Tuesday, April 12, 2005
4:30 PM John B. Davis Auditorium
Boubacar Boris Diop
The Role of African Writers
Senegalese writer, playwright and journalist Boubacar Boris Diop will discuss the role of African writers. He is one of Africa’s leading literary innovators. Boris Diop has written six novels, among which are Tamango (1981), The Drums of Memory (1990), The Knight and his Shadow (1997). Boubacar Boris Diop participated in the Writing to Remember project that commissioned work on the 1994 Rwanda genocide from African writers. Murambi, The Book of Bones (2000) is forthcoming in English translation. Diop’s latest novel, Doomi Golo (The Monkey’s Children) is the first novel to appear in wolof. Diop is also co-founder of Sud, the first non-governmental newspaper in Senegal. He has consistently worked for freedom of the press. He will discuss the role of African writers today, his experience in Rwanda, and will read excerpts from Murambi, The Knight and his Shadow, and Doomi Golo.
Monday, April 11, 2005
7:00 PM John B. Davis Auditorium
Kevin Pina
Haiti: The Betrayal of Democracy
Kevin Pina provided eye-witness accounts for the recent book by Amy Goodman, Paul Farmer, and Noam Chomsky Getting Haiti Right This Time. He will discuss his experience in Haiti, the ongoing situation in Haiti and will show footage from his second film “Haiti: The betrayal of Democracy.”
Pina, is an editor for the Haiti Information Project (HIP), an alternative news agency in Port-au-Prince, which is featured at haitiaction.net. He is also an Associate Editor for the Black Commentator and a Haiti Special Correspondent for Flashpoints Radio.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
12:00 PM H401
Sears Eldredge
L’Ecole des Femmes
Sears Eldredge will speak about “The School for Wives” one of Moliere’s best-loved comedies, a classic contest of age vs. youth, repression vs. freedom. He will discuss his directing, set design and staging choices.
Tuesday, March 8, 2005
4:30 PM John B. Davis Auditorium
Jan J. Dominque
Racial Politics in Quebec: A Haitian Perspective
Haitian writer Jan J. Dominique has publishedMemoir of an Amnesiac (1984 and recently translated into English), Inventer la Celestine(2000), and a volume of short stories Evansion(1996). She will read from her work (in both French and English), and will also speak about the changes in Canadian racial politics that she has witnessed during her several exiles from Haiti.
Monday, March 7, 2005
7:00 PM John B. Davis Auditorium
The Agronomist
A film by Johathan Demme
Life and assassination of Radio Haiti founder Jean Dominique.
The Agronomist is a moving portrayal of Jean Dominique, a Haitian radio personality who was a voice of dissent under the Duvalier regime and against military juntas afterwards. He was assassinated on April 3, 2000, and his assassins have never been brought to justice.
Haitian novelist, Jan J. Dominique, his daughter, will introduce the film and respond to questions afterwards.
Monday, February 28, 2005
7:00 PM John B Davis Auditorium
Brian Concannon
Haiti: After the Coup
The institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti was founded to respond to February’s violent interruption in Haiti’s democratization process. Its mission it to work with the people of Haiti in their non-violent struggle for the return and consolidation of constitutional democracy, justice and human rights, by distributing objective and accurate information on human rights conditions in Haiti and cooperating with human rights and solidarity groups in Haiti and abroad.
Human rights lawyer and activist, Brian Concannon, Jr., who has been deeply involved with the fight for justice in Haiti, will be speaking in Minnesota to mark the one year anniversary of the overthrow of democracy in Haiti.
Brian was in the first group of people to meet with President Jean Bertrand Aristide after his forced removal to the Central African Republic.
Brian co-managed the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, since 1996, prosecuting human rights cases, primarily from Haiti’s 1991-1994 de-facto military dictatorship. After six weeks of trial in the Raboteau case, the jury convicted 53 defendants, including the de-facto dictatorship’s top military and paramilitary leaders, for the massacre of pro-democracy supporters.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
5:00 PM John B. Davis Auditorium
Film Pote Mak Songe: The Raboteau Trial (2002)
The film recounts the trial of the defendants for the 1994 Raboteau massacre in Haiti. It will be followed by a discussion with human rights lawyer Brian Concannon, who participated in the prosecution of the case.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
12:00-1:00 Old Main, fourth floor lounge
Martin Klein
The Slave Trade as an Early Example of Globalization
Martin Klein is Benedict Visiting professor of History and Professor of History Emeritus, University of Toronto. He has taught at Berkeley and Lovanium University in the Congo and has written about French colonialism, Islam and slavery in West Africa. Klein is the author of, Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1847-1914 and Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa. He is currently working on a history of Africa in the twentieth century and a study of slavery in cross-cultural perspective.
Thursday, December 9, 2004
11:40 AM Art 113
Paul Miller
Haiti in Crisis
Paul Miller, local peace and justice advocate will share a DVD, Haiti: Eye of the Storm, from his December 2003 trip to Haiti, shortly before the forced removal of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. His delegation met with Haitian peace and justice organizations.
The video features footage of Father Gérard Jean-Juste who was recently released from jail after an international outcry over his imprisonment two months ago. Miller will lead a discussion about historic and current issues in Haiti.
Paul Miller has traveled yearly to Haiti as a member of volunteer mission groups and as the leader of peace and justice delegations. In January 2005, he will again lead a peace and justice delegation from St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church to Haiti.
Friday, December 3, 2004
3:30 PM Art 113
French Artist, Béatrice Coron
Public Art and Papercutting
Béatrice Coron is a French artist living in New York. She creates small books of art, miniature books for daily space. She recently was commissioned by NewYork Metro Transportation Authority (“Bronx Stories”) and by the Chicago Transit Authority (“Seeds of the Future are Planted Today”) to design steel fences and subway murals in stained glass from her drawings. She will show slides of her work (drawings, papercuts, metal work public art and miniatures), some original papercuts and she will talk about the history of her trade.
You can view her portfolio and animations at http://www.beatricecoron.com/
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
7:00 PM John B. Davis Auditorium
Looking for Life
A Film by Claudette Coulandges
Tuesday, November 9, 2004
7:30 PM John B. Davis Auditorium
Cherif Keita
Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John L. Dube
John Dube (1871-1946) – the co-founder and first President of the African National Congress (1912-1917) – was also a pioneer educator, a journalist, a novelist, a musician and a pastor of the Congregational Church. With a U.S. education in the 19th century, he planted the seeds of a black intellectual and political revolution with the opening of the Ohlange Institute in 1900 (inspired by Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee), the launching of Ilanga Lase Natal (the cirst secular Zulu newspaper) in 1903, and the promotion of a Black literary culture in Natal
The film with be followed by a discussion with Professor Keita.
Monday, October 18, 2004
7:00 PM Humanities 401
Jean Bauberot
La Laïcité en France: entre passion et raison
Professor Bauberot is the Honorary President of the prestigious Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He is a History Professor at the Sorbonne and a member of several councils on religion and society. He is the author of eighteen books, among them, Histoire de la laïcité en France (2003), Religions et laïcité dans l’Europe des Douze (ed. 1994), Laïcité 1905-2005, entre passion et raison(2004) and La Laïcité à l’épreuve, religions et libertés dans le monde (2004). He will consider the concept of Laïcité in France, a concept that is the focus of current debates in France due to recent laws regulating public and private spaces.
Sponsored by the Alliance Française in the Twin Cities, The Department of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota and the Department of French and Francophone Studies at Macalester.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
11:45-12:50 PM John B. Davis Auditorium
Forum on Haiti
Three invited guests will speak about the situation in Haiti and the consequences of the February 29, 2004 removal from office of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Michelle Kershan, Haiti, foreign press liaison for Haiti presidents, Aristide and Preval from 1995-2004.
Laura Flynn, Twin Cities, former secretary for the Aristide foundation and co-writer of a recent Human Rights report about repression since February 2004.
Paul Miller, local peace and justice advocate, made the film: Haiti: Eye of the Storm based on his travels to Haiti in January 2004.