2013-2014 Campus Theme: Constructing the Past
Constructing the Past is the theme for CICPC sponsored programs in 2013-2014. The past is known by the memories of it, individual and collective. It is defined by professional historians, everyday people, governments, private corporations, and all kinds of groups, agencies, and institutions. It is not a ‘fixed’ series of events that all would agree on if only the evidence were before them. Constructing the past is something we all do, everyday of our lives. Yet various conflicting definitions of the past are not all ‘equal.’ Whatever definitions come to prevail affect us all. To say it is a timely topic would be an understatement.
CICPC is interested in co-sponsoring programs that look at the the past, how it is defined, and how those definitions affect us individually and collectively. We invite individual community members, campus departments and student organizations to develop programs related to this theme.
Faculty and first year students will explore the theme by reading and discussing The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster by Jonathan M. Katz as part of the summer reading program. This text was chosen as an intelligent analysis of the reaction to the earthquake in Haiti that occurred on January 10, 2010, including a review of historical events affecting the response by members of the outside world and of Haitians themselves.
At Community Learning Day, on Wednesday, October 2nd, the entire campus is invited to a series of events on the innovation theme.
Schedule for Spring 2014
Codebreaker: Screening of the Docudrama about Alan Turing, followed by Q & A with executive producer Patrick Sammon
Time: Tuesday, February 4, 2014, 7PM
Location: Mildred and Ernest E. Mayo Concert Hall
Translating Experimental Poetry: The Politics of Poetics Under Dictatorship
Reading and talk by Molly Weigel, award-winning translator of Argentine poets Jorge Perednik and Oliverio Gerondo
Time: Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 6PM
Location: Library Auditorium
“Did it Really Happen?: Can the Past as Such be Changed by its (Re)Construction?” by James Livingston
Date/Time: February 26, 2014, 12 – 1:20PM
Location: Education 113
Dr. James Livingston, Professor of History at Rutgers University, has taught economic history at Rutgers for 25 years. He’s written five books, including Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracy: Rethinking the Politics of American History (Routledge, 2001) and The World Turned Inside Out: American Thought and Culture at the End of the 20th Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). He’s currently writing a book with the tentative title of “F@!% Work, A Manifesto: Why Full Employment is a Bad Idea, or, What Happens When Work Disappears.” He has just launched the publication of a new magazine, POLITICS/LETTERS.
Lilian Faderman
Date/Time: March 19, 2014, 1 – 3:20PM
Location: Education 115
Lillian Faderman is an internationally known scholar of lesbian history and literature, as well as ethnic history and literature. Her work has been translated into numerous languages, including German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, Czech, and Slovenian. Among her many honors are six Lambda Literary Awards, two American Library Association Awards, and several lifetime achievement awards for scholarship, including Yale University’s James Brudner Award, the Monette/Horwitz Award, the Publishing Triangle Award, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives Culture Hero Award, and the American Association of University Women’s Distinguished Senior Scholar Award. The New York Times named two of her books, SURPASSING THE LOVE OF MEN and ODD GIRLS AND TWILIGHT LOVERS, on its “Notable Books.
Co-sponsored with the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies as part of the events calendar for Women’s History Month
“Kandahar Treasure: Empowering Afghan Women One Stitch at a Time” by Rangina Hamidi
Date/Time: March 26, 2014, 5:30 – 7PM
Location: Library Auditorium
As founder and president of Kandahar Treasure, the first women’s private enterprise in Kandahar, Rangina Hamidi provides economic opportunities for 400 Afghan women to improve their own lives through traditional embroidery work. Ms. Hamidi believes that women are crucial to the peace process in Afghanistan, “but without economic independence,” she says, “Women have no power to talk to warlords, extremists, or politicians.” Ms. Hamidi escaped her native Afghanistan in 1981, at the age of four, during the Soviet occupation. She moved first to Pakistan and then, in 1988, to the United States. Settling with her family in Virginia, she earned a bachelor’s degree in 2000 in religious and gender studies from the University of Virginia. She spent the years 2003-2011 living and working in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Rangina has been internationally recognized for her work with women, selected as one of 18 finalists for the CNN 2007 Hero Award, and chosen as a “Personality of the Week” by Radio Free Europe in January 2008.
Co-sponsored with the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies as part of the events calendar for Women’s History Month
“Engaging the Past in the Virtual Museum: Anne Frank’s ‘Secret Annex Online’” by Dr. Alison Landsberg
Date/Time: March 27, 2014, 11:30 – 12:20PM
Location: Business Lounge
Dr. Alison Landsberg, Associate Professor of History and Art History, George Mason University, is an internationally recognized scholar in the study of museums and other installations of memory. Her book, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (Columbia UP, 2004) addresses the ways in which people’s ‘memories’ of histories through which people do not live can potentially produce very real, very powerful motives for progressive politics. In this talk, Dr. Landsberg I will consider the potential of the virtual museum to provoke historical thinking in its visitors. A close reading of the “The Secret Annex Online” (accessed on the Anne Frank House website) will reveal the way in which a virtual museum site can simultaneously enable the visitor to engage, in a multisensuous way, with the space of the digital environment and the historical environment it represents, and at the same time, remind the viewer of the constructed nature of the space, and its status as representation. By asserting the mediated status of the representation, while affectively engaging the viewer, the virtual museum creates the conditions for historical thinking, a key step in the acquisition of historical knowledge.
Reconstructing Charles Mingus’ “Epitaph” Series of Events
Times/Locations: April 4, 11:30AM – 12:20PM Distinguished lecture “Charles Mingus” (concurrent with SAC Brown Bag), Gene Santoro, Mayo Concert Hall
April 4, 5:30 – 7:00PM Panel Discussion, “Epitaph,” Gene Santoro, Lewis Porter, Michael Conklin, Gary Fienberg (moderator), Mayo Concert Hall
April 4, 8:00PM Concert “Mingus: Selections from “Epitaph” Main Stage, Kendall Hall
Michael Donoghue
Date/Time: April 10, 2014, 11:30 – 12:20PM
Location: Science Complex – P101
Dr. Michael Sterling is currently Professor of Ecology/Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Botany for the Peabody Museum at Yale University. A Senior Mellon Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution from 1992-1994, Professor Donoghue was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1997. For the past decade he has played a leading role in DIVERSITAS, an international scientific organization focused on biodiversity and global change. Dr. Donoghue’s research has focused on understanding the diversity and evolution of plants, especially the origin and radiation of flowering plants and the movement of plants around the Northern Hemisphere in relation to past climate changes. His field studies have been concentrated in Latin America and China. His work has been supported by some 40 research grants, primarily from the National Science Foundation. He has been a leader in the national and international movement to reconstruct the entire Tree of Life, contributing to the conceptual development of phylogenetic systematics and cofounding TreeBASE, a database of phylogenetic knowledge.
Art Amongst War: Visual Culture in Afghanistan, 1979-2014 on view in TCNJ’s Art Gallery from March 5 to April 17, 2014
REGULAR HOURS: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday from 12:00-7:00PM
Sunday 1:00-3:00PM and by appointment for group and school visits, call 609-771-2633
Associated Lectures
March 5, 2014, 4PM
“Beyond the Images on the Evening News: Afghanistan’s Visual Culture in Context,” Lecture by exhibition co-curator, Dr. Deborah Hutton, AIMM Building, Room 125, followed by Exhibition Opening Reception at 5:00PM, TCNJ Art Gallery
March 19, 2014, 6:30PM
“History of Histories, Afghan Films, 1960-Present,” a compilation of fiction films, newsreels, and documentaries from Afghanistan’s national film archive compiled by artist Mariam Ghani, followed by Q&A with Dr. Jo-Ann Gross, Library Auditorium.
March 26, 2014, 5:30PM
“Kandahar Treasure: Empowering Afghan Women One Stitch at a Time ” by Rangina Hamidi, activist and founder of Kandahar Treasure an enterprise dedicated to empowering Afghan women by reviving traditional crafts, followed by Q&A with Dr. Marla Jaksch, Library Auditorium.
April 2, 2014, 5:30PM
“Combat Paper: Creating a New Language for US Veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq.” Artist and veteran David Keefe will discuss the mission and activities of the Combat Paper Project, which helps New Jersey vets tell their stories through a unique paper and print making program. AIMM Building, Room 125.
April 9, 2014, 5:30PM
“Skateistan: Using Skateboarding to Empower the Youth of Afghanistan” by Benafsha Tasmim, representative and education fellow of Skateistan, an NGO based in Kabul that empowers Afghan girls and boys by teaching them to skateboard, followed by Q&A with Dr. Marla Jaksch, Library Auditorium.