Faculty Lecture Series

Marc Hannaford
Tuesday, 11/15 at 7:30pm
Watkins Lecture Hall, Earl V. Moore Building, 1100 Baits Dr.
Free and open to the public.

Marc Hannaford, Assistant Professor of Music Theory and CWPS 2022 Faculty Fellow, will share about his ongoing research into African American music theorists.

Hannaford will share some of the details of his archival research into the music theoretical work of Mary Lou Williams and Sonny Rollins. Examining unseen sketches, scores, and unpublished book drafts from these two giants of Black American music, Hannaford suggests some of the ways that music theory functions in Black creative practice, as well as how it helps affirm Black life and agency.

Bethany Hughes: “(Net)working: on the early stages of research and collaboration” 
Tuesday, 2/21 at 6:00pm
East Quad 1405, 701 E. University Ave.
Free and open to the public.

Bethany Hughes, Assistant Professor in Native American Studies & Department of American Culture and CWPS 2022 Faculty Fellow, will share about their collaborative research project titled Performing Indigenous Networks.

Hughes’ research project seeks to understand Indigenous networks of cultural production as active processes and interconnected sets of relationships and resources that influence the possibilities and practices of Indigenous artists. It is motivated by the question, “How do Indigenous creatives produce work while navigating the constraints of existing networks of production and forge new networks in the process?” In this talk Hughes will explore the process and practices mutually developed between the artists and scholars of the team. Attending to the ways communication, goals, skills, investments, and commitments align and misalign she will articulate the process the team is undertaking and the challenges inherent in building an equitable, ethical, and reciprocal research project.

Malcolm Tulip, Assistant Professor of Theatre
Tuesday, 9/10 at 6pm, East Quad

Nachiket Chanchani, Assistant Professor, History of Art / Asian Languages & Cultures
Tuesday, 10/8 at 6pm, East Quad Keene Theater

Xiao Dong Hottman-Wei, Lecturer, Residential College
Tuesday, 11/5 at 6pm, East Quad Keene Theater

Mike McGovern: “Creating a Narcissism of Small Differences: Cultural Politics in a Multiethnic Village in Shan State, Myanmar”
Tuesday, 10/9, 6pm, East Quad Room 1405

Mbala Nkanga: “Memory of Violence in Peaceful Performance: An Inquiry into the Development of Theatre and Performance Practices in Francophone Africa”
Tuesday, 11/6 at 6pm, East Quad Room 1405
This presentation presents the preliminary findings on the use of memory of the violent past in popular artistic expressions, performances and plays in Central Africa. It explores the use of myths such as the Mvett of the Fang people of Gabon and historical figures like Lumumba and Mulele, along with the violent events surrounding their existence.

E.J. Westlake: “Walk Toward the Sunset: Outdoor Historical Drama and Appalachian Ethnicity”
Tuesday, 1/29 at 6pm, Walgreen Drama Center, Room B207
Kermit Hunter became famous for his outdoor historical dramas, Unto These Hills and Horn in the West, dramas that are still performed in Appalachia today. His play Walk Toward the Sunset is credited with helping the Melungeon people of Appalachia, a group sociologists categorized as “tri-racial isolates,” gain popular acceptance. This talk explores how Hunter’s play frames Melungeon identity, particularly when considering Hunter’s popularity as a writer of “Indian drama,” and how the narrative holds up to new DNA evidence about Melungeon origins.

Petra Kuppers: “Queer Spiritual Drifting: Site-Specific Performance and Writing”
Tuesday, 4/2 at 6pm, Walgreen Drama Center, Room B207
How can drifting find space on the page? Let’s think together about connections between performance practice and writing, about embodiment and the page, and about widening audiencing procedures for performance. In 2017, Petra Kuppers travelled to Belgium and the Netherlands as part of an Olimpias disability performance exploration of queer spiritual asylum spaces. In this talk, Petra will discuss these performance actions and the resulting publication, a travelogue essay in Performance Research, ‘Queer Spiritual Drifting: Not at home in The Beguinage.’

Eryn Rosenthal: “Dance and Dialogue: Human Contact and Democracy”
Tuesday, 9/26 at 6pm, East Quad Room 1405
How can the body be a laboratory for examining dialogue, choice-making, roles and habits? In this interactive workshop, choreographer and King-Chavez-Parks Visiting Professor Eryn Rosenthal will share some of her research on the connections between a dance form called Contact Improvisation and the political writings of Steve Biko, Ada Colau, Paolo Freire, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, Judith Butler, and others. What can the body bring to larger discussions of dialogue-building, diversity, inclusion, and empowerment?

Anita Gonzalez: “International Theatre for Social Change: Community Liaisons”
Tuesday, 10/24 at 6pm, East Quad Room 1405
The presentation discusses three projects for social change based in Liverpool UK, Johannesburg South Africa, and with Chippewa communities of the Upper Peninsula and Canada. Two of the projects focus on activism against gender-based violence and one explores Black identities in international context. Gonzalez discussed how social activist interventions can manifest as performance-based projects, academic writings, or public scholarship. Community-based activism requires ongoing engagement with partner organizations working for common goals.

Amy Chavasse
Tuesday, 11/14 at 6pm, East Quad Room 1405
Professor Chavasse presents research from her travels to the Malta Festival in Poznan, Poland, and to Berlin, Germany where she created a new dance work for Tanz Tangente. In Poznan, the panoply of dance, music and theater events focused on the festival theme – The Balkans Platform (Platforma Blakany), with the title of “We The People”, analogous to our “not my president” protests. Chavasse will discuss the highly politicized works she witnessed as an audience member, posing questions about gender politics and social inequality and autocracy. She will also discuss the creation of a new dance created with Tanz Tangente in Berlin, called “Little Monsters,” in which movement exploration centered around pulsing, agitation, manipulation and absence.

Emily Wilcox: “Moonwalking in Beijing: Michael Jackson, Piliwu, and the Origins of Chinese Hip-Hop”
Tuesday, 3/13 at 6:30pm, East Quad Room 1405
During the latter half of the 1980s, a popular dance craze known as “piliwu” 霹雳舞 swept urban communities across China. Incorporating two new styles of U.S. urban popular dance – New York-based b-boying/b-girling or “breaking” and California-based popping and locking– piliwu was China’s first localized movement of hip-hop culture, which reflected new circuits of intercultural exchange between China and the United States during the first decade of China’s Reform Era. Analyzing the dance choreography recorded in a 1988 Chinese film, Rock Youth 摇滚青年 (dir. Tian Zhangzhuang), together with media reports and testimonials from members of China’s piliwu generation, this talk reconstructs the history of the piliwu movement, arguing for the central influence of U.S. pop culture icon Michael Jackson, the growth of China’s underground commercial dance (zou xue 走穴) economy, and the agency of dancers’ bodies in transnational movements of media culture.

Kelly Askew: “Postsocialist Poetics: Articulations of Populist Politics in Tanzania”
Tuesday, 2/20 at 6:30pm, East Quad Room 1405
Professor Askew presents the research findings for her current book project, exploring how Tanzanians and Zanzibaris musically and poetically respond to the changes that have taken place since the unraveling of socialism in the mid-1980s. With a focus on popularly produced poetry in Swahili-language newspapers or performed as Swahili rap, this talk explores how ordinary citizens interpret, enact and react to the fusing of socialist and neoliberal practices and ideologies in the United Republic of Tanzania.

Damani Partridge: “Four Years of Filming the Future: Berlin and Detroit”
Tuesday, 1/30 at 6:30pm, East Quad Room 1405
Professor Partridge’s Filming Future Cities project uses film as a critical means to investigate urban futures and engage a broader public, building on his ongoing collaborative film projects in Detroit and Berlin: “Filming the Future of Detroit,’’ and “Filming the Future from Berlin: Noncitizen Perspectives,’’ begun in 2014 (see filmingfuturecities.org). The point of the project is not only to teach refugees, migrants, youth, and noncitizens the skills required for filmmaking, ethnography, and critical analysis of urban landscapes, but also to teach them how to distribute their work to a broader audience and to participate in the planning for and imagination of their city’s future. Using the project’s films as examples, this talk will think through the efficacy of using film as a technique for shaping the future.