Global Humanities Seminar Series: Son Jarocho, Sounds of Dissent, and Global Activism
Join CLAS on Thursday, March 14 from 3:00-4:30 in ICC 462 for our first installment of the Global Humanities Faculty Seminars, a speaker series that will focus on three cultural forms across the Americas—music, community centers, and poetry—that incite social change by taking on global challenges, such as global warming, migration, gender-based violence, and threats to democracy. The first panel Son Jarocho, Sounds of Dissent, and Global Activism will feature Anita Gonzalez, Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University, Bridget Arce, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Miami, and Anna Deeny Morales, Fellow in the Humanities and Adjunct Professor with CLAS as moderator.
Light refreshments will be provided!
About the speakers:
Anita Gonzalez (Ph.D.) is Professor of performing arts and African American studies at Georgetown University and a co-Founder/co-Director of their Racial Justice Institute. Her edited and authored books are Performance, Dance and Political Economy (Bloomsbury), Black Performance Theory (Duke), Afro-Mexico: Dancing Between Myth and Reality (U-Texas Press), and Jarocho’s Soul (Rowman Littlefield). She directs, devises and writes theatrical works that focus on telling women’s stories and histories. She has written works for Boston Opera Collaborative, Chicago Dramatists, The Vagrancy, Brooklyn Tavern Theatre, and Houston Grand Opera’s Songs of Houston series. Her innovative stagings of cross-cultural experiences have appeared on PBS national television and at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, The Working Theatre, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, New York Live Arts, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, and other national and international venues. Gonzalez believes the art of storytelling connects people to their cultures. Over 40,000 students have taken her massive open online courses Storytelling for Social Change and Black Performance as Social Protest on the Future Learn platform. She is a member of the National Theatre Conference and the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and sits on the Board of Directors of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Gonzalez advocates for beautiful art crafted for social activism and consciousness raising.
B. Christine Arce is Associate Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami and Director of their American Studies Program. Her research extends across regions and disciplines throughout the Americas—from Río to Miami, from Mexico City to Manhattan—on issues of gender, migration and non-Western epistemologies in Latiné cultural production as well as the artistic traditions of Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Her book, Mexico’s Nobodies: The Cultural Legacy of the Soldadera and Afro-Mexican Women (SUNY Press, 2017), explores the contributions of Afro-Mexicans and women to Mexican culture and history. Mexico’s Nobodies received the Modern Language Association’s Katherine Singer Kovacks Prize for Best Book in Latin American Studies in 2018; the Association of Gender and Sexuality Studies’ Victoria Urbano Prize in 2016; and Honorable Mention from the American Folklore Society in 2019. Her current monograph analyzes the resurrection of Mexican folk music in Latiné and immigrant communities across the Americas and Europe.