Inst. for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media
The Beat Generation Symposium
October 10-11, 2008.
Film Row Cinema, 1104 S. Wabash, 8th Floor
For more information: www.colum.edu/beats.
Where Women Stand in Chicago Newsrooms
October 15, 2008, 6:00pm
Ferguson Hall, 600 S. Michigan Avenue, 1st Floor.
FREE
The Association for Women Journalists-Chicago (AWJ-Chicago) and the Institute join in bringing four top Chicago women journalists together to discuss the results of a new study, “Where Women Stand: A Survey of Newsroom Staff in the Chicago Region.” The study, released by AWJ-Chicago and completed in partnership with Bradley University, was administered via online questionnaire and takes a hard look at Chicago-area women journalists’ salaries, place in the newsroom, job satisfaction, and more. The discussion will be moderated by Cheryl Corley (National Public Radio) and will feature: Sally Eisele (Chicago Public Radio), Hanke Gratteau (formerly, Chicago Tribune), Lynn Norment (Ebony magazine), and Linda Yu (ABC 7 News). AWJ-Chicago is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization offering members a network that supports women in journalism and promotes the respectful treatment of women by the news media (www.awj-chicago.org).
Music Theatre Workshop at Illinois Youth Center
October 2008. Illinois Youth Center, Warrenvile, IL.
Music Theatre Workshop (MTW) is a youth development arts organization that prepares young people to make positive life choices through the process of writing, producing, and performing original musical theatre inspired by personal stories. One of their signature programs, Fabulous Females, serves young women incarcerated at Illinois Youth Center (IYC) in Warrenville. As part of this program, the young women share their stories and collaborate on a script that will be performed in late fall. The Institute is proud to partner on a special workshop with MTW and the Fabulous Females in October as part of a continuing partnership. This workshop will be led by AquaMoon, the writing, performance and artistic team of camil.williams and veronica bohanan. AquaMoon upholds its motto, “Dismantling the Culture of Silence,” by helping to bridge the gap between the streets, hip-hop feminism, performance activism, and academia. The team works with educational institutions and community-based organizations to effect social change that will result in greater equality, freedom, and fuller lives for womyn and youth. To learn more about the Institute’s workshops, visit our website: www.colum.edu/institutewomengender.
Dancing Graves
October 18, 7:00pm.
International House-Assembly Hall, University of Chicago,
1414 E. 59th Street
The Institute is proud to be a co-sponsor of Dancing Graves, a groundbreaking theatrical performance that weaves together two narratives about Chicago's West side through an Afro-Cuban lens. Mercedes, the main character, leaves Cuba for the U.S. after a huge storm hits the island. This hurricane symbolizes that Mercedes should leave the island for the best interests of her family. The rest of the story explores Afro-Cuban (Yoruba and Bantu derived) religious mythology about death: where the world of the living is entangled with the ancestral spirit world along with the three divine cemetery orishas (Afro-Cuban deities): Oya, Obba and Yewa. The performance also includes sound bites from interviews with various Southside and Westside residents including community activists, Afro-Cuban immigrants, artists and youth discussing community violence and family deaths. The project features a diverse collaboration of emerging scholars, dancers, university students, Chicago youth, visual artists alongside a generation of Afro-Cuban folkloric song, dance and percussion virtuosos in the United States. The featured Afro-Cuban guest performers are from New York City (from Oriki Omi Odara and Raices Habaneras), Washington DC and Miami. Such a rare artistic collaboration in Chicago will powerfully reach out to diverse Chicago audiences and foster cross-cultural relations in a racially divided city. Other co-sponsors include The Lucumi Arts Association, The International House at the University of Chicago, and the Student Government of University Chicago and Uncommon Grant Fund.
Tickets are required: www.dancinggraves.com.
Homotopia: Film Screening
October 22, 2008. 7:00pm. Ferguson Hall, 600 S. Michigan Avenue, 1st Floor.
FREE
Set sometime in the future-present, Homotopia chronicles a group of radical queer dedicated to exposing the trouble with gay marriage, dismantling the State, and undoing the Empire, while looking totally fierce. Woven into the story of Yoshi's adventures in love, resistance, and sex, is a critique of the crushing violence of homonormativity and its deadly perpetuation of US patriotism, conservative kinship structures and affective accumulation. Homotopia holds cinematic assumptions hostage through its motley assemblage of never-passing crew. Race, gender, ability and desire are reworked through an anti-colonial take of queer struggle creating a visual rhythm of melancholic utopianism that knows there may be no future, but still hopes today is not their last.
Chicago Foundation for Women: The Art of Social Justice: How Creativity Complements Advocacy
October 31, 2008. 9:00am.
McCormick Place, 2301 S. Lakeshore Drive, Room E-353-B (Level 3)
As Chicago Foundation for Women's centerpiece event, the Annual Luncheon and Symposium draws more than 2,000 people each year. This year, the Foundation welcomes Denyce Graves, renowned mezzo-soprano and star of the opera Margaret Garner (see below) to its 23rd celebration of women and girls. This year's morning symposium is The Art of Social Justice: How Creativity Complements Advocacy. Moderated by the Institute's Executive Director, Jane M. Saks, the Symposium will feature short presentations by panelists Katrina Browne (producer/director of "Traces of the Trade"), Romi Crawford (Assistant Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Susan Nussbaum (Access Living), and Coya Paz (Teatro Luna). There will also be a short performance by Teatro Luna and a talk-back discussion.
The Symposium is FREE and open to the public, but registration is required at www.cfw.org. Tickets are required for purchase to attend the Luncheon at 11:30am.
Meet the Creators: Margaret Garner
November 2, 2008. 11:30am - 12:30pm
Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Parkway
The powerful new American opera by composer Richard Danielpour, with libretto by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and starring Denyce Graves and Tracie Luck, will receive its Chicago premiere November 1-9, 2008 at the Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University. Based on the true story of a fugitive slave who chooses death for herself and children rather than a return to slavery, Margaret Garner is a heart-wrenching lesson in history and humanity--and a grim reminder of the desperate plight of many who lived in the antebellum South, that defining American epoch. The Institute is proud to present in partnership with the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Auditorium Theatre, and Roosevelt University, this opportunity to hear the creators discuss the genesis and development of this much-heralded production, which has previously visited Detroit, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Charlotte. Panelists will likely include Richard Danielpour, composer; Kenny Leon, director; Stefan Lano, conductor; and others. Moderated by David DiChiera, general director of Michigan Opera Theatre, which co-commissioned the work aand is co-producing this Chicago presentation.
Free with RSVP: audrsvp@auditoriumtheatre.org.
For more information, 312-431-2340.
CONGO/Women: National Exhibition and Educational Campaign
Winter/Spring 2009. Washington DC. / New York, NY / Chicago, IL
Violence toward women in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) prevails even as peace is declared. To motivate action and raise media attention, a unique arts advocacy project is being launched in support of Congolese women. CONGO/Women is an internationally touring photography exhibition and educational campaign produced by Art Works Projects and the Institute. The exhibition features recent work by award-winning photojournalists Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Ron Haviv, and James Nachtwey. Essays by experts in a range of fields will also detail the impact of sexual violence on women in the region. This exhibition and educational campaign has been created to raise awareness of a multitude of issues challenging civilian life in the DRC. A major focus is the widespread sexual violence that continues to be committed against Congolese women, who range in age from babies to grandmothers. The exhibition centers on a series of large color portraits of women, and black and white photographs contextualizing the conditions in which women and their families live. In order to draw the public’s attention to these issues, both the exhibition and educational campaign will tour throughout North America for the next two years, visiting universities and community groups devoted to building an advocacy network focused on the region’s civilian crisis. The organizations join in presenting special launch events this Winter and Spring in Washington DC, New York City, and Columbia College Chicago. Major funding has been provided by the United Nations Populations Fund, The Humanity United Fund, and Columbia College Chicago. For touring schedule and more information visit: www.congowomen.org.
Publication Development: "Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?"
Spring 2009
The Institute will co-produce a new publication, Does Hip-Hop Hate Women? co-edited by Bakari Kitwana and Kara A. Young. This will be the first published anthology of its kind to introduce the critical new writings by fifteen artists and activists from the second wave hip-hop generation (those born after 1985). The project will support new and largely unheard voices in the current hip-hop movement whose views on gender, sex, and identity have been informed by a mainstream hip-hop driven by the corporate music industry. Building upon the dialogue of first wave hip-hop scholars, the book will offer contemporary and grassroots visions for a radical feminist agenda in today's hip-hop music and culture. The fifteen writers will be chosen through a competitive and comprehensive process. Most of the selected writers, primarily unpublished, will include emerging artists, journalists, and graduate students who address issues of masculinity, feminism, homophobia, violence, and misogyny. As a key partner in the project, the Institute will organize special editorial workshops and organize a Chicago book launch and community discussion upon publication presentation by the editorial team in February 2009 to a select group of hip-hop activists, educators and civic leaders. The editors will participate in classroom workshops with students to further engage young people in the developing project and movement. Publication of the anthology is expected in 2009, at which time the Institute will organize a national book launch and community event in Chicago, as well as be instrumental in a national book tour and related programming.