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Lecture Commemorating One Year Anniversary of Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami — 3/8, 5 p.m.

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Lecture: Tohoku One Year Later

Thursday, March 8, 5:00 pm at Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies

This event commemorates the anniversary of the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. We are very excited to have two eminent speakers, Michael Yamashita of the National Geographic magazine, and Ted Bestor, Chair of Anthropology at Harvard and author of Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World. Both have visited northern Japan repeatedly since the disaster.

Instead of just seeing “the one photo” in Michael Yamshita’s slide lecture, you’ll see other, unpublished images of the same scene, giving a sense of the scale of the disaster. Michael Yamashita talked about taking off in a helicopter from near the Fukishima Nuclear Plant a few weeks after the disaster, flying north for 2 1/2 hours and seeing nothing but destruction. He had been to Kobe right after the earthquake there and said that in that disaster, some buildings failed but others withstood the shaking: he said after Tohoku everything was simply swept away.  

Ted Bestor’s work on the Tsujiki Fish market (Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World (University of California Press, 2004) is generally credited with saving that institution. His research on the state of northern Japan after the disaster highlights the devastation of the fishing economy which experienced a double hit: its physical plant wiped out by the earthquake and tsunami, and then its market devastated by fear of nuclear poisoning from water released during the meltdown of the Fukushima Plant.

 For info contact Ann Gertz at X2300

 Caption for image: March 11 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Measuring 9, biggest ever to hit Japan destroying the NE coast line cities and villages for 200 plus miles.  Toshiya Kanaka, 79, doing the clothes he found in his house that was in the background.  He now lives in a refugee center during the day but stays with his wife in a small workshop where he has gathered together all he needs to survive happily making knots with ropes he has recovered from wreckage.  It’s a hobby of which he has many.  A very resourceful man who challenges this to undo him. © Michael Yamashita

 

Spring Break Shuttles

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Salutations esteemed comrades,

Just wanting to remind you all that shuttle tickets to and from New York, Boston, New Haven, and Bradley International Airport for Spring Break (March 9th-26th). More information about the shuttles can be found at wesleyan.edu/transportation and can be purchased at the box office during normal business hours and online at wesleyan.edu/shuttles.

Please let me know if you have any questions, Evan Weber, WSA Transportation Committee Chair, eweber@wesleyan.edu, (808) 224-0644

 

A Biblical Sex Scandal? Noah, Ham, and the Curse of Canaan” — 3/1, 7 p.m.

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Thursday, March 1, 7 p.m.     Center for African American Studies

Jennifer Knust, “A Biblical Sex Scandal? Noah, Ham, and the Curse of Canaan” 

The story of Ham’s encounter with Noah’s nakedness, and the curse that followed, offers a particularly notorious example of what today we might call a “sex scandal.” Though the specifics of Ham’s infraction are far from clear, the shame that was then affixed to whomever was designated as one of his descendants is not. Adapting the insights of affect theory and addressing larger biblical notions of sexual morality and kinship, Jennifer Knust will consider the way that the Canaanites became disgusting objects, and the effect this interpretation has had on understandings of sex, race, and gender. 

 

Spring Faculty Dance Concert — March 2 & 3

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Wesleyan University’s Dance Department &  Center for the Arts present

 “Quicksand” (U.S. Premiere) and “Nine” (World Premiere)

by Artist-in-Residence Hari Krishnan

March 2 & 3

Spring Faculty Dance Concert to include special guest appearance by Toronto’s inDANCE 

8pm in the CFA Theater

A multiracial cast of nine male dancers from Dance Department Artist in Residence Hari Krishnan‘s dance company inDANCE (based in Toronto, Canada) will perform the U.S. premiere of the rambunctiously provocative work “Quicksand” (2011), hailed by Michael Crabb of theToronto Star as “a techno-hip, strutting declaration of freedom from the constraints of tradition and conventional sexuality.” The music for this 40 minute work was composed by Niraj Chag, with visual design by Boyd Bonitzke.

“Quicksand” will be followed by the world premiere of Mr. Krishnan’s work “Nine”, which depicts Navarasa, the nine archetypal moods popular in South Indian classical dance, taught to dancers from Wesleyan Dance Department’s repertory and performance course (see list of dancers below). inDANCE will present the Canadian premiere of “Nine” at Toronto’s Fleck Dance Theatre from April 12 through 14, 2012.

As a part of the Spring Faculty Dance Concert in April 2009, Hari Krishnan premiered a solo work entitled “Liquid Shakti”, inspired by the myth of the river goddess Ganga, which responds to the depletion of natural resources by aggressive industrialization, and is told from the point of view of some of the most vulnerable populations. “Liquid Shakti” was commissioned by the Center for the Arts as a part of Feet to the Fire, a major undertaking on Wesleyan’s campus to examine critical environmental issues through multiple lenses, from science to art. 

The Wesleyan dancers performing the world premiere of “Nine” will include Abigail Baker ’12 and Aditi Shivaramakrishnan ’12 (both performances); Arianna Fishman ’13, Allison Greenwald ’14, Christian Lalonde ’13, Francesca Moree ’14, Cristina Ortiz ’15, Sarah La Rue ’12, and Rachel Rosengard ’14 (March 2); and students Taylor Burton and Natalie Plaza, Dawanna Butler ’15, Arin Dineen ’13, Jessica Placzek ’12, Claire Feldman-Reich ’12, and Tess Scriptunas ’14 (March 3). 

Admission for the performance is $8 for the general public, and $6 for Wesleyan students. Tickets are available online at http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa, by phone at (860) 685-3355, or in person at the Wesleyan University Box Office, located in the Usdan University Center, 45 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown. Tickets may also be purchased at the door beginning one hour prior to the performance, subject to availability.

The “North Africa Spring” Symposium — 3/2 afternoon

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You are invited to attend the symposium on the “North Africa Spring” on Friday, March 2nd. The symposium will run from 2pm – 5.30pm at the Russell House (including a reception after the event). It will feature two speakers. Leonardo Villalon, a political scientist at the University of Florida, will speak on “Spring Storms Across the Sahara: The Francophone Sahel in the Wake of the north African Spring”. Katherine Hoffman, an anthropologist at Northwestern University, will discuss: “Revolution’s Refugees: Tunisian Amazigh Responses to Displaced Libyans and their Commuter Rebellion”. Their presentations will be followed by commentary from Wesleyan faculty in Religion, Middle Eastern Studies, and Philosophy. 

 See below for more information about our guest speakers. We also have a website: http://africa.blogs.wesleyan.edu/the-north-africa-spring/ 

Sponsored by The African Studies Cluster, the Government Department, the Thomas and Catharine McMahon Memorial Fund of the Romance Languages and Literatures Department, the Dean of the Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs, the College of Letters, and the Anthropology Department.

Israeli Film Festival: “Intimate Grammar” — March 1

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Intimate Grammar, a film adaptation by director Nir Bergman, based upon the renowned author David Grossman’s book, will be the fifth film screened in The Ring Family Wesleyan University Israeli Film Festival on Thursday, March 1 at the Goldsmith Family Cinema at 8 p.m. This film explores the metaphoric and emotional field of grammar through a 12 year old boy, Aharon, who refuses to grow up. Film critic Laura Blum will deliver a talk entitled The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up as well as conduct a question/answer session after the screening.

The film is 110 minutes and has English subtitles. Admission is free and all are welcomed. 

Please note that our last screening will take place on Thursday, March 29 at the Goldsmith Family Cinema at 8 P.M. Film director and Wesleyan University Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Dani Menkin, will comment upon his movie Je T’aime, I Love Terminal as well as take questions from the audience. 

I hope to see you at the movies,

 Dalit Katz, Religion Department, Jewish and Israel Studies Certificate Program,Director of the Ring Family Wesleyan University Israeli Film Festival