On Nov. 9, political anthropologist David Vine ’97, associate professor of anthropology at American University, returned to campus to speak on “What Are We Getting Out of This?”: U.S. Empire and the Military Overseas under Trump.” The U.S. has 800 military bases in places from Germany and Japan to South Korea and Saudi Arabia and nearly 80 other countries.
Alok Appadurai ’00 (Photo by Jade Beall)
On April 28, the Center for the Americas will host its 2017 Americas Forum on “Food Justice and Sustainability” at the Ring Family Performing Arts Hall at 2:30 p.m. The keynote address will be given by Alok Appadurai ’00. Appadurai is the the founder of Fed by Threads, a sustainable, sweatshop-free, multi-brand, American-made organic vegan clothing store that has fed over half a million meals to Americans in need. He also recently founded GoodElephant.org, a global network that aims to promote social and environmental reform by nurturing compassion and empathy.
His time at Wesleyan helped to inform his current projects. As a student, he majored in American studies fashioning his own concentration that incorporated colonialism, workers’ rights, utopian communities, the environment and gender/class issues.
After the keynote, three scholars on a panel will present talks on food Justice and agricultural sustainability. Elizabeth Hoover, the Manning Assistant Professor of American Studies at Brown University, will give the talk, “From ‘Garden Warriors’ to ‘Good Seeds’; Defining and Enacting Food Sovereignty Through American Indian Community Gardening Projects.” Following her, Brian Donahue, associate professor of American environmental studies at Brandeis University, will present his “Woodlands, Farmlands, and Communities: Visions for New England’s Future.”
Wesleyan’s Courtney Fullilove, associate professor of history, will conclude the panel with “Seed Saving in Economies of Scale: Some Questions about Sovereignty and International Governance.”
On April 8, the Center for the Americas will host the Americas Forum 2016, “A Hemispheric Conversation on Violence and Memory,” in the Russell House.
The Americas Forum is an annual symposium that brings into dialogue scholars and artists from “north” and “south” around a common theme. This year’s forum features three panelists and a performance artist who will engage in a conversation over the roles that colonialism, settler colonialism, and nation-building continue to play within the complex dialectic between memory, the archive (writ broadly), and the State. The panel starts at 2:30 p.m., and the event ends around 6:30 p.m. after the performance.
The panelists are:
“The Centenary of Aimé Césaire 1913-2008: Poet, Pragmatist, a Voice for the Voiceless” was the theme of the 2013 Americas Forum held April 5-6 in Russell House. The Americas Forum offered an intellectual consideration of Césaire’s contributions to our understanding of the Americas, Marxism, imperialism, independence, race and the role of art.
“The Centenary of Aimé Césaire 1913-2008: Poet, Pragmatist, a Voice for the Voiceless” is the theme of the 2013 Americas Forum April 5-6.
For its 2013 Americas Forum, Wesleyan’s Center for the Americas is commemorating the centenary of Aimé Césaire, éminence grise of the Francophone Caribbean. Taking place on April 5-6 at Russell House, the annual symposium brings scholars and artists from “north” and “south” into dialogue about Césaire, who was not only a regional figure but also a global presence as an intellectual, poet, artist and politician.
Celebrating his influential life, spanning from the movements of Surrealism and Negritude to his ideas on decolonization and spiritual and cultural pan-Africanism, the Americas Forum is also an intellectual consideration of Césaire’s contributions to our understanding of the Americas, Marxism, imperialism, independence, race and the role of art.
This year’s event, which is free and open to the public, is organized by Indira Karamcheti, director of the Center for the Americas and associate professor of American studies; Typhaine Leservot, associate professor of romance languages and literatures and the College of Letters; and Suzanna Tamminen, director of the Wesleyan University Press. Scholars will represent the fields of Caribbean studies, French literature and poetics, Césaire studies, American studies, and African diaspora studies, with musicians, poets, and performers presenting both their own and Césaire’s work.
All talks take place in the Russell House.
After a welcome at 4 p.m. on Friday, April 5, Clayton Eshleman, professor emeritus of poetry and literature at Eastern Michigan University; A. James Arnold, professor emeritus of French at the University of Virginia;
The Center for the Americas hosted the Americas Forum on April 20. The topic was "Authenticity in the Americas: Constructions and Contestations of Identity." The four-hour forum featured six guest speakers from the University of Florida, University of Warwick, University of Michigan, University of Arizona, University of Minnesota and Princeton University.
Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant responds to a question after the April 7 screening of “Lost Son of Havana,” a 2009 film about his first return to his native Cuba in 46 years. Tiant and filmmaker Jonathan Hock participated in the Center for the Americas’ 2011 Americas Forum, held on campus April 7 and 8.
Tiant and Hock address the audience at the Center for the Arts Hall. The forum, “Sports Documentary Filmmakers in the Americas: The Politics of Access,” also featured a screening of “The Two Escobars,” by Jeffery and Michael Zimbalist ‘02, about drugs power and soccer in Colombia. (Photos by Cora Lautze '11)
In the film, "The Lost Son of Havana," former major league baseball star Luis Tiant returns to Cuba, where he encounters unexpected demons and receives unexpected gifts from his family.
Former Boston Red Sox hero Luis Tiant will visit Wesleyan on April 7 to attend a screening of “Lost Son of Havana,” a 2009 film about the charismatic pitcher and Cuban émigré’s first return to his homeland in 46 years.
The screening and a subsequent discussion with Tiant and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Jonathan Hock are part of the Center for the Americas’ 2011 Americas Forum, which will take place on campus April 7-8.
The forum, “Sports Documentary Filmmakers in the Americas: The Politics of Access,” also will feature a screening of “The Two Escobars,” a documentary by Jeffrey and Michael Zimbalist ’02 about drugs, power and soccer in Colombia.
The annual interdisciplinary forum addresses a topic of mutual interest to North and South or Central America, and reflects the center’s
A red-tailed hawk rests in a tree near the Center for the Americas Jan. 27. The bird of prey was taunting a squirrel on a High Street powerline. Several Wesleyan students, staff and faculty have witnessed the hawk on campus in the past six months. (Photo by Olivia Bartlett)
A smaller red-tailed hawk was observed eating prey on the Project to Increase Mastery of Mathematics and Science (PIMMS) property in January by Mike Zebarth, director of PIMMS. (Photo by Mike Zebarth)
