dissertation Fellowship, is a Ph.D. candidate in writing studies, rhetoric and composition. Her dissertation, “Afrofuturist Feminism as Theory and Praxis: Rhetorical Root Working in the Black Speculative Arts Movement,” examines the history of Afrofuturism, exploring intersections between African diaspora culture, science and technology, and Black women’s contributions to the Black speculative arts movement. As Jones explains, “Black artists create methods of world-building and time travel and engage strategies that allow them to cultivate unique perspectives, such as rhetorical root working and activism, to enact an Afrofuturism that recognizes and disrupts normalized genres of futurity in ways that are anti-racist.”

Jones credits her fellowship for allowing her to successfully complete her writing. “I was also able to publish several articles and attend conferences to present my dissertation research,” she says. In 2021, Jones’s research was recognized with two awards: the Geneva Smitherman Award for Research in Black Language, Literacies, Cultures and Rhetorics (from the National Council of Teachers of English Conference on College Composition and Communication Black Caucus) and an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for writing, rhetoric and composition studies from Syracuse University. She will defend her dissertation in May and has accepted a tenure-track position as assistant professor of rhetoric and writing studies and associate director of first-year composition at Oklahoma State University.

�����Ի�����shared their dissertation research on the����followed by a����in February to discuss their work. “The video presentations and coffee hour provide an opportunity for the wider University community to learn about students’ cutting-edge work in an accessible way,” says May. “The Fellows also gain experience speaking to non-specialists about their research and its significance.”

Humanities New York Public Humanities Graduate Projects

Public Humanities Graduate Projects, a joint initiative between the Humanities Center and Humanities New York, open to master’s and doctoral students, support emerging public humanities scholars to engage beyond the ivory tower. “These collaborative projects explore an issue in the public domain with community partners,” says May. “Projects bridge expertise across our communities and bring people together to address community issues.”

This year’s Public Humanities Graduate Project awardees are Jacob Gedetsis G’21 and Ionah Scully.

Jacob Gedetsis (left) and Ionah Scully

Gedetsis, who earned a creative writing M.F.A. in August 2021, received an award for “First Taste: A Community Narrative Around Food,” a youth-focused writing project designed to generate intergenerational community narratives centered on New Americans and food. Last summer, Gedetsis engaged local refugee students at the North Side Learning Center through site visits to local farms, museums, grocers and restaurants—including the CNY Regional Market, Habiba’s Ethiopian Kitchen and restaurants at the Salt City Market—to explore how various New American communities in Syracuse access and make food. Classroom-based workshops helped students reflect on their experiences through creative expression; the project concluded with a public reading and display of student work at the Salt City Market in downtown Syracuse.

Ionah Scully, an award-winning dancer, is a Ph.D. candidate in the cultural foundations of education program and a member of the Michel First Nation, whose traditional lands are in Canada. Their dissertation research focuses on Two Spirit storytelling in education. Via this grant, Scully hosted land-based journaling sessions with Black, Indigenous and other people of color to consider their relationships to land, the land-back movement toward Indigenous sovereignty and relationships to one another as colonized peoples with different experiences of oppression.

Scully’s dissertation research and Humanities New York project take up shared questions but are also distinct. “I am passionate about furthering decolonial action and education and taking full advantage of academia to support many different project directions,” Scully says. “It has been fruitful, and I look forward to seeking additional opportunities to continue this important community work.”

Meet Some Alumni

May notes that the positive influence of both funding sources is evident in past recipients’ successes. Here’s where a few former dissertation fellows and Humanities New York public humanities awardees are today:

• Haejoo Kim G’21 earned a Ph.D. in English with support from a Dissertation Fellowship and defended her dissertation on “Medical Liberty and Alternative Health Practices in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” This spring, she started a position as an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Seoul National University, in Seoul, Korea.
• Donovan Schaefer G’17, who earned his Ph.D. in religion with support from a Dissertation Fellowship, is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His forthcoming book, “” (Duke 2022), explores the intersections between affect theory, science and critical approaches to the secular.
• Kishauna Soljour ’13, G’19, earned a Ph.D. in history with support from a Humanities New York Public Humanities Fellowship, the precursor to its current grant program. As an Andrew W. Mellow Public Humanities Fellow and visiting assistant professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College, she is developing public programming at Yonkers Public Library. Soljour’s research highlights the importance of oral history, migration narratives and popular cultural as well as artistic expressions of identity.
• Matthew D. Stewart G’19, who earned a Ph.D. in history, is a humanities teacher at The Ambrose School in Meridian, Idaho, where he uses the discussion methods honed through his Public Humanities Fellowship in the classroom every day. His dissertation research forms the basis of his first book, “” (University of Utah Press, 2022), which will be featured in the ��on May 2.

Austin Lewter, a graduate student in Pan African studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, presents at the inaugural Social Differences, Social Justice Research Symposium March 31.

On March 31, the hosted its inaugural symposium, crossing interdisciplinary boundaries to showcase student and faculty research related to equity, social justice and global transformation.

Co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Center, Lender Center for Social Justice, Renée Crown University Honors Program and Whitman School of Management, the symposium featured a keynote address from Gisele Marcus ’89, a Syracuse University Trustee and professor of practice in diversity, equity and inclusion at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

“Today is a day of celebration, valuing and honoring,” said , associate professor of management in the Whitman School and member of the Social Differences, Social Justice cluster, addressing scholars during her introductory remarks. “We are excited that we now have a cohort of cluster hires and that the University recognizes the value in convening scholars of different disciplines to bring forth issues of justice and equity and ideas about how we can make improvements. We are here to value you and your contributions. Your work is meaningful and impactful.”

, professor and chair of management in the Whitman School, and , co-director of the Lender Center for Social Justice and professor of arts education in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, welcomed symposium attendees before the panel discussions commenced.

The first panel on African Diasporic Studies showcased student research, featuring graduate students from the master’s program in Pan African studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Moderator , professor of African American Studies and director of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, acknowledged that “the Department of African American studies has a long and rich history at Syracuse University. It continues to be a space where intellectuals across many disciplines center Africa as a site of intellectual knowledge, where faculty and researchers contest pre-existing ideas of what Africa and its diaspora mean, and present alternative knowledges.”

Taana Smith then introduced first-year graduate students Joy Nyokabi, Kailey Smith and Austin Lewter.

From left: Melissa Yuen, Abdullah Naimzadeh and Danielle Taana Smith during a panel discussion on African Diasporic Studies.

Nyokabi presented her preliminary research on attempts by the British government to conceal documents and evidence of war crimes against Kenyans during the Mau Mau War in the 1950s.

As a critical component of the discussion about reparations, Kailey Smith’s presentation argued for the return of stolen cultural artifacts from Western museums to the African nations from which they originated.

Lewter presented his research on the legacy of lynching in the United States, arguing that lynchings have moved from public spectacle—such as the courthouse lawn—and become quieter and more institutionalized, invoking the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland and Eric Garner as examples of modern lynchings.

The second panel, Democratizing Internet Access, was moderated by Abdullah Naimzadeh, a graduate student in the School of Information Studies (iSchool), studying applied data science. Exploring the principle of global internet access as a human right, panelists Catherine Forrest ’22, doctoral candidate Jane Asantewaa Appiah-Okyere and Professor , from the iSchool, shared ongoing research on deployment of the , which was co-invented by McKnight.

Use of the internet backpack to expand global internet access was presented through the lens of several contexts and projects, including for health care workers in rural and remote Central America; teachers in rural Ghana; and elementary school students in underserved areas of Brooklyn and the Bronx in New York City. The panel also addressed the moral imperative for universal internet access—especially amidst the COVID-19 pandemic—and the importance of championing a framework for ethical data collection.

The morning then segued into a full schedule of faculty research briefs and presentations, including:

• , assistant professor of management in the Whitman School, presented on the characteristics and outcomes of diverse teams;
• *, assistant professor of communications in the Newhouse School, presented on contemporary representations of Mexico, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in Hollywood films;
• *, assistant professor of management in the Whitman School, presented on dehumanization and maladaptive perfectionism at work;
• , associate professor of communications in the Newhouse School, presented on her forthcoming book, “Diversity and Satire: Laughing at Processes of Marginalization;”
• , Newhouse Professor in the Newhouse School, presented on the personal, professional and political challenges of critical race scholar-activism;
• , associate professor and director of graduate studies in marriage and family therapy in the Falk College; , Dean’s Professor and Provost Faculty Fellow in counseling and human services in the School of Education; and , assistant professor of public health in the Falk College, presented research on the continuation of teletherapy post-COVID-19;
• , assistant professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, presented on his forthcoming book, “The Body is Not the Land: Memory, Translation, and Territorial Aporias;”
• *, assistant professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, presented on her current book project, “Aerial Geographies: Rooting Aviation in Global Black Literature;”
• *, assistant professor of music history and cultures in the College of Arts and Sciences, presented on racial and language identity within the mixed race or coloured community of Cape Town, South Africa;
• , assistant professor of music history and cultures in the College of Arts and Sciences, presented “Mirroring Motherhood/Land in Diaspora: Igbo Women in Music;”
• Melissa Yuen, the curator at the Syracuse University Art Museum, presented “Teaching and Learning Social Justice at the Syracuse University Art Museum;”
• , associate professor of communication and rhetorical studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, presented “Too Much to Tolerate: School Bathrooms, Trans Temporality, and Black Excess;” and
• , associate dean and Andrew W. Cohen, Walter Montgomery and Marian Gruber professor of history in the Maxwell School, presented “Gender at the Polls: Illicit Voting and Suffrage Before the Civil War.”

*Indicates a cluster hire in the Social Differences, Social Justice research cluster.

Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives Marcelle Haddix

, associate provost for strategic initiatives and Distinguished Dean’s Professor of Literacy, Race and Justice in the School of Education, shared her thoughts on the significance of the day prior to Marcus’s keynote address.

“This inaugural symposium is exactly the type of output, the kind of research work we want to see coming from the research clusters,” Haddix said. “Today spoke to the power of interdisciplinarity, the power of connecting us, bringing us together. And what we often don’t talk about are the kinds of resources it takes to engage in this work; how we acknowledge and reward interdisciplinary collaboration; how we create spaces and opportunities for people to come together across differences. That’s what today’s event really highlighted for me.”

Haddix then welcomed Marcus to deliver her keynote address, “Belonging: Essential to Enhancing the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Equation.”

Gisele Marcus ’89 delivers her keynote address, “Belonging: Essential to Enhancing the DEI Equation.”

Marcus began with a definition of belonging from diversity and inclusion expert Verna Myers: Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion means being asked to dance; belonging is “they’re actually playing some of my music.”

She spoke of belonging as a human requirement, shared how companies can expand their DEI initiatives to include belonging to address the Great Resignation, and how increased feelings of belonging for students lead to better outcomes in higher education.

“Belonging is all about feeling welcomed in a space, feeling that you’re included, feeling that your contributions are valued,” Marcus said. “It matters because when people belong, they are going to help their organization be more productive, there’s going to be better teamwork and an increase in their pride as an employee. And all of those things can be contagious in your environment.”

Marcus earned a bachelor’s degree in management information systems and transportation management from Whitman and an MBA from Harvard University. She is a member of the Syracuse University Multicultural Advancement Advisory Council; former vice president of the Syracuse University Alumni Association; an inaugural lecturer for the University’s Sankofa Lecture Series; and a 2014 recipient of the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence in Global Business Management. Marcus also endowed an Our Time has Come scholarship in her name in the Whitman School and joined the University’s Board of Trustees in 2021.

, associate professor in writing studies, rhetoric and composition in the College of Arts and Sciences and member of the Social Differences, Social Justice cluster, closed the symposium, remarking on the scholarly community being strengthened through the cluster. Berry stated that this group of scholars will be prepared to inform the academy, the arts, business and society, and that including students in the endeavor prepares them to make a global impact.

The Social Differences, Social Justice research cluster includes more than 30 affiliated faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering and Computer Science, College of Law, College of Visual and Performing Arts, iSchool, the Maxwell School, the Newhouse School and the Whitman School. The group has a listserv to which interested scholars can subscribe to stay connected and learn of future events: SDSJ@listserv.syr.edu. To join, send an email to Professor Patrick Berry at pwberry@syr.edu. To learn more about its work, .

From COVID-19’s transformative impact on people’s daily lives to the global reckoning against histories of colonialism and racism, norms are constantly evolving. The Syracuse University Humanities Center’s yearlong , entitled Conventions, explores the ever-changing political, social and cultural currents through a series of lectures, workshops, performances, exhibits, films, readings and more.

The Symposium’s theme, chosen by the��, features events intended to inspire critical thinking and encourage ethically based action through a humanistic lens.

According to Vivian May, director of the Humanities Center and the Central New York Humanities Corridor, this spring’s events will help attendees confront and rework powerful norms and expectations that shape people’s lives and imaginations. “We hope the spring Symposium programming provokes open-ended thinking about what conventions we have come to accept, in our collective and personal lives,” says May.��Below is a selection of upcoming Symposium events.

Supporting Urban Communities During COVID

Community-based programs play a critical role in convening and forging solidarity among vulnerable urban communities.��, a program of the College of Arts and Sciences, has been a space devoted to cultural and community exchange, bridging the Hispanic communities of Syracuse University and Central New York for 10 years. But according to Tere Paniagua, executive director of La Casita and of the Office of Cultural Engagement for the Hispanic Community at Syracuse University, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting isolation severed bonds developed through community-engaged programs at La Casita and similar organizations.

Zach Pearson (left), M.S.W. candidate in the Falk College’s School of Social Work, leads an open dialogue about mindfulness with teens enrolled in ECHOES, a program focused on drama, acting and self-expression.

“The fracture in our system seems to have deepened, disconnecting people from each other and disengaging communities from service agencies, youth programs and other resources available at no cost to residents,” says Paniagua. “The strategies that worked well to build community connections in the past are not as effective now.”

In response, La Casita is hosting —an open, candid dialogue among community organizers, artists, scholars, educators and students about how to address these fractures in Syracuse-area urban communities. They will discuss challenges that can hinder community support and the need to reassess traditional ways of engaging. The event is Feb. 24 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. and will be held in person at La Casita, located at 109 Otisco St. in Syracuse, and will also be available virtually, .

The panelists will reflect on the experiences, inadequacies and successes of various community engagement initiatives as programs reopened to the public following the COVID-19 shutdown.

“The present circumstances within urban communities living in poverty demand more from agencies established to engage and serve,” says Paniagua. “The panel will consider social and cultural elements; the pandemic-related ruptures that have underscored disparity and inequity; and what changes are needed to achieve positive results.”

The event will be moderated by Paniagua, and panelists include:

• Bea Gonzalez, community organizer and the University’s former vice president for community engagement
• Fanny Villarreal, executive director, YWCA
• Elisa Morales, executive director, Spanish Action League
• Maria Emma Ticio, associate professor and chair, Spanish and linguistics
• Brice Nordquist, Dean’s Professor of Community Engagement
• Zachary Pearson, M.S.W. candidate, School of Social Work
• Lizmarie Montemayor, engaged humanities undergraduate research assistant
• Zakery Munoz, Ph.D. candidate, writing and rhetoric

Conventions of Care

Narratio Fellows at the summer workshop (Photo by Edward Grattan)

Since 2019, the�� has been inspiring Syracuse-area former refugee youth to share their stories in a way that is authentic and meaningful to them. The fellowship launches each summer with a monthlong intensive workshop where Fellows learn how to use artistic expression as a storytelling method. They work with artists-in-residence to explore and represent a full range of their own histories and experiences through different creative mediums.

With the 2021-22 cohort marking Narratio’s largest class to date, this year’s fellowship included two groups: A poetry cohort, led by Somali-American writer and community organizer Khadija Mohamed, herself a��, and a photography cohort led by Columbian-American photographer and filmmaker Stefano Castro in collaboration with�������Ի���National Geographic photographers Matt Moyer and Amy Toensing, who is also a professor at the Newhouse School.

Fellows will present their original poetry and photography at an exhibition titled “” on May 5 at La Casita. The exhibition will be connected to La Casita’s spring showcase celebrating youth art in Syracuse.

Eli Clare

�ճ����, in partnership with the��, welcomes author and social justice educator,��, as a Distinguished Visiting Collaborator in the��. A leading thinker at the intersection of queerness, race and disability, Clare is widely recognized for his work highlighting how mental and physical processes interrelate. He will engage faculty, students and wider audiences with two presentations on Oct. 28 and 29.

Members of the campus community with an syr.edu email address will be able to stream each film for 48 hours, and will also have access to live Q&A sessions with the filmmakers. A complete schedule is available at��.

Newhouse School professor����and College of Arts and Sciences professor����are co-directors.

“We were forced to quickly learn how to host a first-rate virtual festival in 2020 because of COVID-19 restrictions, and we were relieved that our campus community responded well,” says Goenka, founding director. “Earlier this summer, we began planning for an in-person event but due to continuing uncertainties of the Delta variant, we decided to be cautious and host it online once again. We are really looking forward to our 20^th��film festival being an in-person celebration next year!”

“Conventions” is a significant theme in this year’s festival program. The opening film, “,” is a highly inventive and illuminating portrait of jazz musician Billy Tipton, which radically challenges the genre conventions of the documentary biopic and interrogates the representation of transgender histories. A virtual Q&A with filmmakers Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt will be held Sept. 23, at 8 p.m. ET on Zoom.

“We’re delighted to bring this innovative and thought-provoking film to open our festival,” says Hallas. “While transgender lives and histories are gaining greater public recognition, Chin-Yee and Joynt have used performance as enthralling and playful means to interrogate the very stakes of cultural representation.”

The festival continues with “,” an empowering portrait of the women who are fighting the U.S. industrial prison complex’s systematic and secretive practices of violence and reproductive injustice against Black and Brown female prisoners. A Q&A with filmmaker Erika Cohn will be held Sept. 24, at 8 p.m. ET on Zoom.

Ajitpal Singh’s award-winning dramatic feature, “,” closes the festival. A devoted mother toils to save money to build a road in a Himalayan village in order to take her disabled son for physiotherapy, but her husband believes that the traditional conventions of shamanic ritual will save them all. A Q&A with Singh will be Sept. 25, at 8 p.m. ET on Zoom.

Festival co-sponsors include the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications; David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics; School of Education; Department of English; Department of History; Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics; Department of Political Science; Department of Religion; Department of Women’s and Gender Studies; Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition; Latino-Latin American Studies Program; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Studies Program; Renée Crown University Honors Program; Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC); Hendricks Chapel; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Resource Center; Lender Center for Social Justice; South Asia Center; Department of African American Studies; Department of Art & Music Histories; South Asian Student Association (SASA); and Students Advocating Safe Sex and Empowerment (SASSE)

All films are either closed-captioned or subtitled in English. Audio description in English is also available for each film. Virtual question-and-answer sessions will include Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART). If you require additional accommodations, contact Robyn Kobasa at��rskobasa@syr.edu��or 315-443-1909 by Sept. 20.

For more information and a full schedule, visit��. Follow on Twitter at #SUHRFF.

“Timely and timeless” is how Vivian May, director of the Syracuse University Humanities Center, describes “Conventions,” the theme of this year’s . In the political sense, she says a convention can be a gathering or convening, as in political conventions or civil rights grassroots organizing. One recent example includes the #BlackLivesMatter movement against police violence for a more just, peaceful world for all, particularly for Black communities. Conventions also take up the concept of norms or expectations (that one follows or seeks to break or change), be they social, religious, familial, linguistic or artistic, among others.

May says this year’s Symposium theme is particularly fitting during the pandemic, as the health crisis has altered ideas of what is (or should be considered) normal in everyday life, how people want to live their lives, and how to inhabit and support a global community across conventional divides and boundaries.

The Syracuse Symposium, now in its 18th year, will investigate and reflect on conventions through a series of lectures, workshops, performances, exhibits, films, readings and more. Hosted by the��, the series is intended to broaden people’s views, address humanitarian issues and encourage ethically based action. Symposium’s annual theme is chosen by the��, whose members review proposals and select each year’s final lineup of events and activities.

Kicking Off With ‘Heart of the Barrio’

Symposium’s season begins with the on Sept. 18 at 6 p.m. ET at La Casita Cultural Center, a hub of experiential learning for Syracuse University students. It is also a place of participatory research and cultural heritage preservation for Latinx scholars, artists, community organizers and educators. This in-person/virtual event includes a guided tour of the exhibit, which focuses on the .

Tere Paniagua, executive director of La Casita and the Office of Cultural Engagement for the Hispanic Community in the College of Arts and Sciences, says that the anniversary programming and exhibition transcend narrow cultural categorizations of Latinx cultures and focus on the individual and collective strengths and talents of those who have contributed to the Center’s richness over the past decade.

Students and alumni facilitating a dual language reading program with children at La Casita.

Nearly 200 students each year from 24 different academic programs across the University participate in co-curricular work, from course-related research to service-learning projects. One community engagement project, also supported by the Humanities Center, is La Casita’s annual children’s publication. The book features original drawings and stories by the children (ages 8-12) in La Casita’s dual language youth program, with writing workshops led by students.

“The student volunteers and children immerse themselves in explorations of ideas and writing for publication,” Paniagua says. “For many of these children growing up in disadvantaged circumstances, this is a moment when their work and creativity are recognized and validated by their community, teachers and families.”

La Casita was also part of last year’s Syracuse Symposium, “,” which included the “” exhibition.

Other Symposium Highlights

The 19th annual��, on Sept. 23, 24 and 25, will showcase trailblazing feature documentaries about social justice issues around the world.

Symposium Q&A

Vivian May

Vivian May, who in addition to being director of the Humanities Center also directs the Central New York Humanities Corridor and is a professor of women’s and gender studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, offers insight into this year’s Symposium.

What do you hope people attending any of this year’s events will take away about conventions?

We hope Symposium’s broad engagement with the humanities and the theme will provoke open-ended thinking about what conventions we have come to accept, in our collective and personal lives. In our classes, as researchers, and with and in our wider communities, the humanities can help us confront and rework powerful norms and expectations that shape our daily lives and our imaginations. The power of collectivity, of convening as a community, and thinking about how best to forge coalitions, build connections and yet not silence differences or ignore disparities, is also something I hope is part of what this year’s programming sparks.

Can you talk about what��this year’s��Symposium��graphic��says about conventions?

It is intended to convey a sense of community or gathering together (circling), but also openings for departing or diverging from one’s community—hence, some of the fish turn away or are swimming outward from the group.

With last year’s events being virtual because of the pandemic, did you find that you were able to reach a wider range of audiences? Will you continue to offer some events virtually going forward?

Yes! Our impact and imprint for programming grew expansively, with participants from across the nation and around the world engaging with our work. Online format events continue to be more inclusive, for those with health immunity issues right now, and are “greener” in many ways, as we face a global warming crisis. Of course, there are intimate and more personal connections that can be lost online, so a mix of offerings and approaches, to meet various needs and remain inclusive and broadly welcoming, is how we anticipate future seasons will unfold.

This is the 18th symposium, each year with a different theme. What factors go into choosing the theme each year?

Our interdisciplinary board, comprising faculty and staff from across the University, thinks carefully about selecting a concept that has many valences and possibilities, offers different ways to be interpreted and applied, and that is relevant across generational, disciplinary, cultural and historical contexts.

How has the symposium changed or evolved over the years?

One significant change, starting in my second year as director, was that, given growing interest and demand, we shifted to a two-semester season, to support more offerings and spread out opportunities across the year for students and faculty to engage with all our partners’ compelling ideas and activities—from film and drama to exhibits and lectures to workshops and other hands-on offerings.

At the same time, the initial impetus—to work from and around a concept, and invite our campus partners and participants to plumb its possibilities—remains a constant.

For more information about the Humanities Center or any of this year’s Symposium events, visit the��.

“Each year, Books in the Humanities gives a snapshot of the breadth and depth of humanities scholarship at Syracuse University,” says Karin Ruhlandt, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “The topics and geographies covered are truly global. They show that disciplines as diverse as poetry, politics, philosophy and popular culture contribute to our collective understanding of what it means to be human.”

Typically, the books published each year are celebrated at an in-person reception, a tradition that has been interrupted by the pandemic. This year, more than 40 works are featured in an SU Libraries’ , to which the following contributed: librarian, Natasha Cooper, and graduate student employee, Zhiwei Wang. Authors and editors hail from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, the Whitman School of Management, Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, the Newhouse School, the College of Law, the School of Education, the College of Visual and Performing Arts, La Casita Cultural Center, the Burton Blatt Institute, SU London and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence.

Books in the Humanities is spearheaded by the Humanities Center, which engages in extensive outreach to learn about humanities books—broadly defined—being published by University faculty, staff and students. The center encourages anyone who will publish a book in the 2021 copyright year to complete its .

Vivian May, professor of women’s and gender studies and director of the Syracuse University Humanities Center and of the Central New York Humanities Corridor, says, “This initiative builds community across disciplinary boundaries by showcasing a rich range of contributions by faculty, staff and students from across the University. The diversity of topics across fields of study, from religion to design thinking to poetry, are a real testament to how the humanities help us make sense of human experience and our place in the world.”

Since the event’s first year, the Syracuse University Libraries has developed a , along with an for 2020. This annotated reference tool has, during the pandemic, become an even more vital source of information about the range of humanities scholarship underway at the University. “The juxtaposition of titles—for example those exploring the lives of saints, homelessness in America and how music, dance and drama were studied in early modern English schools—is a great snapshot of the varied and vibrant intellectual life at Syracuse University,” says David Seaman, dean of Syracuse University Libraries.

P. Gabrielle Foreman

Over the course of these seven decades, Black men and women traveled to attend meetings advertised as “Colored Conventions.” These political gatherings offered opportunities for free-born and formerly enslaved African Americans to organize and strategize for racial justice. Leaders of the abolitionist movement, including Frederick Douglass, took part in some of these assemblies in Central New York and beyond. For instance, the National Convention of Colored Men, held in October 1864, convened leading abolitionists, including Douglass, at the����(still standing in downtown Syracuse). At that convention, organizers presented the��, a document outlining inequalities faced by African Americans. The CCP digitizes documents like these, along with period images related to the Colored Conventions Movement, to create interactive online exhibits which provide insight and understanding of early Black organizing for scholars and interested citizens alike.

The Humanities Center welcomes Foreman, an award-winning educator, scholar, and activist known for her work in Black digital and public history and in African American literature, as the . In addition to her leadership of the CCP, Foreman is professor of English, African American studies and history, and an endowed chair in liberal arts at Pennsylvania State University. Her virtual residency begins with a 3-way dialogue on February 11, “.” Renowned historians ��(University of Texas at Austin) and����(Rutgers University) will join Foreman for a lively discussion, moderated by����(Pennsylvania State University). They will explore how, in their innovative scholarship and in their sustained advocacy for change in the academy, they each center Black women’s lives, resistance, and intellectual contributions. This dialogue is the first of four events that make up Foreman’s spring residency. Find the����of opportunities and information on how to register.

Preserving Rich Histories of Activism

Vivian May, director of the Humanities Center and of the Central New York Humanities Corridor, who is also professor of women’s and gender studies, says each of Foreman’s events will take up key questions of what it means to pursue justice, in one’s academic field and body of research, but also in community and collaboration with others.

“Foreman is a remarkable collaborator and publicly engaged scholar,” says May. “Her leadership and work with the Colored Conventions Project illuminate how the humanities, including Black digital humanities projects, are pivotal to making change.”

Last February 14, on Frederick Douglass Day, dozens of volunteers at Syracuse University helped contribute to the CCP’s effort to��. Through a collaboration between the Humanities Center and the CCP, volunteers at Syracuse joined over 600 people across the United States to transcribe the writings of early Black feminist educator, activist and author Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964). They used computers to read and type up her papers, notes, diaries, newspaper articles and more into a digital database for future generations to enjoy and learn from. Over 1,700 materials were digitized during the event, helping researchers and scholars discover new aspects of Cooper’s life’s work.

May says, “CCP collaborations and partnerships help transform archives, historical knowledge, and offer important new materials for teaching. In a short period of time, this work has exponentially expanded access to newly digitized archival materials, to better document and preserve rich histories of Black political organizing and activism.”

Digitizing these historical materials, and making them readily available via CCP’s two websites—their����and their new����site—­is key, says May. “It democratizes access to this knowledge base and raises awareness of longer histories of civil rights organizing,” she adds. “A new edited volume about these Conventions (to be highlighted in an April event as part of Foreman’s spring residency), will deepen understandings about this political history and these texts, as well.”

Foreman’s residency is hosted by the Humanities Center in conjunction with an organizing team of faculty and academic staff: Dorri Beam, director of graduate studies and associate professor of English; Joan Bryant, department chair and associate professor of African American studies; Petrina Jackson, director of the Special Collections Research Center; and Patricia Roylance, associate professor of English.

The idea for Foreman’s residency grew from a meeting of the Central New York Humanities Corridor working group��Culture and Democracy in 19th-Century New York.��Corridor working groups��connect scholars from across the region who specialize in corresponding areas of study.��The cohort of colleagues, including lead organizer��Dorri Beam, Patty Roylance, Joan Bryant, Petrina Jackson and Cornell University professors Shirley Samuels and Derrick Spires, study the dynamic interplay of race, gender, reform, religion, politics, art and literature in nineteenth-century New York.

“We knew that Foreman’s cutting-edge work in establishing the Colored Conventions Project, which includes quite a few Conventions held in Central and Western New York, would be ideal. The Watson professorship is a sustained visit that will allow time to discover the many facets of her work,” says Beam. “Foreman really makes us understand the full ramifications of the recovery work she does in Black history, bringing to greater light and accessibility seven decades of organized Black political work in the nineteenth century.”

Petrina Jackson, who attended Foreman’s talk and workshops on the CCP, held at the University of Iowa when she was head of Special Collections and University Archives at Iowa State University, says Foreman’s work shines a light on the values, strategies, and support systems Black activists, including women, used in their advocacy.

“Not only will those who participate in Professor Foreman’s residency become acquainted with the amazing stories of Black men’s and women’s early movement for full citizenship, but they will also witness her fierce advocacy for Black students and their success in an academic system that was not designed for them,” notes Jackson.

The Evolution of Colored Conventions

At this spring’s culminating event for Foreman’s residency, Joan Bryant will join Foreman,����(Pennsylvania State University),����(Cornell University) and�� (University of Maryland) to discuss the history of early Black organizing during a virtual panel. Each is a contributor to “,” an important new volume of essays focusing on the nineteenth century’s longest campaign for Black civil rights which was the prequel to the NAACP, Civil Rights, and Black Lives Matter movements.

In the book, Bryant’s essay analyzes an early period in Colored Convention history that she refers to as “the gap years.” Bryant explains how a small set of delegates brought the annual national gatherings to a temporary halt in the 1830s as they tried to redefine what it meant for Black people to work as American reformers.

“The group prompted struggles over the meanings of race, which they viewed as a discourse that invented and sustained whiteness as a category of privilege,” she says. “I argue that the debates of this period explain how ideas about race informed the evolution of antebellum (pre-Civil War) and postbellum (post-Civil War) Colored Conventions.”

Bryant expects panelists to engage in a range of topics, including: resources offered by the CCP for understanding the conventions; how digital tools have made convention records accessible to general audiences, facilitated discoveries of previously unknown conventions, and fostered new interpretations of convention participation and networks; and how African American print culture informed the evolution of Colored Conventions.

The virtual panel, titled “Why Didn’t We Know?! Seven Decades of 19th-Century Black Political Organizing” will be held on April 16 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. ��is open through April 14.

“I look forward to opportunities the residency can offer to connect contemporary Black Lives Matter activism and Black visibility in ‘official’ politics to a long reform tradition of using media networks to promote Black self-determination and collective action,” Bryant says. “Given Gabrielle’s talents and commitments, I also think her visits will inspire a diverse array of students, faculty, staff, and administrators to reflect on ways that technological conventions mediate and document how they function as individual political actors.”

��was established by the Watson family to support on-campus residencies of prominent humanities scholars, writers and artists.

As assistant director for proposal development, Sarah Workman applies her academic background to help Syracuse University humanities faculty develop research proposals and find funding and support to make their ideas a reality. Workman, whose position is shared between the Office of Research and the College of Arts and Sciences, supports humanities faculty in a variety of ways. “I’m constantly looking at what’s out there in terms of funding, especially as it pertains to the humanities faculty,” she says. Workman encourages faculty to reach out to her via email. “We’ll do a brainstorming session to figure out what opportunity may be a good fit given where they are in the research process.”

Conversations turn to what she can do to best support the project and faculty member or research team. This includes searching for funding opportunities and connecting faculty with corporate and foundation relations. Workman also often works closely with the Syracuse University Humanities Center (SUHC) to strengthen humanities research culture on campus and is currently collaborating with the SUHC to develop a new webpage with updated resources for campuswide humanities faculty. She also connects faculty with related interests so they may learn from each other’s funding successes. Her support spans all phases of research development, from helping faculty prioritize their ideas, to developing funding proposals and connecting scholars with funding opportunities.

After completing an undergraduate degree in English and Spanish from Cornell University, Workman lived in Israel briefly. She then went on to earn an M.A. from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Workman has firsthand experience in developing research projects from start to finish. However, while finishing her Ph.D., she realized that she didn’t want to pursue a typical academic position in the humanities, where book-length research projects are the norm.

Sarah Workman

Workman realized that the parts of academic work she enjoys, like collaborating with colleagues, reading in different disciplines and working in a writing group, would be more accessible in an alternative support role for faculty. She worked for a time at Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship. There she designed online learning environments and supported course and curriculum development funding opportunities. By gaining experience working with a wide range of faculty in various stages of their careers, Workman developed a strong understanding of challenges faculty members face. “I see how their research influences their teaching and vice versa. As a graduate student in the humanities, I understand the demands on their time as well as what it means to do academic research in the humanities,” she says.

Workman can help facilitate support and research connections among faculty. For example, Associate Professor Heath Hanlin in the Department of Transmedia is developing a project that uses virtual reality to create museum exhibitions in U.S. locations that have been drastically impacted by climate change. With Workman, Hanlin has been actively pursuing multiple grant opportunities for this project.

Workman conducted research and made connections relevant to grantees to help guide the process, including on-campus connections. For example, she connected him with Earth scientist Melissa Chipman who was previously awarded a relevant National Geographic Storytellers grant. “Heath and Melissa are off having their own conversation about the ways in which scientists are trying to learn about how they can better communicate the impacts of climate change,” Workman says. “Heath’s doing it from a virtual reality perspective, and Melissa’s thinking about it from an Earth sciences perspective. They’re thinking about the same questions from these various disciplinary vantage points, and I was able to bring them together.”

Workman thinks her role at Syracuse University is the fit she didn’t find in the course of her Ph.D. “I very personally know what it’s like to struggle with research momentum,” she says. Her empathetic approach appreciates the personal process that academic research is for professors. She is happy to be in a place to help the humanists on campus be successful. “I understand the challenges because I was processing all of that as a graduate student to see if I wanted to do it. It informs the way I now work with faculty.”

As we collectively navigate through a global pandemic, pursue social justice on multiple fronts and seek answers to the global warming crisis, “Futures,” the theme of this year’s Syracuse Symposium hosted by the ��(SUHC), offers a series of events to broaden people’s perspectives, inspire change and encourage ethically based action.

“Futures,” which launched at the start of the semester and runs throughout the academic year, features a tackling existential questions like, why are we here, what are we called to do and to whom/what are we accountable or responsible? Many Symposium events address social, cultural and environmental shortcomings, past and present, and offer ways we can improve the outlook for our shared future.

Some of this year’s Symposium events include a and creator of , Nikole Hannah-Jones (The New York Times) (Oct. 8); a , whose work illustrates the possibility of moving toward a peaceful future (Oct. 29); a addressing race and roles of women while engaging with a just vision of the future (Nov. 12) (Jean-Louis’ exhibit “” is currently on display at Point of Contact); and an , linking Syracuse and South African communities to investigate the impacts of climate change on marginalized and racialized populations (March 26). All Symposium events this year take place virtually, allowing for unprecedented national and international participation.

A Q&A with Vivian May, director of the Humanities Center, principal investigator of the Central New York Humanities Corridor and professor of women’s and gender studies, provides further insight into this year’s Symposium.

How does this year’s Symposium address some of the current challenges facing society?

VM: This year is full of uncertainty and ambiguity—because of the pandemic and novel coronavirus, but also because many forms of injustice and inequality are being laid bare, from state violence against Black and Brown communities to the ways that climate change is wreaking havoc on our environment.

In response, “Futures” has many different kinds of offerings. We hope this multifaceted approach provides different portals for people to experience how the humanities matter, how we must not take them for granted and how they provide us with much-needed tools to navigate so much uncertainty.

How do the humanities help us in times like these and what are the benefits of attending symposium events?

VM: Art, music, history, drama, literature, philosophy, languages, religion—they pull us into different worlds, expand our imaginations and provide us with tools to deal, at our innermost levels, with our fears, hopes and disappointments. The humanities lead us to, and through, hard questions about inequality, love, memory, justice and the role of the state. The nature of existence, and definitions of what we mean by personhood, or what a world is, cannot be addressed without the humanities.

So, we hope people find ways to connect with each other, think proactively about the future and to try to ensure, even if we also feel some despair right now, that collectively, we can and should pursue glimmers of possibility for a transformed and more just world.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The 1619 Project, will participate in a virtual conversation on Oct. 8. (Photo by James Estrin)

On Oct. 8, in partnership with University Lectures, Nikole Hannah-Jones (The New York Times), a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and creator of The 1619 Project, will engage in a��virtual conversation with Rawiya Kameir, a new faculty member in the Newhouse School. What can people look forward to that evening?

VM: Hannah-Jones’ work, particularly in The 1619 Project, excavates the past, starting with the first ship of enslaved people arriving at Jamestown, as a means to carve out our future differently as a nation. It is well beyond time to collectively confront how systemic racism, structural inequality and violence are woven into the very fabric of our democracy, in contradiction with our stated aims and goals. Hannah-Jones’ work underscores how the future we say we want is not possible without a return to our nation’s roots, meaningfully reflecting on (and acting from) how our past continues to shape our present structures, practices, laws and our very sense of self as individuals and as a nation. As James Baldwin wrote in 1965, “History…is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us.”

With symposium events going virtual, how does that impact programming as well as potential audiences?

VM: We made the decision to hold all of our offerings in a virtual format early on, when not much was known about how COVID-19 might unfold and what impact that might have on this academic year’s activities. Holding remote-format events, workshops and dialogues is different—we lose the intimacy of being together, exploring ideas. On the other hand, virtual events have invited broad engagement in new ways. First, our students can participate, no matter where they are in the world. Faculty, staff, students and community members can easily join activities and, in addition, we have seen quite a lot of national and international participation already in this year’s earliest Symposium events.

Describe your vision for the Humanities Center and its role in larger cultural conversations.

VM: At the SUHC, we showcase how the humanities are needed to address today’s most pressing problems and can help us all explore some of life’s most enduring questions—questions that have no easy answers or quick solutions, but that we are compelled to answer as a broader society and individually. Through our diverse events, research supports and fellowships for faculty and students, we break divides, facilitate new knowledge and bring people together in ways that build community. The SUHC’s impact can be felt well beyond the University’s boundaries—thanks to our many community partnerships, but also because we are home to the CNY Humanities Corridor, an 11-institution consortium supporting humanities collaborations in Central New York, as well as national and international partnerships.

Since 2004, Syracuse Symposium has engaged wider publics with innovative, interdisciplinary work in the humanities by renowned scholars, artists, authors and performers. The Symposium’s annual theme is chosen by the Humanities Center advisory board, which also helps review proposals and select each year’s final line-up of events and activities.

For more information about the Humanities Center or any of this year’s Symposium events, email��humcenter@syr.edu.

Hilary Weaver

On Oct. 22 and 23, the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI), housed within the College of Law, and the Syracuse University Humanities Center, whose home is the College of Arts and Sciences, are hosting two virtual events on disability and future thinking. Both events are part of , the Humanities Center’s annual public events series. This year’s programming engages the meaning and impact of “Futures” from diverse perspectives and genres across a range of locations, locally and globally. The events also honor and contribute to National Disability Awareness Month, celebrated each year in October.

“The two-day ‘Futures’ event is an excellent opportunity for those involved in social work, members of the disability community and Indigenous community, and many other individuals and groups to examine methods of change to positively impact those with disabilities,” says Diane Wiener, research professor and associate director of interdisciplinary programs and outreach at BBI. “July 26, 2020, was the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA); the two-day ‘Futures’ event could not be more timely. Professor Weaver brings years of expertise and experience in multicultural, Indigenous-centered social work to our collaborative discussion on the future of the disability community and thoughtful, practical ways to imagine and create a more inclusive and accessible world. We are honored and thrilled to have her join us, virtually.”

“(Dis)ability Futures and Indigeneity: Critical Epistemologies for Social Change”
Virtual lecture on Oct. 22 from 4 to 6 p.m. ET

Guest Speaker: , associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, University at Buffalo

In mainstream thinking, disabilities are frequently perceived as deficits, emboldened by values borne out of colonization. In this lecture, Weaver instead draws on traditional Indigenous understandings, wisdom, and knowledge to answer vital questions. What can the United States and the rest of the world learn to change our future, by making disabilities and other differences understandable, without applying a deficit model? The future does not need to be as hierarchical as the present.

RSVP by Oct. 16 to receive the link to the event.

American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and live captioning will be provided. Please indicate any other accommodations requests when RSVPing.

“The Medicine Wheel as a Framework for Understanding Disabilities: Informing Our Future Thinking, Informing Our Future Actions”
Virtual workshop on Oct. 23 from 10 a.m. to noon ET

Guest Speaker: , associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, University at Buffalo

The Medicine Wheel is a powerful symbol for many Native Americans and it contains many layers of meaning. In this workshop, Weaver explores how components of the Medicine Wheel can be used to understand traditional Indigenous ideas about disabilities. Participants will engage with relevant Native American teachings and interpretations to understand how these ideas can shift our understanding of different abilities of Mind, Body, Spirit and Heart. Discussion focuses on how, as individuals and more broadly, we can work toward change, reduce stigma and “othering,” and forge a better future in our shared world.

RSVP by Oct. 16 to receive the link to the event.

American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and live captioning will be provided. Please indicate any other accommodations requests when RSVPing.

Note: a special opportunity for NY State licensed social workers, the School of Social Work Continuing Education Program is offering free continuing education (CE) contact hours for these events. If you are eligible and interested in obtaining free CE’s for this event, please express interest when you RSVP. Earn up to four Continuing Education contact hours on Oct. 22 (2 CEs) and Oct. 23 (2 CEs). is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0106. Please for more information.

Additional supporters of the two-day symposium are the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics; the Office of Diversity and Inclusion; the Department of Religion; the Native American and Indigenous Studies program in the College of Arts and Sciences; and Native American SUNY: Western Consortium.

The 18th annual Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival (SUHRFF) is online from Sept. 24-26 due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The film festival is part of and is presented by the and the . Accessed through the film festival website——each film will be available to stream to the campus community for 24 hours (12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. ET) with a live Zoom Q&A with the filmmaker as listed. An syr.edu email address is required for login access because of film distribution agreements.

“Like all film festivals around the world, we have had to rethink how to run SUHRFF in the midst of the pandemic,” says Tula Goenka, professor of television, radio and film and founder and co-director of the festival. “With the terrific support from the information technology services of the Newhouse School and the University, as well as the generous flexibility of filmmakers and their distributors, we are delighted to be able to program three incredible films in this year’s virtual festival, while also maintaining the post-screening discussion, which is always such an enriching and informative component of our annual event.”

SUHRFF 2020 opens on Thursday, Sept. 24, with “” directed by Shalini Kantayya. Premiering to great acclaim earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, the film explores the deeply troubling implications of our increasing reliance on artificial intelligence. As MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that most facial-recognition software does not accurately identify darker-skinned faces and the faces of women, she begins investigating the widespread bias in algorithms. There will be a Zoom Q&A with Kantayya and Safiya Umoja Noble, associate professor of information studies, University of California, Los Angeles, (one of the media scholars featured in the film) at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, Sept. 24.

“Coded Bias”

“We’re thrilled to bring this extremely timely and thought-provoking film to open our festival,” says Roger Hallas, associate professor of English and co-director of the festival. “The film highlights the key role of women, especially women of color, at the cutting edge of digital scholarship and activism around these critical issues, which are not only shaping our future society, but also impacting us already right now.”

The festival continues on Friday, Sept 25, with a screening of “,” Cecilia Aldarondo’s truly cinematic revelation of the dual crises that have recently beset Puerto Rico: Hurricane Maria and the debt crisis. Weaving across the island, Aldarondo witnesses vastly differing visions of Puerto Rico’s future as it struggles to rebuild and remake. There will be a Zoom Q&A with Aldarondo at 4 p.m. ET on Saturday, Sept. 26.

“Landfall”

The festival concludes on Saturday with “,” Priya Sen’s exquisitely observed portrait of work class queer lives in Delhi. “Tula and I both saw the film at the 2019 Flaherty Seminar and we were immediately taken by the tremendous sensitivity and insight that Sen’s camera achieves in documenting the everyday world and future aspirations of Sachi and Parveen, the film’s protagonists,” says Hallas. There will be a Zoom Q&A with Sen at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday, Sept. 26.

“Yeh Freedom Life”

Festival co-sponsors include the Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics; School of Education; School of Information Studies; Department of African American Studies; Department of English; Department of History; Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics; Department of Religion; Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition; Latino-Latin American Studies Program; Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration; Hendricks Chapel; Lender Center for Social Justice; and South Asia Center. Festival supporters include the Department of Art and Music Histories, Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Department of Political Science, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, Renée Crown University Honors Program, and Students Advocating Safe Sex and Empowerment.

All films are either closed-captioned or subtitled in English. Audio description in English is also available for each film. Q&As on Zoom will provide live captioning through Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART). If you require other accommodations, please contact Kristen Northrop (kmnorthr@syr.edu or 315.443.7358) by Sept. 10.

Full information can be found on the .

Syracuse University’s premier speaker series, the University Lectures brings to Syracuse University audience members and the larger public notable guest speakers of exceptional accomplishment who share their diverse global experiences and perspectives. The series was created through, and is supported by, the generosity of alumnus Robert B. Menschel ’51. Media sponsor for the University Lectures is .

Series events typically take place on campus, but—following public health guidance due to the COVID-19 pandemic—this fall’s lectures will all be virtual, viewable via Zoom. And audience members will be able to submit questions for consideration as part of the experience, time permitting. Connection information will be provided closer to each event.

Wilmer Valderrama
Tuesday, Sept. 22, 7:30 p.m.

Wilmer Valderrama

Valderrama will take part in a conversation with David Barbier Jr. ’23, an international relations major in the Maxwell School and a television, radio and film major in the Newhouse School. He is also a Posse Foundation Scholar and a participant in the Renée Crown University Honors Program.

Valderrama has amassed an extensive acting résumé in film and television that solidified him in Hollywood as a sought-after leading man. He is most recognized for his portrayal of the character Fez on Fox’s Emmy-nominated series “That ’70s Show” (1998-2006), a role that garnered him numerous Teen Choice Awards. In 2016, he joined the cast of the hit CBS drama “NCIS” (then in its 14th season) as NCIS Special Agent Nick Torres.

His other recent television credits include Fox’s “Minority Report,” Netflix’s “The Ranch,” ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s television series “From Dusk Till Dawn.” Valderrama also voiced the main character of Disney’s hugely popular animated children’s show “Handy Manny,” which introduced preschoolers to Spanish.

His film credits include the animated feature “Charming” (2018), for which he voiced Prince Charming, “The Adderall Diaries” (2015), “To Whom It May Concern” (2015), “Larry Crowne” (2011) and “From Prada to Nada” (2011).

Behind the camera, Valderrama created and produced the MTV series “YO MOMMA,” also serving as its host. And his production company WV Entertainment has multiple television and film projects in development.

In his community, Valderrama serves on the board of Voto Latino and is the spokesperson for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s Ready 2 Lead program, which works to educate and empower Latino youth. Valderrama also recently co-founded HARNESS, a group dedicated to connecting communities to inspire action and power change. In 2013, Valderrama was honored with an ALMA Award for Outstanding Social Activism.

Born in Miami, Valderrama moved to Venezuela with his family at age 3 and returned to the United States as a teen. He and his sisters were the first in their family to speak English, and his parents instilled in them the critical importance of education.

Fluent in both Spanish and English, Valderrama resides in Los Angeles.

Valderrama’s appearance is sponsored by the .

Nikole Hannah-Jones
Thursday, Oct. 8, 7:30 p.m.

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Hannah-Jones will be interviewed by Rawiya Kameir, assistant teaching professor in the magazine, news and digital journalism department in the Newhouse School. A critic, editor and producer, Kameir was a finalist for the 2020 National Magazine Award in the Essays and Criticism category.

Hannah-Jones covers racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and has spent years chronicling the way official policy has created—and maintains—racial segregation in housing and schools.��Her deeply personal reports on the black experience in America��offer a compelling case for greater equity.

She was named a�� for “reshaping national conversations around education reform.” This is but one honor in a growing list. Her story “Worlds Apart” in The New York Times Magazine won the National Magazine Award (a.k.a. Ellie) for “journalism that illuminates issues of national importance” as well as the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism.

In 2016, Hannah-Jones was awarded a Peabody Award and a George Polk Award for radio reporting for her��“This American Life”��story “The Problem We All Live With.”��She was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists and was also named to 2019’s The Root 100 as well as Essence’s Woke 100. Her reporting has also won Deadline Club Awards, Online Journalism Awards,��the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service, the Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting and��the Emerson College President’s Award for Civic Leadership.

Most recently, The New York Times Magazine’s that she spearheaded on the history and lasting legacy of American slavery went viral, and her powerful introductory essay—written under the headline “Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True”—was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Named for the year the first enslaved Africans arrived in America, the project features an ongoing series of essays and art on the relationship between slavery and everything from social infrastructure and segregation, to music and sugar—all by Black American authors, activists, journalists and others.

Nothing we know about American life today has been untouched by the legacy of slavery. “The 1619 Project” quickly went viral—the print issue flew off shelves immediately, prompting hundreds of thousands of extra copies to be printed—spreading its heartbreaking and important message worldwide. Random House announced��that it will be adapting the project into a graphic novel and four��publications for young readers, while also releasing an extended version of the original��publication, including more essays, fiction and poetry.

Earlier this year, Hannah-Jones appeared on to discuss the project. And an impactful ad about the project—a collaboration with singer-songwriter Janelle Monáe—debuted at the Oscars just days later.

In addition to Hannah-Jones’ Pulitzer, “The 1619 Project” won two 2020 National Magazine Awards this past May, in the Public Interest category and in the Podcasting category, for three audio pieces.

In February 2020, she was profiled by Essence as part of its Black History Month series, celebrating “the accomplishments made by those in the past, as well as those paving the way for the future.”

Hannah-Jones co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting with the goal of increasing the number of reporters and editors of color.

Along with��The New York Times, her reporting has been featured in ProPublica,��The Atlantic Magazine, Huffington Post, Essence, The Week Magazine,��Grist, Politico Magazine and on��“Face the Nation,” “This American Life,” “The Tom Joyner Morning Show,” MSNBC, C-SPAN,��Democracy Now and radio stations across the country.

Hannah-Jones’ appearance is co-sponsored by the , which is presenting .

Thom Filicia ’04
Tuesday, Oct. 27, 7:30 p.m.

Thom Filicia

Filicia started his career at renowned design firms Parish-Hadley, Robert Metzger and Bilhuber & Associates. He launched his acclaimed enterprise in 1998 and emerged as one of today’s most influential and respected interior and product designers. His projects range from residential and hospitality to commercial interiors all over the world.

includes such projects as the VIP Suite for the USA Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Aichi, Japan; an eco-friendly apartment for Riverhouse, Manhattan’s first premium (LEED certified) “green” luxury condominium tower; and the Delta Sky Decks at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Filicia has been praised as a top designer and international tastemaker. He gained widespread fame for his role as the interior design expert on the Emmy Award-winning “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” as well as for his television work for Style Network, HGTV and most recently Bravo’s “Get a Room with Carson & Thom.”

He is also the driving force behind the Thom Filicia Home Collection, which includes furniture, artwork, bedding, textiles and wallcovering, and has a flagship showroom, called , at The New York Design Center.

Filicia is the best-selling author of “Thom Filicia Style” (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2008) and “American Beauty: Renovating and Decorating a Beloved Retreat” (Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2012).

In 2011, he was named one of Elle Decor’s top 25 A-List Designers. In 2006, he was chosen as one of ’s Top 100 American Designers and ’s Top 50 “Tastemakers.”

Filicia’s appearance is co-sponsored by the and is part of Syracuse University’s LGBTQ History Month.

The Humanities Center is hosting a transcribe-a-thon of the writings of activist, educator and author Anna Julia Cooper on Feb. 14.

As an outspoken advocate of abolition and women’s rights, Frederick Douglass gladly accepted an invitation to the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. It was events like this, and being part of the “Underground Railroad,” that made Upstate New York, a hotbed for social justice and equality in the 19th century. Today, the Syracuse community can play a role too, by literally preserving history. On Frederick Douglass Day, Feb. 14, a day which celebrates Douglass’ many contributions as an author, preeminent orator and social reformer, the Humanities Center is partnering with the Colored Conventions Project to host a local transcribe-a-thon of the writings of Anna Julia Cooper as part of a national day of service.

Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper became the fourth African American woman to earn a doctoral degree when she received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Paris-Sorbonne in 1925 at the age of 67. Cooper was a visionary black feminist leader, intellectual, activist and educator: her most widely known book is her 1892 volume, “A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South.”

The transcribe-a-thon will digitally preserve other examples of Cooper’s writings and life work for future generations to enjoy and learn from. Students, faculty, staff and members of the community are invited to sign up for one or more half-hour time slots, between noon to 3 p.m., Feb. 14, in the Peter Graham Commons, 114 Bird Library. Participants will use computers to read Cooper’s documents online and type up the content into a digital database. Materials will include Cooper’s papers, notes, diaries, newspaper articles and more from Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center archives. The transcribe-a-thon is part of an emerging field known as digital humanities, where digital tools are used in the practice of humanities research.

MK Czerwiec, R.N., M.A., a.k.a. “Comic Nurse”, will lecture on the emerging field of graphic medicine on Thursday, Jan. 23, from 4 to 6 p.m. at SUNY Upstate Medical University, New Academic Building 4414BC. Czerwiec will discuss how the growing field of graphic medicine can benefit all involved in health care, whether in the clinic, the classroom or the community.

On Friday, Jan. 24, Czerwiec will lead a workshop on graphic medicine exercises from 10 a.m. to noon at SUNY Upstate Medical University, Setnor Hall 3509/10. In this session, participants will engage with graphic medicine exercises to explore creative, reflective and inclusive practices for the care of self and others.

Both events are free and open to the public.

“These Syracuse Symposium events will address issues of power in the silencing of disability and the ‘voices‘ of those who experience barriers in healthcare and healthcare education and practice,” says Diane Wiener, research professor and associate director of interdisciplinary programs and outreach for BBI. “These events will also address how disabled people’s ‘voices‘ are sometimes silenced in Graphic Medicine, the comics industry, and beyond, thus demonstrating why adaptations are necessary to (re)fashion a primarily visual medium so that it is consistently accessible to a spectrum of creators and audiences.”

As was the case with the fall 2019 installments in the series, the symposium is sponsored by the Burton Blatt Institute’s Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach, the Consortium for Culture and Medicine (Le Moyne College, Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical University), and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Czerwiec has been making comics under the pseudonym Comic Nurse since 2000. With UK physician Ian Williams, she co-runs GraphicMedicine.org, a website devoted to the intersection of comics and health. Her first graphic memoir, “Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371” (Penn State University Press, 2017), is believed to be the first graphic memoir created by a nurse. She is also a co-author of the Eisner Award-nominated Graphic Medicine Manifesto (Penn State University Press, 2015) which maps the field of Graphic Medicine.

The event locations have wheelchair-accessible space and bathrooms. American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) will be provided. Please refrain from using scented products to ensure the comfort and safety of participants.

For information on parking or to request additional accommodations, please contact Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri at 315.443.2156 or razubal@law.syr.edu by Jan. 16.

Elizabeth J. Donaldson, professor of English and interim associate dean for curriculum and student success at the New York Institute of Technology.

Syracuse University’s Humanities Center and the Burton Blatt Institute’s (BBI) Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach are hosting the two-part Syracuse Symposium, “‘Cripping’ Graphic Medicine: Psychiatric Disability, ‘Crip’ Culture and the Humanities.” Elizabeth J. Donaldson, professor of English and interim associate dean for curriculum and student success at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), will give a public lecture on these topics on Tuesday, Oct. 29, at 4 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, 114 Bird Library.

On Wednesday, Oct. 30, Professor Donaldson will follow up her lecture by leading “Drawing Out the Public Sphere: A Workshop on ‘Cripping’ Graphic Medicine” starting at 10 a.m. in 304 Tolley Humanities Building.

This symposium, in the emerging cross-disciplinary field of graphic medicine, engages Syracuse University’s and SUNY Upstate Medical University’s constituents in collaboration by drawing linkages across disability studies and the health humanities. Both events are free and open to the public. Community members are encouraged to attend. An RSVP is not needed for the lecture; please RSVP to Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri for workshop participation (information follows).

The Consortium for Culture and Medicine—involving Le Moyne College, Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical University—and the Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences are co-sponsors of the events.

Today, graphic memoirs are both popular and acclaimed: for example, Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home” (2006) is taught in college courses and has been adapted into an award-winning Broadway musical. Yet, when Justin Green published his 40-page autobiographical comic, “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary,” in 1972, he was breaking new ground and inventing a new form. By reading Binky Brown as a disability memoir, Donaldson argues that psychiatric disability and the empathetic treatment of mental health issues are foundational to this genre. Contemporary graphic memoirs of psychiatric disability are both a legacy of Green’s innovative confessional comics and an extension of his work. For students of disability studies, these graphic texts challenge stereotypes of mental illness and offer important and unique insights into the experiences of people living with madness and psychiatric disability.

“These Syracuse Symposium events will address issues of power in the silencing of disability and the��‘voices’ of those who experience barriers in healthcare and healthcare education and practice,” said Diane Wiener, research professor and associate director of interdisciplinary programs and outreach for BBI. “The event will also address how disabled people’s ‘voices’ are sometimes silenced in graphic medicine, the comics industry and beyond, thus demonstrating why adaptations are necessary to (re)fashion a primarily visual medium so that it is consistently accessible to a spectrum of creators and audiences.”

A second lecture and workshop in this series will be held in Spring 2020 with MK Czerwiec, a.k.a. Comic Nurse.

Event Details

Tuesday, Oct. 29:��‘Cripping’ Graphic Medicine: Psychiatric Disability, ‘Crip’ Culture and the Health Humanities
Public lecture by NYIT Professor Elizabeth J. Donaldson
4 p.m.-6 p.m.
Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, 114 Bird Library
Light refreshments will be served.

Wednesday, Oct. 30:��Drawing Out the Public Sphere: A Workshop on ‘Cripping’ Graphic Medicine
Workshop led by NYIT Professor Elizabeth J. Donaldson
10 a.m.-noon
304 Tolley Humanities Building
Please call 315.443.2156 or email razubal@law.syr.edu to RSVP for this workshop.

American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) will be provided during the lecture and workshop. For other accommodations, contact Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri at 315.443.2156 or razubal@law.syr.edu.

Being held Sept. 26-28, the film festival is part of Syracuse Symposium 2019: SILENCE and is presented by the in the College of Arts and Sciences and the . Co-sponsored and supported by over 25 academic units and organizations, SUHRFF is an interdisciplinary event that embodies the vision of Syracuse University—preparing engaged citizens, scholars and leaders for participation in a changing global society.

“This year’s Syracuse Symposium theme of ‘Silence’ resonates deeply with our festival because the very ethos of human rights filmmaking lies in the struggle against silence, against powers of censorship, exile, marginalization and disenfranchisement,” says Roger Hallas, associate professor of English and co-director of SUHRFF. “Film not only gives voice to those who have been silenced, but it also finds creative and compelling means to represent the silences that perpetuate injustice and oppression.”

A still from “Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements,” directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky.

All screenings are free and open to the public; no tickets are required. DHH accommodations will be provided.

SUHRFF opens on Thursday, Sept. 26, at 7 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3, with a screening of “” directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky. Premiering earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, the film delves into an intergenerational exploration of living with deafness within the filmmaker’s own family. The film will be followed by a panel discussion with Michael Schwartz, associate professor of law and director of the Disability Rights Clinic, and Beth Ferri, professor of disability studies and inclusive education in the School of Education.

“We’re excited to screen this deeply moving and artistic film for opening night,” says Tula Goenka, professor of television, radio and film in the Newhouse School and co-director of SUHRFF. “As soon as I saw the film at Sundance in late January, I knew we had to secure it for a screening on campus, for seldom has a film woven together the themes of family, disability and creativity with such intimacy, grace and insight.”

The festival continues with a screening of “,” on Friday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3. Also premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, former transmedia faculty member Jeffrey Palmer’s documentary presents an exquisitely crafted portrait of Navarro Scott Momaday, one of Native America’s most celebrated writers, drawing on revelatory interviews, epic landscape cinematography and expressive animation. Palmer will introduce the film and participate in a Q&A.

The theme of “Silence” continues on Saturday afternoon at the Shemin Auditorium in the Shaffer Art Building with screenings of “,” documenting the ongoing struggle of South African college students for transformational, intergenerational justice and decolonized higher education a quarter century after the end of apartheid; “,” an exciting and moving story of the groundbreaking international criminal case to break contemporary Spain’s culture of impunity around the atrocities and abuses of General Franco’s 40-year dictatorship; and “,” a beautifully rendered fictional tale about the trauma of exile for the Tibetan refugee community living in New Dehli.

SUHRFF is co-sponsored by the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics; School of Education; Hendricks Chapel; Department of History; Department of Languages, Literature and Linguistics; Citizenship and Civic Engagement program; International Relations program; Latino-Latin American Studies program; Native American and Indigenous Studies program; Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC); and the South Asia Center.

SUHRFF’s supporters are the Department of African American Studies; Department of Art and Music Histories; Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies; Department of Political Science; Department of Religion; Department of Sociology; Department of Transmedia; Department of Women’s and Gender Studies; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Studies program; Disability Cultural Center; LGBT Resource Center; Office of Multicultural Affairs; and Students Advocating Safe Sex and Empowerment (SASSE).

Public parking is available in the University North and South lots on University Avenue on Thursday and Friday.��On Saturday, parking is available in the Comstock Avenue Garage.

All films are either open-captioned or subtitled in English. Communication Access Realtime Translation will be available at all screenings for the introductions and discussions. If you require other accommodations, please contact Kristen Northrop (kmnorthr@syr.edu or 315.443.7358) by Sept. 15.

Full information can be found on the festival website at��.

Through the eye—or ear—of the beholder.

“People experience silence in many ways. It may represent peace and quiet, or—in contexts of inequality—a stifling of voices, or a strategy of resistance,” says Vivian May, director of the in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and newly appointed director of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-supported Central New York Humanities Corridor. “Silence is a rich concept, approachable from many angles.”

Each year, the Humanities Center hosts the Syracuse Symposium, a year-long series of public events focused around a theme. Previous themes (all chosen by the center’s advisory board) include “Stories,” “Belonging,” “Identity” and “Justice.”

Programming for the engages the meaning and impact of silence across perspectives and genres, locally and globally. As notions of social justice and inclusivity continue to be at the forefront of national discussions, students, faculty and community members have the opportunity to engage personally with these same ideas through the Symposium’s more than two dozen events.

Highlights of fall Symposium programming include:

• film (Human Rights Film Festival, Sept. 26-28);
• musical performance (“On the Edge of Silence” with Ensemble/Parallax, Sept. 29);
• exploring the humanities’ role in understanding health and disability (“TitBits: Breast Cancer Stories,” Oct. 24-26, and “Cripping Graphic Medicine,” Oct. 29); and
• poetry (“What You Have Heard is True,” with Carolyn Forché, Dec. 5).

“The humanities (the arts, literature, philosophy, language, history) give us the keys to interpreting the human condition,” May observes. “For example, when is silence acceptable—and to whom? When is it chosen, or imposed, and why? These thought-provoking questions are timeless—and timely.”

The full Symposium schedule is available at . Events are free and open to the public. Workshops require advance registration, where noted.

The Humanities Center is located in the historic Tolley Humanities Building. It serves the campus community by cultivating diverse forms of scholarship, sponsoring a broad range of programming and partnerships, and addressing enduring questions and pressing social issues.

In addition to the Syracuse Symposium, the Humanities Center annually supports graduate student and faculty fellowships; the Watson Visiting Professorship; a Universitywide Books in the Humanities celebration; and many lectures, workshops and seminars. It is also home of the Central New York Humanities Corridor, a dynamic consortium of more than 10 universities and colleges that sponsors innovative research activities across the region.

The Books in the Humanities Reception represents work done by authors and editors in 12 schools and colleges, as well as SUArt Galleries. (Photo courtesy of Skylines/Shutterstock.com)

Looking for something new to read? Don’t miss the fourth annual , featuring works by more than 60 University authors and editors from across campus.

Organized by the Syracuse University Humanities Center in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), the reception is Wednesday, April 17, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the Goldstein Alumni and Faculty Center. Free and open to the public, the event features a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction titles that were published last year. Books will be available for sale, and many of the authors will be on hand to sign copies.

A complete list of submissions is available on the Syracuse University Libraries’ page.

For more information, contact the Humanities Center at 315.443.7192 or visit .

A&S Dean Karin Ruhlandt considers the event a fitting recognition of faculty contributions to their respective fields. “This is a joyous occasion to celebrate creative work in the humanities, ranging from monographs to poetry, from short stories to biographies. A&S faculty are leading the way in illuminating the human experience,” she says.

Humanities Center Director Vivian May agrees, noting that the event captures a broad range of faculty research interests. “It exemplifies the humanities footprint on campus,” says May, adding that the submissions span a dozen schools and colleges on campus, as well as the Syracuse University Art Galleries.

A&S sponsors the reception, with additional support from the University’s Office of Research, the Syracuse University Bookstore and Syracuse University Libraries.

“This year’s submissions convey significant scholarship and accomplishments, and high levels of research productivity by colleagues in A&S and across campus,” says John Liu, the University’s vice president for research and professor of biology in A&S. “The breadth and depth of these publications are a barometer of the great work being conducted in the humanities at Syracuse.”

Located in the Tolley Humanities Building, the Humanities Center cultivates diverse forms of humanities scholarship, sponsors a range of dynamic programming and partnerships, highlights the humanities as a public good and underscores the relevance of the humanities for addressing enduring questions and pressing social issues.

Presented by the Humanities Center in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), the series explores the role of storytelling through an interdisciplinary lens. More information is at .

A&S recently caught up with a few of this month’s organizers—Osamah Khalil, associate professor of history, Anneka Herre, program director of the Urban Video Project (UVP), and Phil Memmer, executive director of the Arts Branch of the YMCA—to discuss their programming.

Osamah, tell us about your transnational symposium, “,” on April 11-12.

Osamah Khalil

We will address the theme of “Stories” by examining how authoritarianism has been experienced and resisted through a range of expressions, from text and film to art and activism, over the past seven decades.

Our topics will range from Japanese-American internment during World War II, to the end of the Cold War, to current debates over immigration. In addition to different kinds of authoritarianism, we will explore why it endures.

You’ve assembled a terrific lineup.
Thank you. Participants include Syracuse faculty and graduate students, as well as scholars from Cornell and the U.S. State Department [Associate Professor Jeremy Wallace and historian James Graham Wilson, respectively].

Urban Video Project will screen “Culture Capture: Terminal Addition” on the Everson Museum Plaza from April 11-May 25.

Anneka, you have invited the New Red Order [NRO], a rotating and expanding cast of visual artists and performers, to campus. Tell us about them.
Our three guests—Adam and Zack Khalil, as well as Jackson Polys—are core contributors to the NRO. [April 16-18], they will discuss and premiere their film “Culture Capture: Terminal Addition,” commissioned by LightWork for UVP and shot in and around Syracuse.

The NRO is a “public secret society” that challenges European settler and colonialist tendencies with what they call “sites of savage pronouncement.”

American history told through a Native lens, as it were.
Their project is about many stories. They include stories that we, as a country, built on settler-colonialism, tell ourselves about our own history, specifically the way we have consigned Indigenous peoples to a historical past.

Phil, you regularly team up with Syracuse Symposium for a mini-residency by a renowned writer. What should we know about this year’s visitor, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, on April 25?

Laure-Anne Bosselaar

She’s an acclaimed poet whose four books demonstrate how the unique particulars of one’s life stories—the horrors of anti-Semitism, the pain of childhood neglect and abuse, the grief of losing a spouse—can, through the filter of art, shimmer with universal truths.

Her latest book, “These Many Rooms” [Four Way Books, 2019], draws on the sudden loss of her husband, noted poet Kurt Brown. Like her previous volumes, it shows how the particulars of any individual’s story have the potential to become universal through artful retelling.

Her own life story is rather unique—born in Belgium, raised by a convent of “abusive nuns.”
Laure-Anne describes the family that briefly raised her as “virulent anti-Semitism.” Her stories from these difficult times permeate her first three books of poems, which show how early emotional and physical deprivation can be overcome by intelligence, humor, curiosity and determination.

[Pulitzer Prize-winning poet] Charles Simic says that Laure-Anne writes “wise poems about memory—poems whose art lies in their ability to make these memories ours, too.”

Rounding out Syracuse Symposium is a (April 23-24) by Michelle Caswell and Samip Mallick, co-founders of the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) in Philadelphia.

“They will address how institutional archives have historically served as sites of white privilege and supremacy, thus disadvantaging the stories of marginalized communities,” writes organizer Tarida Anantachai, a librarian in Syracuse University Library’s Learning Commons in Bird Library. “Their programs will explore the embedded oppressions within archival practices and how community-based archives such as SAADA have countered these structures and amplified the experiences of historically underrepresented communities.”

Larry Blumenfeld

is a cultural journalist, music critic and longtime contributor to The Wall Street Journal. As this year’s��Jeanette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities Center, he will��explore “Jazz in Troubled Times” through a series of��lectures, workshops, public discussions and musical performances.��Everything is free and open to the public. For more information, visit .

The College of Arts and Sciences recently caught up with Blumenfeld to discuss his residency, which runs from March 25-April 5 and covers the “ongoing relevance and resonance” of jazz culture.

What is “jazz culture”?
There are many possible interpretations, but jazz culture begins and ends with music. For our purposes, it refers to shared patterns of behavior and values that both give rise to bodies of music and draw from them in a functional way. It speaks of many of the things we like to—and need to—discuss right now, such as race, gender, ethnicity, class, cultural heritage and a sense of purposeful community.

How is jazz still relevant?
A century ago, jazz was a brand-new style of music. Fifty years later, it was mainstream music. The radio played it. People danced to it. Musicians earned a living performing it, and sometimes achieved popular stardom. Those days are gone.

While tastes have changed, jazz is still very much alive, but in different ways. Just as Miles Davis, John Coltrane and a long legacy of musicians mined repertory and contemporary influences against the backdrop of activism and experimentalism, today’s jazz artists are reimagining the concept of jazz for their lives and times. Though it may not have the mainstream appeal it once had, the music binds a vital community and connects it to an important history.

Pianist Jason Moran will perform in Hendricks Chapel on April 5. “He personifies the relevance of jazz culture,” Blumenfeld says.

What are some examples?
Proof of jazz’s relevance is all around us, from Spike Lee’s Oscar-winning film [“BlacKkKlansman”] to��Henry Threadgill’s recent Pulitzer Prize [for his composition “In for a Penny, In for a Pound”].

Just as jazz culture was indelibly tied to the Civil Rights Movement, it now reflects the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements. Its connections to other styles of music—pop, rock, hip hop, electronica, classical music—are sometimes obvious and other times less so, but they remain essential. I would argue that jazz, more so than other genres, continually updates and reinvents itself.

Talk about your theme, “Jazz in Troubled Times.”
Jazz is a century old. Troubled times are far older. We’re living in a troubled time now.

Jazz is music, but it exists within a humanistic perspective. It also is inherently multicultural. Since the 1920s and ’30s, jazz has been a conduit for political action, social justice and spiritual healing. It also has coincided with some of the darkest hours of our nation’s history and has helped us through those times.

The main lectures of my residency will focus on two areas. One is the role of jazz culture in the recovery of New Orleans, since the 2005 floods that resulted from levee failures after Hurricane Katrina. The other is the impact of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians [AACM], a collective founded in Chicago more than 50 years ago that has been grounded in jazz tradition and has affected all corners of musical life.

Saxophonist Yosvany Terry will explore the “centrality of Cuban tradition to jazz culture” in a concert at La Casita on March 29.

You have histories with both.
I am working on a book drawn from my research and reporting in New Orleans since 2005. I have studied the ongoing struggles and contributions of brass bands; the Mardi Gras Indians; Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs; and jazz musicians of all stripes. I am convinced that jazz culture has shaped the city’s recovery process. I also am concerned about the role of culture in what is now a “new” New Orleans. There are larger lessons and metaphors to that story that tell us a lot about the identity of jazz and our country.

AACM emerged in Chicago in the ’60s, in response to many rapid changes in the city and our society, in general. Since then, AACM has supported the growth of composers, performers and educators who understand the traditions of jazz and African American culture but also look beyond categories and styles. AACM focuses on individual realizations. It does great work for children and developing musicians, often embracing other art forms, such as dance, theater and painting.

I probably will touch on elements of jazz criticism and musicology, but that’s not the purpose of my visit. My focus is on how jazz culture fosters notions of activism, spiritual growth and a sense of community, in a deeply personal and intersectional way. We appreciate jazz—I appreciate jazz—as music, first and foremost. But isn’t it also the voice of a community, or of several communities?

Bassist Linda May Han Oh will lead a jazz listening party in 114 Bird Library on April 4.

I imagine your guests will help answer that question.
Bassist Linda May Han Oh will lead a listening party [in 114 Bird Library on April 4] that constructs a jazz history from music composed or played by female musicians. She and I will also discuss a changing perspective when it comes to gender and jazz that affects how we consider the past, and what opportunities women have in the jazz field moving forward.

Saxophonist Yosvany Terry, who teaches at Harvard University [and whose visit includes a concert at La Casita Cultural Center on March 29], will explore the centrality of Cuban tradition to jazz culture in the United States. Often in spite of the politics, there is an exciting flow of culture between both countries.

My visit will conclude with my public conversation with pianist Jason Moran, followed by a solo-performance [in Hendricks Chapel on April 5]. I have known him for most of my career and marvel at how he consistently reimagines jazz culture and its connections to wider worlds. His solo-piano work is a thing to behold, and it should sound glorious in the chapel.

Jason’s approach comes out of the jazz-piano tradition, but it embraces and embodies other streams of music, too. He is a widely accomplished musician, composer and visual artist who, for me, personifies the relevance of jazz culture.

From 6-7 p.m., Anderson will participate in a panel discussion with moderator Tanisha Jackson, CFAC’s executive director, and James Gordon Williams, an assistant professor of African American studies and an authority on Prince’s music. Afterward, Anderson will lead a master class for musicians of all instruments and abilities until 8:30 p.m.

Both events are free and open to the public, and are presented in honor of Black History Month. For more information, contact CFAC at 315.442.2230, and include any accessibility accommodation requests.

In addition to primary funding from the Syracuse University Humanities Center and CNY Jazz, Anderson’s visit is co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Music Histories in A&S, CFAC, the Goldring Arts Journalism Program and A&S.

Larry Blumenfeld

Larry Blumenfeld, cultural journalist, music critic and longtime contributor to The Wall Street Journal, will serve as the at Syracuse University, March 25-April 5.

Blumenfeld’s residency, titled “Jazz in Troubled Times: The Relevance and Resonance of a Culture,” will explore the convergence of politics, activism and the arts, while rethinking the nature of jazz as an enduring culture.

The Humanities Center in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) supports the annual Watson Professorship in partnership with a faculty host—this year’s is Eric Grode, assistant professor in the Newhouse School and director of the Goldring Arts Journalism Program.

Blumenfeld will headline eight scholarly and artistic events, drawing on his extensive fieldwork in New York City, New Orleans and Havana. The schedule includes public discussions with performances by saxophonist Yosvany Terry and his quartet (March 29) and pianist Jason Moran (April 5), as well as a listening party co-curated by bassist Linda May Han Oh. (April 4).

Jason Moran

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, including a complete schedule, contact the Humanities Center at 315.443.7192 or visit .

Humanities Center Director Vivian May looks forward to Blumenfeld’s residency, saying it will underscore how jazz culture influences—and is influenced by—social change.

“Larry’s work embodies public humanities scholarship,” says May, also a professor of women’s and gender studies in A&S. “He will explore jazz’s deep resonance as an art form; its improvisational power to bridge arts and activism; and its continued relevance as framework for understanding questions of inequity, identity and community in turbulent times.”

Undergirding Blumenfeld’s visit is jazz’s alleged resurgence. In the WSJ, he wrote, “Reports of jazz’s death have been ill-advised. So, too, have tales of [its] resurrections.”

Linda May Han Oh (Photo by Shervin Lainez)

Against this backdrop, the former Jazziz editor in chief will examine “America’s classical music” through a multicultural lens. Emphasis will be on how questions of race, gender, ethnicity, class and cultural heritage are intertwined.

One of Blumenfeld’s lectures will draw on his extensive study of cultural recovery in post-Katrina New Orleans—also the basis for his forthcoming book from the University of California Press. “Jazz has been a powerful conduit for political action, social justice and healing,” he says, recalling his time along the Gulf Coast in the wake of the deadly 2005 hurricane.

Another lecture will stem from his research into the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a Chicago-based nonprofit that, for more than 50 years, has championed original music spanning avant-garde jazz, classical and world music. Blumenfeld considers the AACM the “clearest driving force of any new jazz aesthetic,” responsible for erasing borders between genres and disciplines.

Among the beneficiaries of AACM’s aesthetic—and the consistent foci of Blumenfeld’s scholarship—are Moran, the Kennedy Center artistic director for jazz, who teaches at the New England Conservatory (and whose artwork is on view this fall at the Whitney Museum of American Art), and Terry, a leading proponent of Afro-Cuban jazz, who is both a senior lecturer on music and director of jazz ensembles at Harvard University.

Yosvany Terry

Terry and Moran will precede their performances at La Casita Cultural Center and in Hendricks Chapel, respectively, with interdisciplinary discussions about jazz culture.

“How do you write about something being created in front of you?” Grode asks. “How do you harness art for the greater good?

“Larry has spent decades answering these questions, and music lovers of all stripes will benefit enormously from hearing what he’s learned, through workshops, roundtables, lectures, performances and a public listening session of recordings made by female musicians throughout jazz history.”

The listening party co-led by Oh, who teaches bass at The New School, involves The Diane Arthur Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive in Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center.

Blumenfeld adds that, with all the recent talk about walls, jazz stands as a metaphor for and a document of this nation’s multicultural truth.

“Its aesthetic demands and develops an elevated, open-minded exchange of ideas that opposes caricature and fundamentalism,” says the Brooklyn resident, who also curates a music series for Spoleto Festival USA and presents the popular “Jazz and Social Justice” series for the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. “Jazz is not in need of a revival; it is a culture through which we summon spiritual energy, humanistic focus and political power—the stuff of real transformation.”

Prince (left) with Marcus Anderson, who was the late artist’s sideman from 2012-16 and played on his final studio album, “HIT N RUN Phase Two.”

The Syracuse University Humanities Center has announced acclaimed saxophonist Marcus Anderson will visit campus on Monday, Feb. 25, in honor of Black History Month.

A veteran of Prince’s backing band, the New Power Generation, Anderson currently tours with CeeLo Green and runs his own coffee label line.

The artist-entrepreneur will participate in a����with James Gordon Williams, assistant professor of African American studies in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and an authority on Prince’s music; Tanisha Jackson, executive director of the Community Folk Art Center (CFAC); and Eric Grode, assistant professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and director of the Goldring Arts Journalism Program.

Afterward, Anderson will lead a master class from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at CFAC, 805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse. Registration is required. Call 315.442.2230 by Monday, Feb. 18, and include any accessibility accommodation requests.

“During his visit, Marcus will reflect on the current state of the music business, including how contemporary music can promote social and cultural understanding,” says Vivian May, director of the Humanities Center and professor of women’s and gender studies in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). “We’re also excited about his master class, which is open to singers and instrumentalists of all ages and backgrounds. Come play or just watch.”

Both events are free and open to the public. For more information, call the Humanities Center at 315.443.7192 or visit .

On Sunday, Feb. 24, CNY Jazz will present Anderson as part of its popular Cabaret Series at 5 p.m. at the Marriott Syracuse Downtown, 100 E. Onondaga St., Syracuse. For tickets and more information, call 315.479.5299 or visit .

In addition to primary funding from the Humanities Center and CNY Jazz, Anderson’s visit is co-sponsored by the Department of Art and Music Histories in A&S, CFAC, the Goldring Arts Journalism Program and A&S.

Anthony DeCurtis (Photo by Francesca DeCurtis)

Syracuse Symposium continues its yearlong excursion into “Stories” with a program by , bestselling authors of biographies of musicians Lou Reed ’64 and Joni Mitchell, respectively.

Both authors will discuss their respective books and rock biographies, in general, on Tuesday, Feb. 19, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, 114 Bird Library. Theo Cateforis, associate professor of music history and cultures in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), will moderate the discussion. Afterward, DeCurtis and Yaffe will sign copies of their books, which will be available for sale.

Cateforis also will host a session with DeCurtis on “The Music and Life of Lou Reed” in conjunction with Cateforis’ course Rock Music/HOM 378 on Feb. 19 from 2 to 3:20 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons.

Both events are free and open to the public. For more information, call the Humanities Center in A&S at 315.443.7192 or visit .

“As a fellow author, I admire Anthony’s and David’s ease of prose. They have a wonderful sense of flow,” says Cateforis, author of “The Rock History Reader” (Routledge), the third edition of which was published last month.��“It is tremendously difficult to engage a reader, but they make it look easy.”

A contributing editor for Rolling Stone for more than 35 years, DeCurtis is author of four books, including “Lou Reed: A Life” (Little, Brown and Company, 2017) and “The Soundtrack of My Life” (Simon & Schuster, 2013), with music legend Clive Davis. DeCurtis also is a distinguished lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania. His many honors include a 1988 Grammy Award for “Best Album Notes” for the Eric Clapton “Crossroads” box set and three ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Awards.

DeCurtis says his liberal arts education, which includes a Ph.D. in American literature from Indiana University-Bloomington, has helped him identify with Reed, long considered one of rock’s most singular and influential artists.

“Lou saw himself as a writer,” says DeCurtis, adding that the Velvet Underground leader earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Syracuse University. “Growing up in Greenwich Village, I had a firsthand relationship with many of the worlds in which Lou moved, even the most marginal, underground ones. This, coupled with my teaching and research interests, has helped me comprehend and render this aspect of his creative life and identity.”

David Yaffe (Photo by Ellen M. Blalock)

Like DeCurtis, Yaffe is a seasoned journalist and scholar—a humanities professor in A&S, who writes about music for such periodicals as The Nation, Harper’s Magazine and The New York Times. He also is author of three books, notably “Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell” (Sarah Crichton Books, 2017).

Yaffe notes similarities between Reed and Mitchell, suggesting they are musical polymaths, as remarkable as they are complicated. The difference, however, is that Mitchell is alive and Reed is not—giving “Reckless Daughter” a sense of urgency.

“Both of them walked into pop music and transcended whatever limitations it was thought to have,” says Yaffe, winner of an ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Award and a Roger Shattuck Prize for Music Criticism. “They were untrained musicians who were as original as anyone could have been.”

Cateforis admits that writing about celebrities, dead or alive, can be challenging. He references the opening chapter in “Reckless Daughter,” in which Yaffe details how Mitchell “turned on him” after interviewing her for The New York Times in 2007. “You constantly risk offending or overly flattering your subject,” says Cateforis, newly elected president of the U.S. chapter of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.

Theo Cateforis

Conversely, DeCurtis probably would have never considered writing a book about the “prickly and combative” Reed, were he still alive. “With Lou’s passing [in 2013], the challenge then falls to reconstructing the artist’s life through the eyes and memories of others, while still maintaining a critical distance,” Cateforis adds.

In addition to primary funding from the Humanities Center, both events are co-sponsored by A&S, the Department of Art and Music Histories (A&S), the Department of English (A&S) and the Goldring Arts Journalism Program in the Newhouse School.

Adela C. Licona

, this year’s Syracuse Symposium keynote speaker, finds the euphemistically termed “tender-age facilities”—in reality, prisons for migrant babies and children—wholly reprehensible.

The University of Arizona (UA) professor, artist and activist believes the oft-repeated phrase masks extreme cruelty and violation. “I seek to unmask such violence, using socially engaged art to intervene and offer shared outrage,” she explains.

Humanities Center Director Vivian May is an ardent supporter of Licona’s work, having invited the scholar to participate in the symposium’s yearlong foray into “Stories.” “Adela shows how the humanities and creative arts give us tools to confront our complicity in violence, while combating inhumane ways of thinking and being in the world,” says May, professor of women’s and gender studies in A&S.

An outspoken critic of Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, Licona makes creative projects that highlight the long and brutal history of state violence against families and children. Such projects, she says, help raise public awareness of, deepen collective engagement in and spur action around issues of social justice.

Licona insists the public humanities—and the liberal arts, in general—play a key role in questioning and combating Trump’s policy, which, to date, has “divided more immigrant children than have been counted from their parents or caregivers.”

“I first heard the term ‘tender-age facility’ last summer, when the current administration began separating and incarcerating children in isolation from those with whom they were traveling,” says Licona, who holds multiple appointments at UA, including associate professor of English and vice chair of the Ph.D. minor in Social, Cultural and Critical Theory. “Children and adults have died at the hands of ICE [the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency] and in the context of ‘tender-age facilities’ and ‘transgender migrant pods.’ It’s urgent to ensure people understand there is nothing ‘tender’ about them.”

On Thursday, Feb. 21, Licona will discuss “,” an original participatory art project that directs attention to the United States’ flawed immigration system and long histories of forced separations and incarcerations. The event is 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium. The following morning, Licona will present a on a type of coalitional community engagement she calls “borderlands activism.” Both events are free and open to the public.

A&S recently caught up with Licona to discuss how “Stories” can help contextualize histories of cruelty inflicted on migrant and refugee children and their families.

“TENDER R/AGE :: RABIA TIERNA”

You have said that Audre Lorde, who wrote that our silence does not protect us, was the inspiration for “RABIA TIERNA” [Spanish for “Tender Rage”]. How has your creative project evolved?
It began as a crowdsourcing call to friends to send in photos of themselves as children. Like many project participants, I lived a cage-free childhood, and have always known that caging people was wrong. This project has become a collective outcry against what is happening to children and other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

As someone studying textual and visual rhetoric, I contemplate new ways of seeing, being and relating. Therefore, “TENDER R/AGE” is a collaboration of socially engaged art that intervenes into the horrors of U.S. policy regarding migrants and asylum seekers. At its inception and especially as the project circulates online and as a site-specific exhibition, it becomes relational and coalitional, with distinct localities and other movements for social justice broadly defined.

Family separations are nothing new in the United States.
We have a long, brutal history of them. From slavery and government boarding schools to internment camps, the United States has incarcerated and killed many children through imposed or enforced separations.

We are witnessing the proliferation of a for-profit industry that is unfolding before our eyes, but also stays purposely obscured from us. “Tender-age facilities” are prisons. They are a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States.

This proliferation is taking place in what I call a “regime of distortion,” where the current administration cultivates fear and suspicion through dehumanizing and criminalizing rhetorics. This brings me to the role of the humanities.

That role is—
Formulating tough questions beyond the how, how many and why of any given practice—in this case, issues of migration and asylum.

We can sketch the most pressing issues of our time with data, but the ethical, moral and human rights dimensions [of these issues] must be interrogated and reimagined through a creative and critical humanistic approach. It’s at times like these that I look first to the poets among us.

(Sakhorn/shutterstock.com)

What do you say to people who think illegal border-crossers deserve punishment?
Rather than seeing these separations as a form of punishment, I see them as enactments of simultaneous torture—for the child and the adult. I believe the cries of the children we have heard from the prisons are a call to collective action. They are calling us to do something.

I am fortified by the many writers, thinkers, artists, scholars and music makers who turn their creative and critical attentions toward imagining a world of broad justice, one free from domination. They include [writer] Octavia Butler, who didn’t shy away from the ugliest truths about humanity; [cultural theorist] Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa, who reminded us that the pen can be used as a sword in the fight for social justice; and [writer] Toni Morrison, who believes writing helps civilizations heal.

I hope my time at Syracuse inspires meaningful conversations and that, together, we might imagine new strategies and practices for collectively being.

The authors will hold a book launch, “How Do We Know It Works? Reflections on Empirical Studies of Contemplative Practices,” on Friday, Feb. 15, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in 123 Sims Hall. Panelists will be author Joshua Felver, assistant professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences; author Rachel Razza, associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science in the Falk College; and author and editor Qiu Wang, associate professor in the School of Education.

The Syracuse contributors, representing a wide variety of fields and disciplines across the University, came together to collaborate. They include Diane Grimes, associate professor of communication and rhetorical studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts (author and lead editor); Dessa Bergen-Cico, associate professor in the Department of Public Health, Food Studies and Nutrition in the Falk College (author); Nicole Fonger, assistant professor of mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education (author); and Mark Costa (research assistant professor in the School of Information Studies (author). Several graduate students also contributed to the book.

A reception will follow the panel discussion, and copies of the book will be for sale at the event. All are welcome to attend. To request accommodations, contact Grimes at dsgrimes@syr.edu or 315.443.5136 by Feb. 5.

Sponsors are the Humanities Center; the Contemplative Collaborative; Communication and Rhetorical Studies; and Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition.

“Empirical Studies of Contemplative Practices” attempts to associate the interpretation of contemplative approaches to scientific studies. It draws on expertise from a range of disciplines, including psychology, applied statistics, health sciences, neuroscience, communication, computer science and information technology; examines the critical processes of contemplative approaches; and aims to guide the scientific research of contemplative practices. The book includes pedagogical and experimental aspects of studies such as research design, measurement, program assessment, statistical modeling, data mining, technology integration and evaluation.

“The book aims to serve as a forum to inspire empirical studies of contemplative practices that address the complexity and variety of such practice in a thoughtful way,” says Grimes. “It includes compiled interpretation of bodily manifestations of contemplative practices, psychological analysis of contemplative practices and systematic studies of the effect of contemplative practices through data analysis. Together, the chapters of this book offer first steps along a path to deeper understanding of contemplative practices.”

The book has been endorsed by Sharon Salzberg, a key figure in the field of meditation, who says “this multidisciplinary collection of work does an excellent job of sharing the progress to date and pointing towards the next steps.” Its cover is designed from photos from 123 Sims Hall, a meditation classroom on the Syracuse campus.

The authors say the book could have broad appeal in scholarly areas such as life sciences, psychology, communication, health care, education and data science. They want to draw attention from meditation practitioners and those who are interested in religious and philosophical studies, as well as the broader public. “We hope that the systematic study of contemplative approaches can make an impact on the larger population in their daily lives,” Grimes says.

Grimes, Razza and Felver are the director and associate directors, respectively, of the Contemplative Collaborative on the Syracuse campus. The collaborative supports students, faculty and staff who engage in contemplative practices, as well as teaching strategies, scholarly research, and discourse surrounding these practices, with the goal of cultivating focused attention in ways that foster insight and deepen understanding of complex issues.

The Contemplative Collaborative bridges student life and academic life through a community of faculty, staff, administrators and students with shared interests in mindfulness and contemplative practices that embody engaged learning, a mindful academy and compassionate society. This community is composed of more than 170 members, representing diverse disciplines and offices across the University. The collaborative aims to enhance student development and promote academic excellence in tandem with personal well-being. It was a 2015 recipient of a Center for Contemplative Mind in Society’s Teaching and Learning Center grant.

The Syracuse University Humanities Center is based in the historic Tolley Building. (Tony Shi Photos)

Based in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), the Humanities Center offers a range of competitive fellowships supporting graduate research.

The fellowships, says Humanities Center Director Vivian May, pave the way for��emerging scholars to excel in their careers. “They also illustrate the humanities’ breadth and relevance,” says May, a professor of women’s and gender studies in A&S. “At a time when government funding [of the humanities] is unpredictable, the University and other private sources, including foundations, often make up the difference. Sustaining such inquiry is vital to our success as a student-centered research university.”

This year’s are Lorenza D’Angelo and Adam Kozaczka G’12, doctoral candidates in philosophy and English, respectively, in A&S.

The are Camilla Bell ’14, G’18 and Gemma Cooper-Novack, doctoral students in cultural foundations of education and literacy education, respectively, in the School of Education (SOE).

The Humanities Center awards up to two Dissertation Fellowships a year. Fellows receive stipends, office space and support for their research during their residency in the Humanities Center.

D’Angelo and Kozaczka will present their research on Friday, Jan. 18, from 9:30-11:30 a.m. in 304 Tolley. The , which includes coffee and a light breakfast, is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Humanities Center at 315.443.7192.

Lorenza D’Angelo

D’Angelo is using her fellowship to write about the value of experience. Much of her work evolves from ongoing debates about the nature of cognitive phenomenology, which is the study of experiences associated with thinking, reasoning and understanding.

The Italian-born scholar insists that not all forms of pleasure and pain are sensory (i.e., associated with perception or bodily sensation). Some are cognitive, such as “pleasures afforded by art and nature, the joys of academic discovery and the frustration experienced when witnessing an injustice,” D’Angelo explains.

She says that in addition to providing information about one’s physical well-being, pleasure and pain measure one’s “psychological and social flourishing.”

“It is a mistake to think that physical health and material goods are sufficient for a happy life,” says D’Angelo, who works with Ben Bradley, the Allan and Anita Sutton Professor of Philosophy. “If you are surrounded by injustice and crime, deprived of educational resources and incapable of enjoying your cultural and natural environment, your pain is real. The connection between individual well-being and collective goods is much more immediate than people normally realize.”

Adam Kozaczka G’12

Kozaczka’s work also is highly varied. Consider his dissertation, “Romantic Legalism,” which examines the overlap between legal and novelistic concepts of character in 18th- and 19th-century Britain.

Working with English professors Mike Goode and Erin Mackie, Kozaczka explores the convergence of masculinity, violence and character in British novels and criminal trials from that period.

“The concept of character relates to not only carefully written novels, but also carefully constructed criminal defense” says Kozaczka, who earned a master’s degree in English at SU. “Authors such as Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Frances Burney and William Godwin wrote and thought about how the difference between guilt and innocence was not just about what the accused did, but also about who the accused was.”

Public Humanities Fellowships are supported by a partnership between Humanities New York (formerly the New York Council for the Humanities) and the Mellon-funded Central New York Humanities Corridor, which is a program of the Humanities Center.

As the name implies, the yearlong fellowships focus on public scholarship.

“We encourage emerging humanities scholars to conceive their work in relation to a broad public sphere. In the process, they develop skills for doing public work and strengthen the region’s overall humanities community,” says May, adding that the Humanities Center, in partnership with Humanities New York and the Central New York Humanities Corridor, awards up to two such fellowships a year.

Camilla Bell ’14, G’18

Bell is using her fellowship to launch a retreat for participants of the 2018 Summer Arts & Culture Camp, facilitated by the Community Folk Art Center (CFAC) and modeled after the Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights Movement.

She works closely with SOE Professor Mario Rios Perez, CFAC Education Director Tamar Smithers ’07 and former camp facilitators Evan Starling-Davis G’20 and Howard Jones Jr. “I envision reflective workshops where participants grapple with the impact of the summer camp, as well as the relationship between freedom and education,” says Bell, who holds a master’s degree from SOE and a dual bachelor’s degree from A&S and SOE.

Freedom Schools originated in the 1960s in the Deep South, where systemic racism exacerbated educational inequities.

“During the Civil Rights Movement, Freedom Schools helped young people of color navigate unjust and inequitable living and learning conditions. We’re doing the same, carving out a space for today’s youth to sharpen their critical literacies and obtain the tools they need to serve as agents of change,” she adds.

Gemma Cooper-Novack

Cooper-Novack also is a proponent of public scholarship, as evidenced by her desire to develop a yearlong out-of-school-time program for locally resettled refugees. Her goal is to help them write and publish a middle grades collective novel.

Providing refugees with authentic writing opportunities is a relatively new concept, and Cooper-Novack hopes her project will push the boundaries of narrative writing.

“I want to strengthen the voices, writing skills, and storytelling and advocacy skills of ENL [English as a New Language] refugee students in Syracuse,” she says. “I will do this by focusing on the intersections of writing pedagogies and social justice, the development of writer identity in the community, and the significance of arts education and creative writing in literacy education in and out of the classroom.”

Cooper-Novack’s project will culminate with a local youth book festival in 2019.

Students interested in applying for 2019-20 Public Humanities Fellowships are invited to attend an on Friday, Dec. 7, from 10:30-11:45 a.m. in 304 Tolley. The program includes brief presentations by Bell, Cooper-Novack and former fellow Jesse Quinn G’17. The event is free and open to the public, and includes a light breakfast.

, presented by the in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), continues its yearlong look at “Stories” with a rich array of November events.

They include a mini-residency by photographer (Nov. 1-2), a concert by the (Nov. 2), readings by members of the (Nov. 8) and the screening of a documentary about twin artists (Nov. 13).

A&S recently caught up with organizers Mary Lee Hodgens (MLH), Neva Pilgrim (NP), Ivy Kleinbart (IK) and Roger Hallas (RH) to discuss their respective events.

Mary Lee, you are associate director of Light Work, where Keisha Scarville’s photography is on display through Dec. 13. How do you characterize her brand of storytelling?

Keisha Scarville’s primary theme is the relationship between transformation and the unknown. Grounded in photography, she works across different media to explore [notions of] place, absence and subjectivity.

A selection from “Alma,” Keisha Scarville’s solo show at Light Work.

Her new exhibition, “Alma,” refers to her mother, who died in 2015. It features photographs that explore how the loss of such an anchor point can affect one’s identity, as well as one’s sense of absence and self in the world.

“Transformation born of loss,” as you have written.

Yes. Keisha worked on the project for more than three years and approached it like chapters in a book. There are references to Guyana [South America], where Alma was born, and to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, where Keisha grew up and has continued to call home. She uses Alma’s richly patterned clothing and possessions to conjure up her presence, visually speaking.

I sense parallels with your event, Neva, where storytelling can be transforming for performers and audience alike.��
Our concert draws on the stories of people who fled South Vietnam after the war in search of a better life for themselves and their children. It is called “The Odyssey: Stories of the Boat People,” and shows how these people have held onto their music, art and values. “The Odyssey” is the latest in a long line of concerts that the Society of New Music [which Pilgrim co-founded in 1971] has done at Syracuse.

Van-Anh Vanessa Vo performs a Tiny Desk Concert in October 2013.

Tell us about the headliner, Vân-Ánh Vanessa VÕ.��

She is a North Vietnamese musician, composer and filmmaker who has immersed herself in the traditional arts of her homeland. Her story is inspiring, considering that Asian music is male-dominated. She pestered one teacher for three years to give her lessons, until he finally relented and took her on as an apprentice.

Vanessa was part of a second wave of Vietnamese refugees who entered the United States in the late Seventies and early Eighties. The similarities between them and the Syrian refugees of today are striking.

The Vietnam War also figures in readings by members of the Syracuse Veterans’ Writing Group. Would you say something about the group, Ivy?��

We have been holding monthly workshops on campus for about eight years. While many of our members are Vietnam veterans, the group is open to��all veterans, giving them a safe space to produce and share writing, mostly nonfiction and poetry, with one another.

Your event is on the Thursday before Veterans Day. Busy year, right?
It marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive [of the Vietnam War] and the 15th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

The Syracuse Veterans’ Writing Group meets every month on campus.

The theme we’ve chosen for this reading is “Returning from Conflict,” which observes these and other critical moments in history through our readers’ stories of homecoming and reintegration.

We will feature seven writers, each representing a unique experience of “Returning from Conflict,” in terms of the physical return from war and the long-term psychic and social process of reintegration. We hope the audience will come away with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the diversity of veterans’ experiences and the true costs of war.

You and your co-leader, Professor Eileen Schell, have remarked about the literary quality of your members’ writing.��

We think audiences will be surprised by how powerful and piercing these stories are. The work featured in this reading is at times bold, witty and humorous; at times poignant, lyrical and reflective. But all of these writers are fearless in confronting the military’s impact on their lives.

Roger, you and Professor Tula Goenka, as co-directors of the Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival, bring many filmmakers to campus. What is special about this event?
We are thrilled to present “Witkin & Witkin,” Trisha Ziff’s superb, new documentary about painter Jerome Witkin [professor emeritus in the ] and his identical twin brother, photographer Joel-Peter Witkin.

It was Trisha’s first visit to campus in 2012 to screen her film “The Mexican Suitcase” at the Syracuse University Human Rights Film Festival that sparked the idea for “Witkin & Witkin.”��A good friend of Joel-Peter, she was eager to meet his brother, Jerome. That initial meeting set the stage for a documentary about the two brothers, who may share genes and a family history, but remain both personally and professionally divided.

Trisha Ziff at Syracuse in 2016.

Will we hear from the filmmaker or the artists?

We will host Trisha and Jerome, both of whom will introduce the screening and participate in a Q&A afterward.

Trisha is a photography curator-turned-filmmaker who has a gift for reframing the rich storytelling of static images within the dynamism of cinematic storytelling.��Jerome is a world-renowned painter and beloved professor who has trained generations of artists at Syracuse.

All of us seem to enjoy a good story.
NP: Storytelling is a great tool. If used properly, technology can enhance it. For instance, “The Odyssey” features video clips of brave Vietnamese who, in their own words, talk about risking everything for a better life in the United States. We see how they have carved out new identities for themselves while remaining true to their heritage.IK: For audiences, storytelling offers access to otherwise incomprehensible experiences. It can change people’s way of understanding the world, providing a broader perspective and challenging distortions in thinking.

For the writer, the act of translating experience into language, working to ‘get it right’ on the page, can be an enormous help with coming to terms with a complicated past.

RH: Images tell stories differently than words, but different kinds of images have their own distinct modes of storytelling.

[To Hallas] Would you elaborate?

RH: A painting or photograph tells a story within a single frame, giving the viewer time to contemplate what it is saying. Cinema, on the other hand, controls our experience of narrative time, as it unfolds across the duration of a film.

In my own research, I have been thinking about what happens when these two distinct modes of visual storytelling intersect in innovative ways, which is another reason why I am excited to bring “Witkin & Witkin” to campus.

MLH: Storytelling is how we share our humanity. It may be the primary antidote to the isolation and loneliness of modern life.

For more information about the 2018-19 Syracuse Symposium, visit .

Margaret Atwood

Acclaimed author Margaret Atwood (“The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Alias Grace”) will visit Syracuse University on Thursday, Oct. 25, and participate that evening in an on-stage conversation in Hendricks Chapel for the series.

The event, which is free and open to the public, starts at 7:30 p.m. Part of SU’s , it is co-sponsored by the and the , with media sponsor . Atwood’s appearance is also part of the Humanities Center’s programming, which is focusing this year on the meaning and impact of “STORIES” from diverse perspectives.

American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) will be provided.

Atwood will be speaking with fellow novelist , associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences. At the conclusion of their conversation, the floor will open for questions from the audience. The SU Bookstore will have a selection of Atwood’s books available for purchase in the Hendricks narthex before and after the event. There will be no book signing opportunity.

Margaret Atwood
The renowned Canadian author has more than 40 novels, non-fiction works, short story collections, children’s books, books of poetry, a graphic novel and a comic books series to her credit spanning her more than 50-year career.

Atwood has been a recipient of the Man Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the Harvard Arts Medal, the Raymond Chandler Award, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among more than a hundred honors. She has also received 26 honorary degrees.

Two relatively new blockbuster adaptations of a pair of Atwood’s most notable books—“The Handmaid’s Tale” (McClelland & Stewart, Houghton Mifflin, 1985) and the mystery “Alias Grace” (McClelland & Stewart, Bloomsbury, Doubleday, 1996)—have brought a fresh recognition of her work to new audiences.

The two seasons of the Hulu production of “The Handmaid’s Tale” have garnered nine Primetime Emmy Awards, including the 2017 award for Outstanding Drama Series. The series has also earned a Peabody Award, two Television Critics Association Awards, an American Cinema Editors Award, an Art Directors Guild Award, three Critics’ Choice Television Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, among other honors.

The six-episode adaptation of Atwood’s murder mystery “Alias Grace” is currently available on Netflix, having debuted in November 2017.

Her children’s book “Wandering Wenda and “Widow Wallop’s Wunderground Washery” (McArthur & Co., 2011) was produced as an animated children’s series. MGM is producing a series from her novel “The Heart Goes Last” (McClelland & Stewart, Bloomsbury, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2015). And Paramount is adapting the three books in her MaddAddam series (McClelland & Stewart, Bloomsbury, Doubleday)—“Oryx and Crake”��(2003),��“The Year of the Flood”��(2009) and “MaddAddam” (2013)—into a television series.

In 2016, Atwood entered the world of graphic novels with “Angel Catbird” (Dark Horse), the story of a young genetic engineer who accidentally mutates into a cat-owl hybrid, which debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times Bestseller List. She has since written volumes two and three. And the complete 320-page collection was released Oct. 16.

Atwood recently teamed with Eisner Award-winning illustrator Ken Steacy for a three-issue comic book series, “War Bears,” which tells the story of the early days of comics in Toronto and one fictional cartoonist’s struggles with the industry in the 1940s.

Atwood is a founding trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize and a founder of the Writers’ Trust of Canada, a nonprofit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada’s writing community.

In addition to her literary endeavors, Atwood is an inventor. In 2004, while on a paperback tour in Denver for her novel “Oryx and Crake,” Atwood conceived the concept of a remote robotic writing technology, the LongPen, that would allow someone to write in ink anywhere in the world via tablet PC and the internet.

Dana Spiotta
Spiotta��is author of four novels:����(Simon & Schuster, 2016), winner of the St. Francis College��Literary Prize and a finalist for the��Los Angeles Times��Book Prize;����(Simon & Schuster, 2011), a finalist for the��National Book Critics Circle Award;����(Simon & Schuster, 2006), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the American Academy’s Rosenthal Foundation Award; and����(Simon & Schuster, 2001), a��New York Times��Notable Book.

Spiotta is recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for��the Arts Fellowship and the Rome Prize in Literature. In 2017, she��received the John Updike Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

About the University Lectures
The University Lectures was created through, and is supported by, the generosity of alumnus Robert B. Menschel ’51. The cross-disciplinary series brings to Syracuse University notable guest speakers of exceptional accomplishment who share their diverse global experiences and perspectives.

The University Lectures welcomes suggestions for future speakers. To recommend a speaker, or to obtain additional information about the series, write to��lectures@syr.edu. For up-to-date information on the series, visit the University Lectures and follow on .

Acclaimed trumpeter Bria Skonberg recently participated in a three-day residency in the Rose, Jules R. and Stanford S. Setnor School of Music.

October is (NAHM), and Syracuse University is marking the occasion with an array of events and activities.

Vivian May, director of the , says most of the University’s NAHM-related programming originates in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA), SUArt Galleries and Syracuse University Libraries.

“NAHM raises awareness of the arts and humanities, while sparking creative partnerships,” says May, also a professor of women’s and gender studies in A&S. “There is no shortage of scholarly and creative projects on campus.”

May considers the arts and humanities vital to Syracuse’s research mission, whether faculty are integrating art into STEM education or students are using scientific methods to understand and interpret the world. “NAHM recognizes the importance of culture not just during October but throughout the entire year,” she adds.

The following is a snapshot of arts and humanities events this month on campus:

Novelist Margaret Atwood

College of Arts and Sciences
Home of the humanities, A&S sponsors a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary initiatives. Chief among them is the Humanities Center—a hub of research activity, fellowships, visiting professorships and public programming, located in the historic Tolley Building.

The Humanities Center presents , an annual public events series with an overarching theme.��This year’s symposium looks at the meaning and impact of storytelling from diverse perspectives and genres.

As part of NAHM, Syracuse Symposium will present the exhibition “,” Oct. 11-31; a by Williams College geographer Nicolas Howe, Oct. 12; a , Oct. 21; and a by “Handmaid’s Tale” author Margaret Atwood, Oct. 25. For details, visit .

The Humanities Center also sponsors competitive fellowships and visiting professorships. This year’s Dissertation Fellows are Lorenza D’Angelo and Adam Kozaczka, Ph.D. candidates in philosophy and English, respectively.

Joining them are two Public Humanities Graduate Fellows: Camilla Bell and Gemma Cooper-Novack, Ph.D. candidates in the School of Education. Their work is supported in part by the Mellon-funded (a program of the Humanities Center) and .

May is pleased to welcome this year’s Faculty Fellows: Myrna García-Calderón (Spanish), Michael Rieppel (philosophy), Carol Fadda (English) and Albrecht Diem (history). Preparations also are underway for a spring semester mini-residency by��Larry Blumenfeld, the Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor, who is a��culture reporter and music critic for The Wall Street Journal.

May’s work is complemented by that of Dorri Beam, new chair of the . Composed mostly of departmental chairs and program directors in A&S, the council partners with the Humanities Center, the Humanities Corridor and Syracuse Universities Libraries to assure the humanities have, in May’s words, a “robust, dynamic presence” on campus.

“The study of the humanities encourages interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge, problem solving, communal life, research techniques and classroom dynamics,” says Beam, also an associate professor of English. “Our faculty are known for their internationally recognized research and for creating opportunities for intellectual exchange.”

Rapper Baba Brinkman

Case in point: The Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program and Department of Psychology kicked off NAHM with a visit by . A self-described “white, Canadian, peer-reviewed science rapper,” he presented his award-winning show “The Rap Guide to Consciousness” in Hendricks Chapel.

“It was an interdisciplinary, multimedia experience, showing how science and the humanities work together. ’The Rap Guide to Consciousness’ is to neuroscience what [the musical] ‘Hamilton’ is to history,’” one observer recalls.

Other October events in A&S include the following:

• The , featuring novelist Robert Lopez on Wednesday, Oct. 10, and Katie Kitamura, The Leonard and Elise Elman Visiting Writer, on Wednesday, Oct. 24. Both readings are at 5:30 p.m. in Gifford Auditorium.
• A lecture by art historian Ittai Weinryb about his new exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center called “.” Glenn Peers, newly appointed professor of art history, is organizing the lecture, which is��Thursday, Oct. 11, from 5-7 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium.
• The Joseph and Amelia Borgognoni Lecture in Catholic Theology and Religion in Society, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Catonsville Nine, on Monday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium.
• Artist LaToya Hobbs’ solo show “,” exploring perceptions of Black womanhood, running through Nov. 3 at the Community Folk Art Center.

College of Visual and Performing Arts
While Baba Brickman was freestyling in Hendricks, another Canadian artist—trumpeter, singer and songwriter —was hitting all the right notes in Setnor Auditorium. Her performance marked the culmination of a three-day residency in the .Setnor is one of six schools and departments in VPA, which is presenting more than 50 events in October. They include the following:

• An exhibition of Tyrolean-styled dirndl skirts called “,” running through Oct. 12 at the Sue & Leon Genet Gallery.
• A concert by the , part of the Setnor Guest Artist Series, on Tuesday, Oct. 9, from 8-9 p.m. in Setnor Auditorium.
• The , highlighting music and fashion icon Grace Jones, Oct. 10-14 at various locations throughout Syracuse.
• The School of Art’s Visiting Artist Lecture series, with illustrator , on Thursday, Oct. 11, at 6:30 p.m. in Shemin Auditorium.
• The Department of Drama’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s “,” Oct. 12-21 at Syracuse Stage.

More information is at .

Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s “Forbidden Fruit” (1950)

Syracuse University Art Galleries
SUArt Galleries has six exhibitions going on during NAHM, between Main Campus and Lubin House in New York City.

Two of the exhibitions—“” and “”—have been the subject of gallery talks by David Prince, associate director and curator of collections of SUArt Galleries, and Romita Ray, associate professor of art, as well as chair of art and music histories in A&S.

The Kuniyoshi exhibition, curated by Prince, examines the artist’s life and career through his 1950 painting, “Forbidden Fruit,” which is housed in the University’s permanent art collection. Kuniyoshi’s lifelong desire to become naturalized was thwarted by a perfect storm of arcane government regulations, World War II and the Cold War, Prince says.

A regular presenter in the Galleries’ Lunchtime Lecture series, Prince also will discuss “Rodin and Syracuse” on Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 12:15 p.m. at SUArt Galleries. He will consider sculptures by several noted students of Rodin, including Ivan Meštrović, whom Rodin called the “greatest phenomenon amongst sculptors.”

A sculptor-in-residence and professor of sculpture at Syracuse from 1947 to 1955,��Meštrović has inspired students and scholars alike. His��work in the University’s art collection and papers in the Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) drew��Fulbright Scholar Dalibor Prancevic from Croatia to campus earlier this year. They also shaped a prize-winning Honors Capstone project by Tammy Hong ’18.

Syracuse University Libraries
Located on the sixth floor of Bird Library, the SCRC presents “.” The nine-month exhibition, which began last month, commemorates the 30th anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The incident claimed the lives of 270 people from 21 countries, including 35 Syracuse students returning home from a semester abroad.“Whether through scholarship, public advocacy, art or physical memorials, we ensure their lives and the lessons learned from their deaths are not forgotten,” says Pan Am 103 Archivist and Assistant University Archivist Vanessa St.Oegger-Menn. “The exhibition documents not only the terrorist act itself, but also the lives of those lost and the ways in which they are remembered.”Adds Vivian May, “No matter who you are or where you live, there are many ways to celebrate the arts and humanities. Syracuse is committed to cultivating collaboration, active exchange and a sustained dialogue among our students, faculty and community partners. NAHM is one way we do this.”

NAHM is a coast-to-coast collective recognition of the importance of culture in the United States. Americans for the Arts launched the event 30 years ago, but reestablished it in 1993 as a month-long celebration.

NAHM focuses on the arts at local, state, and national levels; encourages individuals and organizations to participate in the arts; allows governments and businesses to show their support of the arts; and raises public awareness about the role the arts and humanities play in our communities and lives. More information is at .

The (SUHRFF) returns for its 16th year as it once again brings to Central New York an outstanding lineup of critically acclaimed films addressing social justice and human rights in the United States and around the world.

Director Rudy Valdez (center) will introduce and discuss his film “The Sentence” (2018) at SUHRFF.

The Sept. 27-29 festival is part of the 2018-19 Syracuse Symposium, whose theme is “Stories.” SUHRFF is co-presented by the in the College of Arts and Sciences and the . An interdisciplinary event, SUHRFF embodies the spirit of One University—achieving even greater things at the University through the work of many disciplines.

Roger Hallas

Tula Goenka

All screenings are free and open to the public. DHH accommodations will be provided. For more information, visit .

SUHRFF opens on Thursday, Sept. 28, at 7 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3, with a screening of “” directed by Rudy Valdez. Premiering earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary, the film offers an achingly powerful story of the long-term effects of mandatory prison sentences as Valdez turns his camera to document his own family story. Valdez will introduce the film and participate in a Q&A.

“We’re thrilled to bring this compelling film and its director to open our festival,” says Tula Goenka, professor of television, radio and film in the Newhouse School and co-director of the festival. “While several recent documentaries, such as Ava DuVernay’s ’13th,’” have mounted powerful political arguments for prison reform, none can match “The Sentence” in the intimacy with which it reveals the impact of draconian judicial policies on American families.”

The theme of stories further resonates in “,” which screens on Friday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3. Alexandria Bombach’s award-winning film (Sundance, SXSW and Hotdocs) offers a searing exploration of the survivor’s burden to bear witness as Yazidi genocide survivor Nadia Murad travels the world to tell her traumatic story in numerous demanding public contexts to generate international response to her community’s urgent peril. The screening will be followed by discussion with Kelsea Carbajal and Margaret Mabie, members of the Syrian Accountability Project in the College of Law, which recently published a report on the Yazidi Genocide.

The festival continues on Saturday afternoon at Shemin Auditorium in the Shaffer Art Building with screenings of “,” about the murder of a Filipina trans woman by a U.S. marine; “,” a poignant drama about the threatened loss of an indigenous language in Mexico; and “,” a sensitive fictional exploration of the legacies of Nepal’s brutal civil war on its communities.

The film festival is co-sponsored by the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, the School of Education; the Department of Languages, Literature and Linguistics; the Citizenship and Civic Engagement Program; the International Relations Program; the Latino-Latin American Studies Program; the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program; the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC); the Disability Cultural Center; the LGBT Resource Center; and the South Asia Center.

It is also supported by the Department of Art and Music Histories; the Department of History; the Department of Political Science; the Department of Religion; the Department of Sociology; the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies; the Asian/Asian American Studies Program; the LGBT Studies Program; the Middle Eastern Studies Program; the Office of Multicultural Affairs; and SASSE: Students Advocating Safe Sex and Empowerment.

Free public parking is available in the Lehman, University and Harrison lots on University Avenue after 6 p.m. on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, parking is available in Q4 and other open parking lots.

All films are either open-captioned or subtitled in English. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) will be available at all screenings for the introductions and discussions. For other accommodations, contact Kristen Northrop (kmnorthr@syr.edu or 315.443.7358) by Sept. 21.

Full information can be found on the festival website: .

The festival schedule includes the following:

OPENING NIGHT: Thursday, Sept. 27
Opening reception
6 p.m., Newhouse 3 Lobby

“The Sentence”
Rudy Valdez
(USA, 2018, 85 min. Closed-captioned in English)
7 p.m., Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3
Turning his camera on his own family, filmmaker Rudy Valdez constructs a personal and achingly powerful portrait of the long-term effects of mandatory prison sentencing. Introduction and Q&A with director Rudy Valdez.

Friday, Sept. 28
“On Her Shoulders”
Alexandria Bombach
(USA, 2018, 94 min., English, Kurdish and Arabic with English subtitles)
7 p.m., Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3
A searing exploration of the survivor’s burden to bear witness as Yazidi genocide survivor Nadia Murad travels the world reliving her trauma to prompt international response to her community’s peril. Post-screening discussion with Kelsea Carbajal and Margaret Mabie (Syrian Accountability Project).

Saturday, Sept. 29
“Call Her Ganda”
P.J. Raval
(USA, 2018, 98 min., English and Tagalog with English Subtitles)
1 p.m., Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
The brutal murder of a Filipina transwoman by a U.S. Marine illuminates how gendered violence becomes a geopolitical battle over postcolonial national sovereignty. Skype Q&A with director P.J. Raval.

“I Dream in Another Language”
Ernesto Contreras
(Mexico/Netherlands, 2017, 104 min., Spanish and Zikril with English subtitles)
4 p.m., Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
In a remote Mexican community, a young linguist seeks to document an indigenous language before its last two speakers pass away, but discovers the trauma of lost love stands in his way.

“White Sun”
Deepak Rauniyar
(Nepal/USA/Qatar/Netherlands, 2016, 89 min., Nepali with English subtitles)
7 p.m., Shemin Auditorium, Shaffer Art Building
Finding the political within the everyday, “White Sun” uses one village’s complex tribulations to narrate Nepal’s devasting recent history of civil war.

Details are at��.