Syracuse Symposium™ 2009 invites the Syracuse University and Central New York communities to celebrate “Light” through a diverse array of lectures, performances, exhibits, symposia and other special events, beginning on Sept. 10 with “Illuminating Oppression: Seventh Annual Human Rights Film Festival” and a lecture by renowned photographer Howard Bond. All events are free and open to the public except where otherwise noted.
The Syracuse Symposium™ is a semester-long intellectual and artistic festival celebrating interdisciplinary thinking, imagining and creating, organized and presented for The College of Arts and Sciences by the SU Humanities Center. The 2009 event features 13 lectures and keynote addresses, three performances and three exhibitions. A complete schedule of events is available at http://syracusesymposium.org.
“The SU Humanities Center is proud to present Syracuse Symposium 2009,” says Gregory Lambert, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities, founding director of the SU Humanities Center and project director for the Mellon CNY Humanities Corridor.
“In addition to featuring the extraordinary work of Winslow Homer and Barry Anderson, as well as performances by the Shen Wei Dance troupe, Syracuse Symposium 2009 is distinguished and enriched by the inclusion of Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor events,” Lambert says. “The synergy between the symposium and the Mellon Humanities Corridor makes the 2009 season truly a celebration of the interdisciplinary humanities both on campus and in the surrounding community.”
Illuminating Oppression: Seventh Annual Human Rights Film Festival
The three-day, “Illuminating Oppression: Seventh Annual Human Rights Film Festival” will feature award-winning documentaries by independent filmmakers from Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America, South Asia and West Asia. The festival will open at 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 10, with “Behind Forgotten Eyes.” Directed by Anthony Gilmore, the film examines the forgotten casualties of World War II—Korean women who were abducted and forced into a brutal and systematic form of sexual slavery by the occupying Japanese Imperial Army. The film’s co-director, Ryan Seal, will lead a discussion following the screening.
The festival will continue at 7 p.m., Friday, Sept. 11, with films that examine the predicament of refused asylum seekers in the United Kingdom and tell the extraordinary story of Christian and Muslim women in Liberia who banded together to fight for peace in their shattered country. On Saturday, Sept. 12, films will be shown at 1, 4 and 7 p.m., concluding with “The Sari Soldiers,” which chronicles the courageous efforts of six Nepalese women caught up on opposite sides of a civil war amid a government crackdown on civil liberties.
All films will be shown in SU’s Life Sciences Complex Auditorium, Room 001, and are free and open to the public. A complete listing is available on the Syracuse Symposium website. The film festival is co-sponsored by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, the South Asia Center at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Institute for Global Affairs, and the South Asian Students Association in collaboration with Breakthrough, an international human rights organization that promotes values of equality, dignity and justice.
Howard Bond lecture and exhibition
Bond’s lecture, “Photography as Art: Trends Since 1839,” marks the opening of an exhibition of his work in SU’s E.S. Bird Library, 6th Floor, Sept. 8–Jan. 14, 2010. The lecture will be held at 5 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 10, in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, E.S. Bird Library, and is free and open to the public.
The exhibition will feature 22 pieces of Bond’s work, donated to the SU Library by alumnus Carl Armani ’60. The works highlight the photographer’s mastery of abstraction, proximity, pattern, texture and landscape. A protégé of Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham and Brett Weston, Bond has published two books and 22 limited edition portfolios of prints.
Bond’s lecture and the exhibition are co-sponsored by the SU Humanities Center and the SU Library and its Special Collections Research Center.
Scheduled Events (More information is available at http://syracusesymposium.org)
SPEAKERS
Janna Levin, professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, Columbia University, and critically acclaimed author will speak at 4 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 17, in the Life Sciences Complex Auditorium, Room 001. The lecture is presented in cooperation with the Kameshwar C. Wali Lecture in the Sciences and Humanities and the Department of Physics in The College of Arts and Sciences.
Alan Wallach will present “On Luminism: Light and Landscape in Mid-19th Century America” at4 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 24, in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, E.S. Bird Library. Wallach is a leading scholar in 19th-century American art history and museum studies at the College of William and Mary.
The lecture is presented concurrently with the Winslow Homer exhibition and symposium and is co-sponsored by the Department of Music and Art Histories in The College of Arts and Sciences and the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation initiative.
Barry Anderson, photographer and video artist, will present a keynote lecture for his video art exhibition, “Intermissions,” at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 29, in Watson Theatre.
Lily Kong, internationally renowned geographer and religious scholar at the National University of Singapore, will present “Light and the Sacred,” the keynote address for the “Place/No Place” conference at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 1, in Watson Theatre. The lecture is presented jointly with the Department of Religion in The College of Arts and Sciences and funded by the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation initiative.
W.J.T. Mitchell, theGaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of Media, Visual Art and Literature at the University of Chicago, will present a lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 8, in Watson Theatre. The lecture is funded by the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor and the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Edwidge Danticat, award-winning author, will present a reading of her work at 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 14, in Gifford Auditorium, HB Crouse. The reading will be preceded by a Q&A session from 3:45‑4:30 p.m. in the same location. The event is presented in cooperation with the Raymond Carver Lecture Series and the English department in The College of Arts and Sciences.
Richard Dyer, internationally renowned film scholar and professor at King’s College London, will present “Darken Our Lightness: The Italian Horror Film,” at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 15, in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium, Newhouse 3. The lecture is the keynote address for the Syracuse Film Festival and the Musicology/Music History Mellon Conference (October 16–18), funded by the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor.
George Crabtree, award-winning physicist and materials science expert at Argonne National Laboratory, will present “The Energy of Light” at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 28, in the Life Sciences Complex Auditorium, Room 001. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Physics in The College of Arts and Sciences.
Marian Wright Edelman, children’s rights advocate and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3, in Hendricks Chapel. The lecture is a joint presentation with the University Lectures.
James Schmidt, scholar on European political thought at Boston University, will present “The Limits of Enlightenment” at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 5, in Maxwell Auditorium. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy in The College of Arts and Sciences.
Ira Glass, award-winning journalist and host and producer of “This American Life,”will speak at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 17, in Hendricks Chapel. The lecture is a joint presentation with University Lectures.
“A Conversation: Posing Beauty,” featuring photographer and historian Deborah Willis, and photographer and folklorist Carrie Mae Weems, will be presented at 7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 19, in Watson Theatre. The event is co-sponsored by Light Work, the Department of Communications and Rhetorical Studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor.
Performances
Lynn Manning, award-winning poet, playwright and actor will perform his critically acclaimed autobiographical solo play “Weights (One Blind Man’s Journey),” at 8 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 15, in the Setnor Auditorium. The event is co-sponsored by the School of Education and the disability studies, cultural foundations of education, and teaching and leadership programs; the music education program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts; and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies in The College of Arts and Sciences.
Shen Wei Dance Group will perform “Re-,” the third piece in a triptych that draws from the personal experiences and reactions of Shen Wei from his time in, and study of, Tibet, Cambodia and China’s Silk Road, at 7 p.m., Thursday and Friday, Sept.24 and 25, in the Landmark Theatre. Ticket information is available at syracusesymposium.org. The event is presented in cooperation with the Laura Hanhausen Milton First-Year Lecture in The College of Arts and Sciences, the University Lectures, the Office of the University Arts Presenter and Shared First-Year Experience.
Society for New Music will present “Light” at 4 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 18, in Hendricks Chapel. The concert will feature sonic explorations of light performed by an ensemble of stringed instruments and energy chimes. The concert is a joint presentation with the Malmgren Concert Series and the Society for New Music.
Exhibitions
Winslow Homer’s Empire State: Houghton Farm and Beyond
Through Oct. 11 in the SUArt Galleries, Shaffer Art Building
A reception will be held from 4:45–6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26.
The event is funded by the Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor in cooperation with SUArt Galleries.
Barry Anderson: Intermissions
Through Oct. 31
The exhibition will feature video installations in the Light Work main gallery as well as several other locations around Syracuse University and the city, including projections onto buildings and other venues. The event is co-sponsored by Light Work, which is coordinating the exhibition.
Howard Bond Retrospective
Sept. 8–Jan. 14, 2010, in the SU’s E.S. Bird Library Gallery, 6th floor.
The exhibition is funded by the SU Humanities Center and the Syracuse University Library and its Special Collection Research Center.
About the SU Humanities Center
Founded in 2008, the Syracuse University Humanities Center fosters public engagement in the humanities, as well as facilitates interdisciplinary scholarship in and across various fields of inquiry. The center is home to the Syracuse Symposium, the Andrew W. Mellon Central New York Humanities Corridor, the Jeanette K. Watson Professorship and other major research initiatives, annual fellowships and public programming. Gregg Lambert, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities, is founding director. More information is available at http://www.syracusehumanities.org/.
