Join Peter DiGennaro and guest speakers Adonis Volanakis, Dr. Johanna Fernandez, Dr. Siobahn Carter-David, and Dr. John Kuo Wei Tchen in our new Monday talk series, [Un]making Memory. Explore the making and unmaking of memory, and the question of who makes [or unmakes] your mind for you. Each presentation is followed by Q&A and a continuing discussion on Creating Future Memory lead by Peter.
May 1: Adonis Volanakis + “The Memory Echoplex“
Memorial work in Greece concerning World War II and collaborations with refugees producing memorials
May 8: Dr. Johanna Fernandez + “Engendered Memory”
Engendered Memory, De-Gendering Memory, and the Women of the Young Lords Party”
May 15: Dr. Siobahn Carter-David + “Worn Memory”
Clothing, garments, vestments, and textiles’ place in personal, social, cultural, and political memory-roles
May 22: Dr. John Kuo Wei Tchen + “Owning The Right To Memory”
Who’s in charge after all?
“[Un]making Memory” is a free talk series in conjunction with CAW’s “Creating Future Memory: The Art of Memorials” class lead by International Human Rights and Peace Educator Peter DiGennaro.
Featured Guests:
Adonis Volanakis is a Greek Artist from Athens. His practice is the collaborative amalgam of human encounter and aesthetics, poetry and politics, fine art and theatre. His work in performance designing and/or directing consists of more than 60 productions (Royal Opera House-Covent Garden/ UK, Benaki Museum, Odeon of Herodes Atticus, National Greek Opera, Onassis Cultural Centre etc.). He teaches at: University of Peloponnese/ Nafplio, University of Patras, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs / Paris and the Masters in Art Therapy/ Athens. For the academic year 2012-2013 he was a Fulbright Artist/ Visiting Scholar at the Arts Politics Department, Tisch/ NYU where he teaches till now. He curates blinddate12.blogspot.com, a coming-together platform with artists, writers, philosophers and strangers. He was also co-curator for international artists for the first Mykonos Biennale 2013. He has received distinctions from institutions such as the Arts and Humanities Research Board/ UK, London Institute, and scholarships from foundations such as the: Fulbright, A.S. Onassis, Linbury, A.G.Leventis, Propontis, Spyropoulos, B&E Goulandris.
Dr. Johanna Fernández is a native New Yorker. Author of When the World was their Stage: A History of the Young Lords Party, 1968 – 1974 (Princeton University Press), Professor Fernandez received her PhD in History from Columbia University and a BA in Literature and American Civilization from Brown University. Dr. Fernández teaches 20th century U.S. history, the history of social movements, the political economy of American cities, and African- American history. She has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Trinity College, and was the recipient of a 2011 Fulbright Scholars grant to continue her work in the Middle East and North Africa.
Dr. Siobahn Carter-David is an Assistant Professor in History, teaching in the areas of fashion/beauty studies, American culture and identity politics, and African American, urban, and recent United States history. Her research explores the “new” politics of racial uplift as represented in the fashion instruction of post-Civil Rights African American print media, as well as more broadly, American fashion, beauty culture, and the politics of presentation. She has written and given numerous talks on hip-hop music, black nationalism, youth culture, culture and clothing, and urban style. She also curated an exhibit, “Strong Shoulder: Revisiting the Women’s Power Suit,” which explored the meaning of “power dressing,” its position within third-wave feminism and corporate culture, and the evolution of women’s professional fashions in the 1980s.
Dr. Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen is a facilitator, teacher, historian, curator, re-organizer, and dumpster diver. He works on understanding the multiple presents, pasts, the futures of New York City, identity formations, trans-local cross-cultural communications, archives and epistemologies, and progressive pedagogy. He also works on decolonizing Eurocentric ideas, theories, and practices and making our cultural organizations and institutions more representative and democratic. Professor Tchen is the founding director of the A/P/A (Asian/Pacific/American) Studies Program and Institute at New York University and part of the original founding faculty of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU. He co-founded the Museum of Chinese in America in 1979-80 where he continues to serve as senior historian. Jack was awarded the Charles S. Frankel Prize from the National Endowment for the Humanities (renamed The National Medal of Humanities). He is author of the award-winning books New York before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882 and Genthe’s Photographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown, 1895-1905. He is co-principle investigator of “Asian Americas and Pacific Islanders Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight” produced with The College Board. Professor Tchen has been building research collections of Asians in the Americas, critically examining practices of collections and archives to make sense of how we come to know what we know, and don’t know. He is currently co-chairing the effort at the Smithsonian Institution to form an Asian Pacific American Center. He is also editor of The ‘Yellow Peril’ Reader: Understanding Xenophobia. He regularly collaborates with filmmakers and media producers, artists and collectors, and through the A/P/A Institute sponsors and produces hundreds of programs and performances, including co-curating MoCA’s core exhibition: “With a single step: stories in the making of America” in a new space designed by Maya Lin.
About Pete DiGennaro
Peter DiGennaro is a Program Director and Teaching-Artist specializing in International Human Rights, Peace Education, and Critical Pedagogies across subject headings and educational sectors. Holding a BA from Bentley University in Communications and Management, and an MA in Arts Politics from New York University, his research focuses on the study of Power given the social value of Identity. Creating Human Rights curriculum for Amnesty International, the Unitarian Universalist Society, and on-line platforms, as well as being a Facing History and Ourselves Certified Teacher, Peter is thrilled to be creating individually and socially informed work with the CAW community.
See Creating Future Memory in our Featured courses this Spring and upcoming seasons!