Critical Encounters Series
Critical Encounters brings together likely minds from unlikely disciplines in a series of open dialogue before an audience of campus community and the public.
Conceived by Professor Anne Cheng, the series promotes reflections and debates concerning race, cross-cultural translation, and issues of social justice at the intersection of art, theory, culture, and politics. In bringing together dynamic artists and thinkers from disciplines that do not traditionally talk to one another who nonetheless share similar preoccupations, this series of dialogues aims to provide opportunities for unexpected, synergistic exchanges.
Race Studies and the Arts Initiative at Princeton
This series represents the drive, on behalf of the Department of English and the Center for African American Studies, to contribute to the development of comparative and transnational race studies at Princeton. It is the assumption of this series that the most engaging and productive way to introduce race studies to Princeton students and the community at large is to foreground the ways in which thinkers, writers, and artists of color are already engaged with larger cultural discourses in the diverse fields of art, cinema, politics, law, philosophy, history, and popular culture. We hope to expand the notion of racial debate beyond black and white and to introduce artists and thinkers of color in cross-cultural, cross-genre, and cross-national contexts. In short, the highly interdisciplinary nature of Critical Encounters offers a crucial framework for re-imagining of what is and how to conduct race studies today.
This series also hopes to make a significant contribution to the University’s commitment to the arts by offering a forum that bridges the gap between scholarship and the creative arts. The artists, filmmakers, lawyers, philosophers, and scholars featured in these dialogues demonstrate the intimate and productive relationship that can exist between modes of research and creativity.
The series is co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Center for African American Studies, with special sponsorship for each event from other departments and programs across the campus.
Scheduled Events for 2009:
The Critical Encounters series brings together like minds from unlikely disciplines for dialogue followed by Q and A. We hope you'll join us on April 29 at 4:30 p.m. in McCosh 28 for the next installment, which will bring together Shannon Jackson, renowned Performance Studies scholar, and Marianne Weems, Artistic Director of the Builders Association, for a multi-media conversation on “Theater and the Politics of the New Media.”
Shannon Jackson is Professor of Rhetoric and Department Chair of the Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley specializing in performance theory, experimental visual art and performance, sex/gender/race studies and American studies. Her publications include Lines of Activity: Performance, Space and Activity at Hull House (2000), which earned Honorable Mention, John Hope Franklin Prize in American Studies (ASA) and Professing Performance: Theater and the Academy from Philology to Performativity (2004), which earned both the Best Book Prize in Theatre Studies (ATHE) and Best Book Prize in Performance Studies (NCA).
The Builders Association, founded in 1994 and directed by Marianne Weems, is a New York-based performance and media company that extends the boundaries of theater by creating original productions based on stories drawn from contemporary life. Based on innovative collaborations, Builders' productions blend stage performance, text, video, sound, and architecture to tell stories about human experience in the 21st century. From BAM to Bogata, Singapore to Melbourne, Minneapolis and Los Angeles to Budapest, The Builders Association's OBIE award-winning shows have toured to major venues the world over.