Author, Editor, and Activist

The Real F-Word: FAT

Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Marilyn Wann offers a funny and engaging discussion of what it currently means to be fat or thin, the impact of such messages, and a revolutionary new alternative for how we should live in and think about our bodies.

Biography (provided by the speaker)
Marilyn Wann is a fat civil rights activist. She published a print ‘zine in the mid-90s called FAT!SO? and later wrote a book of the same name. Wann was centrally involved in successful passage of San Francisco’s height-weight anti-discrimination law in 2000 and lobbies for similar laws elsewhere. She has performed with several fat-positive groups: Marilyn splashed on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” as part of the Padded Lilies synchro swim team; shook pompoms with the Bod Squad cheerleaders who oppose weight-loss surgery; and danced with the Phat Fly Girls hip hop troupe, a Big Moves project.

Video of the Program

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Professor of Asian studies and women’s & gender studies, University of British Columbia

Why are Japanese Cyborgs Always Female?

Thursday, November 5, 2009
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

In the robot, android or cyborg body, sex and gender are constructed and unnecessary rather than biological and functional; nonetheless, most depictions of such post-human entities retain gender and sex markers. This presentation explores the reasons behind this phenomenon in recent Japanese anime films, such as Osamu Tezuka’s Metropolis.

Co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Studies

Topical Background
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a cyborg is “a person whose physical tolerances or capabilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by a machine or other external agency that modifies the body’s functioning.”

The idea of the technologically enhanced human has been prevalent in fiction since Edgar Allen Poe wrote of the prosthetic General John A.B.C. Smith in his 1839 short story, “The Man that was Used Up.” Darth Vader, the Terminator, and The Six Million Dollar Man are just a few of the cyborgs that have entered American popular culture. In Japan, cyborgs frequently appear in animated works.
Japanese animation usually depicts cyborgs as female. In the cyborg body, Read more

Cultural Historian, Actress, and Dancer

The (Black) Dancing Body as a Measure of Culture

Thursday, October 1, 2009
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Through dance demonstrations and visual images, Dixon Gottschild examines the pervasive Africanist presence in American culture and the sociopolitical implications of its invisibility. With dance as the focus and race the parameter, she reveals Africanisms in modern and postmodern dance and American ballet.

A book signing will follow the presentation.

Topical Background
Cultural appropriation is the adoption of practices and traditions from a specific culture by another group of people. This usually involves mimicking or borrowing musical techniques, dance styles, or other art forms.

The term “Africanist,” as used by Brenda Dixon Gottschild, refers to concepts, practices, attitudes, and forms that are rooted in Africa or African culture. The term originated in the works of American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits. In Myth of the Negro Past (1941), Herskovits was one of the first to examine African influences on both African Americans and whites in the United States. Others to use the term include author Toni Morrison, who describes Africanism in her book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), which explores the presence Read more

Actor and Monologuist

Howard Zinn’s “Marx in Soho”

Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The Depot, 7:00 p.m.

Returning to earth for one hour to clear his name, Karl Marx launches into a passionate, funny and moving defense of his life and political ideas in Howard Zinn’s brilliant, timely play, Marx in Soho. The play is an excellent introduction to Marx’s life, his passion for radical change, his analysis of society, and its relevance to current events, trends, and developments.

Topical Background
Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier, Germany. He studied jurisprudence and law at the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin. In 1843, the 25-year-old Marx moved to Paris, where he devoted himself primarily to studying political economy and the history of the French Revolution. In 1845, Marx moved to Brussels after the Paris authorities ordered him to leave for openly approving the assassination attempt on the King of Prussia. In 1849, Marx moved to London and remained there for the rest of his life. In London, Marx devoted himself to understanding political economy and capitalism, and to revolutionary activities. He argued that capitalism would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its Read more

Documentary Film Director

Operation Filmmaker

Wednesday, September 16 – Film Showing – Operation Filmmaker
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, September 17 – Discussion with film director, Nina Davenport
Stern Center, Great Room, 7:00 p.m.

Do-gooder intentions go disastrously wrong when Hollywood gives a young Iraqi film student the chance of a lifetime. Operation Filmmaker tells the fascinating and riveting story of this student’s odyssey in the West, which has uncanny parallels to America’s recent misadventures abroad.

Topical Background
Many Americans expected Operation Iraqi Freedom to be a quick intervention welcomed by the Iraqi people. Yet, over six years later, an American occupation continues. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 5,000 Americans have perished in the conflict since 2003. Millions have become refugees and sectarian violence persists. Our initial expectations were upset; our ignorance of Middle Eastern culture exposed.

Inspired by the 2003 MTV profile of Iraqi film student Muthana Mohmed, American actor Liev Schreiber invited the young man to intern on a Hollywood movie set. Documentary maker Nina Davenport immediately saw an opportunity: she would tape Muthana’s Hollywood internship. “I thought the film would be called The Kindness of Liev Schreiber,” she later said. However, cultural differences Read more

Professor of English, University of Virginia

When Bob Dylan Came Knocking

Friday, September 4, 2009
Stern Center, Great Room, 4:30 p.m.
Bob Dylan popularized Eric Lott’s book by putting its title on his 2001 album “Love and Theft.” Dylan’s “lift” of the title reflected Lott’s view that appropriations are fundamental to popular culture and that artistic creativity has an important bearing on education and identity formation.

Following Professor Lott’s talk, there will be a barbecue and concerts by Structure of Feeling and Black Landlord, named the “best local band” by Philadelphia Magazine in August 2009. Concerts are co-sponsored by The Division of Student Development, the Office of Campus Life and the Multicultural Organizational Board.

Topical Background
Cultural theorist Raymond Williams claims that culture is “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.” Certainly the meaning of the term is highly contested.

In his book Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, John Storey identifies six different definitions of the term:

• The “culture which is widely favored or well liked by many people.”
• The culture which is “left over after we have decided what is high culture.”
• “Mass culture,” that is, Read more