Auburn Connects!
2011-2012 Calendar of Events

(Events will be added and room locations will be updated throughout the year, so please check back regularly!)

SCHEDULE OF AUBURN CONNECTS! EVENTS

Spring 2012

January

1/17, 5:00 pm, Biggin Hall Auditorium. “Of Men and Gods”, a film documentary set in Haiti by anthropologist Anne Lescot, sponsored by the Art at the Threshold Series. Free and open to the public.  Of Men and Gods examines the daily existence of several Haitian men who are openly gay. Prevalent, yet still taboo, homosexuality and gay culture are allowed to flourish within the context of Haiti's Vodou religion. As "children of the gods," the men find an explanation for homosexuality as well as divine protection. They also find an outlet for theatrical expression through exhilarating performances in which they embody the gods. Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic looms as a continual threat and adds a disquieting degree of nihilism to their relatively optimistic attitudes toward life and happiness in Port-au-Prince.     

 

1/19. 6:00 pm, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. Opening Lecture: “Promises of Freedom”.   The opening lecture by the collector is followed by a reception. Students who would like to attend should join the museum (free) by going to the Museum’s website http://jcsm.auburn.edu/index.php and following the link on the front page. They should also RSVP to RobbinB@auburn.edu or 844-3085.  Open to the public.

 

1/26, 5:00 pm,  Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, reading by Natasha Tretheway.
Ekphrasic poetry reading by Pulitzer Prize winner, Natasha Tretheway, who holds the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University. This is a program for Promises of Freedom: Selections from the Arthur Primas collection (Dec.10, 2011-March 10, 2012), an exhibition celebrating 150 years of African American art.

February

2/1   Auburn Connects! Spring Semester Writing Contest in Response to Mountains Beyond Mountains Deadline for Submissions.  All undergraduates can enter, prizes awarded for top three entries.  Submit writing as a word document or PDF file to: auburnwrites@auburn.edu, or mail to: Office of University Writing, 3436 RBD Library, Auburn University, AL 36849-5279.

2/6, 4:00 pm, Biggin 005. "Borders within Borders: Haitian Migrant Women's Experiences in the Dominican Republic" by Dr. Jennifer Shoaff, Dept. of Gender and Race Studies, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Sponsored by the Women's Studies Program, AU Connects!, and Anthropology. Dr. Shoaff draws from long-term ethnographic research in the northwest border region of the Dominican Republic to explore Haitian migrant women's experiences of mobility and containment across an array of structural and symbolic borders within the Dominican nation-state.

 

2/9, 3:30-5:00 pm, 2223 Auburn University Student Center, Making Connections Series “From Freedom Fighters to Nomads:  Haiti’s Revolution in World Literature,”  panel by Drs. Traci O’Brien, Alex Holland, and Adrienne Angelo, Auburn University Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.For the younger generation in North America, Haiti has perhaps only been visible either as country victimized by its own leaders (“Baby Doc” Duvalier) or by the recent natural catastrophe.  This panel seeks to create awareness of two critical events in the history of Haiti:  the tremendous impact that the Haitian Revolution (with Toussaint L’Ouverture as its leader) had on the national literatures of Europe and Latin America and the wave of emigration that resulted from the Duvalier regime. Unlike the American Revolution and the French Revolution, the 1791 Haitian Revolution moved race slavery to the center of other national debates and forced a reevaluation of freedom and slavery based on racial hierarchies.  Despite the imprisonment of L’Ouverture and the subsequent assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, this was the only successful large-scale slave revolution worldwide.  Thus, this panel will seek to elucidate connections between these very important pieces of Haitian history and other national literatures.

 

2/14, 5:00 pm, Biggin Hall Auditorium. “Political and Religious Aspects of Ritual Violence among the Postclassic Maya in Northern Guatemala (AD 950-1524)” lecture by Dr. William Duncan, East Tennessee State University,  sponsored by The Art at the Threshold Series.  Free and open to the public.   Dr. Duncan is assistant professor of anthropology at East Tennessee State University. Duncan earned an MA and PhD from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His primary research emphasis is Mesoamerican bioarchaeology, covering a range of topics including microevolution, trauma and taphonomy, cultural modification, mortuary practices, and indigenous ideas about embodiment. Duncan's particular interests include identifying evidence of violence among individuals buried in distinct ritual contexts among the Maya, Mixtec, and Zapotec cultures and understanding biological relationships among individuals subjected to ritual violence. In addition to his work in Mesoamerica, he is currently involved in a historic forensics case as part of the canonization process of a martyred 16th-century Spanish priest.

March

3/20, 5:00 pm, Biggin Hall Auditorium, “Tina Modotti: Muse, Photographer, Revolutionary,” lecture by Dr. Mark Miller Graham, Auburn University, sponsored by the Art at the Threshold Series. Free and open to the public.  Tina Modotti was the daughter of an Italian machinist who immigrated to the United States in 1906. After her marriage, she moved to Hollywood and met the photographer Edward Weston. When her husband died in Mexico, she made her first visit to the country she would return to photograph in 1923, first as Weston's assistant and apprentice and later as his professional partner. She published her images, which included portrait studies, in the magazines Mexican Folkways and Formas. In 1927 Modotti joined the Communist Party, and her political affiliations and activities caused her to be deported from Mexico in 1930.

3/27, 7:00 pm, Science Center Auditorium, ""Medicine, Poverty, and Haiti: Lessons from Abroad", D. Matthew L. Godwin, Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University. Sponsored by the College of Sciences and Mathematics. Dr. Goodwin lived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti for six months in 2009, working at the renowned GHESKIO clinic (winner of the 2010 Gates Award in particular for their robust response to the earthquake).  In this talk, he will present a "pre-earthquake" view of Haiti, presenting both work that was done at the HIV clinic as well as stories from his interactions with Haitians while living there.  This talk will attempt to both bring to light what a remarkable and resilient people Haitians are, as well as highlight larger issues relating to developing countries and health care.  

3/28, 5:00 pm, Biggin Hall Auditorium, “Caribbean Women Writing Bridges of Sound”, a lecture by Dr. Velma Pollard, retired, University of West Indies., sponsored by the Art at the Threshold Series. Free and open to the public.  Caribbean writing in the second half of the twentieth century almost invariably includes reference to the Black Diaspora.  The relationship between Africa and Americas is an inescapable part of the historical/cultural mindscape of the artists.  What is interesting is the different strategies the use to evoke relationships between people in the different locations where the enslaved have settled and between each and the Africa of their origin.  This talk examines the use of sound to establish dispora connections, in some Caribbean women’s writing: in poems by Oliver Senior of Jamaica and Nancy Morejon of Cuba but chiefly in two novels: Praise Song for the Widow by Paule Marshall (Barbados/USA) and Louisiana by Erna Brodber (Jamaica).

April

 

April 2, 7:00 pm, Auburn University Arena, Tracy Kidder, author, Mountains Beyond Mountains, The Quest of Dr.  Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World.  Large venue seating and open to the Public. Tickets are free and available at the Auburn chamber of Commerce and the AU Student Center.  Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard and studied at the University of Iowa. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. The author of Strength in What Remains, Mountains Beyond Mountains, My Detachment, Home Town, Old Friends, Among Schoolchildren, House, and The Soul of a New Machine, Kidder lives in Massachusetts and Maine. Read more about Tracy Kidder here.

 

April 17, 5:00 pm, “Art Matters: Sculpture, Peace, and Diplomacy in Ancient Yoruba” a lecture by Dr. Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University, sponsored by The Art at the Threshold Series.  Free and open to the public.  Dr. Blier is Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Arts and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. An historian of African art and architecture, she is the author of more than a half dozen books, including The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power, and African Royal Art: The Majesty of Form. Her talk will be based on her forthcoming book, Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power and Identity c.1300, which explores the terra cottas and bronzes of ancient life and focuses on a king who brought peace to warring factions of a devastating civil war through the commissioning of art works and a new city plan.              

 

 

Last Updated: Aug. 22, 2010