University Symposium Calendar of Events, 2008-09
The Symposium's public events will be organized by semester-long themes. The theme for Fall 2008 was Political Bodies/The Body Politic. The theme for Spring 2009 was "Exploring Embodiment."
Wednesday, September 10
Bringing Justice to an Unjustified Past in Korea
Judge Park Won Soon discusses human rights and transitional justice in Korea. Named by the Citizen Times as the "Most Distinguished and Respected Activist in Korea" for three years running, Judge Park is the executive director of the Hope Institute and of the Beautiful Foundation and Beautiful Store (a community foundation and fair-trade network).
4 pm, 125 Nolte
Friday, September 26
"Recovering Our Sensual Wisdom: The Body and Knowing": A talk by Don Hanlon
Don Hanlon Johnson will describe the history of "scholar shaping techniques," Western ecclesiastical and academic understandings of the human body and consciousness, and its impact on Western understandings of consciousness, knowing, and knowledge production. Johnson is a professor and Director of the Somatic Psychology program at the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco. He is the author of many accessible and groundbreaking works on the emergent field of somatics and its linkages to scholarly inquiry, patterns of scholarly embodiment, and its role in human consciousness and knowledge production.
12:00 - 1:30 p.m, 140 Nolte Center
Wednesday, October 8
Performance and Social Justice
Ananya Chatterjea (Theatre Arts and Dance), Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley (English), and Jigna Desai (Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies) lead a discussion of how global politics impact on women's bodies and how to make an embodied response.
4:00 pm, 125 Nolte
Wednesday, October 22
Somali Refugees in Europe
During the summer of 2007, Abdi Roble and Doug Rutledge of the Somali Documentary Project (SDP) traveled to places in Europe that have proven very difficult for Somali refugees: Germany, Greece and Malta. They discovered that Europe is using its border countries to create a fortress against refugees attempting to enter the European Union. Roble and Rutledge will discuss the SDP’s work in the United States and in Dadaab refugee camp, and compare the conditions for Somali refugees in the U.S. and Europe, with specific information on each European country. Abdi Roble has been honored with the Arts Freedom Award of the South Settlement House and the Individual Artist Award from both the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Doug Rutledge is a poet, playwright, and essayist who has dedicated most of his life to humanitarian issues. They are the authors of The Somali Diaspora: A Journey Away (University of Minnesota Press, September 2008).
4:00 pm, 125 Nolte
Wednesday, November 5
The United Nations Convention on Persons with Disabilities
Arlene S. Kanter will discuss the history leading up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons, its key provisions, its importance to the disability rights movement worldwide, and problems that remain for children and adults with disabilities under international and domestic disability laws. She is the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Law, Director of the Disability Law and Policy Program, and Co-Director of the Center on Human Policy, Law and Disability Studies at Syracuse University
4:00 pm, 125 Nolte
Wednesday, November 12
The 1969 Morrill Hall Takeover: University of Minnesota Veteran Activists Reflect on Black Bodies in Resistance
Organized by Walt Jacobs, African American & African Studies, this roundtable discussion will be one of several events leading up to the fortieth anniversary of the peaceful protest efforts that forced the University to address issues of equal rights for minorities.
Cosponsored by the Department of African American & African Studies
4:00 pm, 125 Nolte
Friday, November 14
"Delicious Movement": A workshop with Eiko & Koma
Delicious Movement Workshops are designed for all people who love to move or who want to love to move with delicious feelings. Since 1972, Japanese-born choreographer/dancers Eiko & Koma have created a unique theater of movement out of stillness, shape, light, sound, and time. In 2004 they received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for their "lifetime contribution to the field of modern dance" and in 2006 they received the Dance Magazine Award and were honored in the first round of the United States Artists Award. Wear comfortable clothing; no dance experience is required. Because space is limited we do ask that you register by sending an e-mail to ias@umn.edu.
12:00 p.m., 125 Nolte
Wednesday, November 19
"Food Technology, Food Psychology: Ancel Keys and the World War II Development of the K Ration": A talk with Sarah W. Tracy
Sarah W. Tracy, Director of the Medical Humanities Program in the Honors College at the University of Oklahoma, examines Ancel Keys's role in developing the K Ration as part of a larger biography of Keys that places his 70-year career in the evolving context of the human and biomedical sciences. In helping to create the Army's first thoroughly modern combat ration, Keys introduced a holistic food-engineering standard for subsistence meals that embraced both food (and advertising) psychology and food technology.
4:00 pm, 125 Nolte
Mondays, September 29, October 27, and December 1
Conversations about Body & Knowing
Lunch discussions in which we will ask questions about what we know about the body and how we know it, and how people in different times and places have articulated their knowledges about the body. The ideas from these meetings will help to stimulate academic discussion and to shape the course of the symposium over the course of the next two years. Open to all; lunch provided. Please register at ias@umn.edu or 626-5054.
12:00 pm - 1:15 pm, 125 Nolte
Friday, December 5
Sovereignty: A Minnesota Sesquicentennial Symposium
Organized by Christine Bauemler (Art) and Sonja Kuftinec (Theater Arts and Dance), this symposium will explore the historical, cultural and political relationships between the University of Minnesota, American Indian sovereign governments and the larger Twin Cities community. By learning from contemporary American Indian ways of living and knowing in the realms of politics, law and science, in education and community outreach, and through the performing and visual arts, we seek to understand how more just futures can be imagined, and a more vibrant University can be realized.
10:00 am to 5:00 pm, Nolte 140, with shuttle service to evening receptions at Ancient Traders Gallery and Form+Content Gallery
Wednesday, December 10
"Respect for Sacred Sites: Protecting Indigenous Burial Grounds under International Law": A talk by James Anaya
James Anaya is James J. Lenoir Professor of Human Rights Law and Policy at the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law, where he teaches and writes in the fields of international human rights, indigenous peoples' rights, and constitutional law.
4:00 pm, 125 Nolte
Monday, January 26
"A Simple Movement Practice" - workshop with Dana Reitz
An invitation to experience a quiet moment; an opportunity to read your body in motion. Dana Reitz is a faculty member of the Interdisciplinary Program in Collaborative Arts and a Founding Fellow of the Center for Creative Research (CCR). She is currently a core faculty member of Bennington College, where she has developed a wide variety of interdisciplinary courses. She is the recipient of two New York Dance and Performance ("Bessie") Awards, she is the Artistic Director of Field Papers, Inc, and her work has been supported in part by many foundations and public agencies, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc., and The National Endowment for the Arts.
Monday, January 26, 12:00 pm, 125 Nolte Center
Wednesday, February 11
Visit to artist Andréa Stanislav's studio
Andréa Stanislav is a professor of Art at the University of Minnesota and practices a multimedia approach to art making, inspired by the language of film, architecture, and pop culture. Scientific studies in the psychology of perception inform her work as well. Her installations combine formalism, concept, and interactivity to create an experiential environment that explores worlds we can see -- and worlds we can’t see -- but that we know intuitively are real. Images of some of her work can be seen on her website.
Bus to the studio (890 29th Ave. SE, Minneapolis) will leave Nolte Center at 4 p.m. and return at 5:30 p.m.
Wednesday, February 18
"Embodiment and Body Knowledge in the Ancient World": A presentation by Daniel H. Garrison
Daniel H. Garrison is a professor of Classics at Northwestern University. His latest work is On the Fabric of the Human Body, a complete four volume translation with commentary of the anatomical atlas published by Andreas Vesalius in 1543, making one of the most influential medical works of all time available for free online with the ability to interact with the text and the illustrations. Garrison's other publications include Sexual Culture in Ancient Greece (Oklahoma, 2000) and The Student's Catullus, 3rd edition (Oklahoma, 2004).
4:00 to 5:30 p.m., 125 Nolte
Friday, March 6
"The Devil in the Medieval Theatrical Flesh": A presentation by Jody Enders
Jody Enders is a professor in the Departments of Theater and French & Italian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her recent work includes Medieval Theater of Cruelty (Cornell, 1998), Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends (Chicago, 2002) and Murder by Accident: Medieval Theater, Modern Media, Critical Intentions (Chicago, 2009).
12:00 to 1:30 p.m., 125 Nolte
Wednesday, March 11
"Understanding Body Image: Sense of Self, Media Imagery, and Visual Culture": A Presentation by Ann Marie Barry
Ann Marie Barry is a professor of Communications at Boston College. Among other works, she is the author of Visual Intelligence (1997) and The Advertising Portfolio (1990), a commissioned mediation handbook for the Crime and Justice Foundation, and numerous articles and chapters on Visual Communication Theory.
4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte Center
Monday, March 23
Movement Workshop and
Tuesday, March 24
"Kinesthetic Experience: Understanding Movement Inside and Out": A presentation with Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone is a dancer, choreographer and philosopher with extensive background in evolutionary biology. Her work includes The Phenomenology of Dance (University of Wisconsin, 1966), The Roots of Thinking (Temple, 1990), The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered Bodies (Open Court, 1994), and The Roots of Morality (Penn State, 2008), as well as The Primacy of Movement (John Benjamins,1999) and Illuminating Dance: Philosophical Explorations (Bucknell, 1985). She is currently working on The Corporeal Turn: An Interdisciplinary Reader. The Roots of Power was nominated by Ashley Montagu for an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
Organized by the Embodied Methodologies Group.
Workshop, 1:00-3:00, Northrup Studio 5
Presentation, 4:00 p.m., 125 Nolte
Thursdays, January 29, February 19, March 12, and April 9
Conversations about Body & Knowing
Lunch discussions in which we will ask questions about what we know about the body and how we know it, and how people in different times and places have articulated their knowledges about the body. The ideas from these meetings will help to stimulate academic discussion and to shape the course of the symposium over the course of the next two years. Open to all; lunch provided, but space is limited to allow for real conversation. Please register at ias@umn.edu or 626-5054.
12:00 pm - 1:15 pm, 125 Nolte
Monday, April 27
"Dancing the Violent Body of Sound": Informal showing and discussion
Guerino Mazzola, professor of Music and participant in the Collaborative Arts Program, William Messing, professor of Mathematics, and Rachmi Diyah Larasati, professor of Theatre Arts and Dance, present Fourier's formula unwrapped and embodied in a dance-choreography.
7:00 pm, 100 Barbara Barker Center for Dance
Tuesday, March 3, Monday May 4, and Friday May 22
Open Rehearsal of Field Songs
As part of the University Symposium on Body & Knowing, Minneapolis-based dance theater company Black Label Movement, led by Carl Flink (Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance), will have a series of open rehearsals of a new work in development, Field Songs. Field Songs examines the often charged boundaries where rural and urban landscapes and cultures collide.
4:00 - 5:30 p.m., 100 Barbara Barker Center for Dance
Saturday, May 23
"Ashesh Barsha, Unending Monsoon" - Ananya Dance Theatre
Arid, Bare, Windswept: Ashesh Barsha, Unending Monsoon is a danced response to a world gone mad through the overconsumption of electricity, energy, and natural resources. Ashesh Barsha is the third and final piece of the trilogy on environmental justice, and explores unanswered questions of reparation, the mismanagement of hurricanes and tsunamis, and a world where human connectivity is lost and indigenous knowledges eroded.
8:00 - 9:30 p.m., 100 Barbara Barker Center for Dance
Friday, May 29 through Sunday, June 7
"Field Songs": Dance performance by Black Label Movement
Black Label Movement's third Southern season is anchored by the premiere of 2008 McKnight Choreography Fellow Carl Flink's Field Songs featuring sod, dirt, concrete and live music by local roots-rock band The Jinnies. The new work moves and plays along the charged boundaries where urban and rural landscapes collide. Post-show discussion each evening through June 6. Post-show q&a May 30 & 31, June 3 & 6, Pre-show talk June 6 at 7:15pm. Master class: partnering workshop, June 6 at 10:30 am, $15 drop-in, cash or check.
Friday, May 29 through Sunday, June 7. 8:00 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7:00 p.m. Sundays, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday. Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave South, Mpls, 612.340.1725, $22, $20 students and seniors, $11 children, pay-as-able Wed. June 3
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Symposium 2006-2008: Time
Symposium 2005-06: The Politics of Populations
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