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Fall 2000 Southern Accents: Representation and Resistance through the Arts
The American South is a diverse region with a rich and complex history. However, for much of Hamilton's student population of mostly Northerners, this region represents a largely unknown and mysterious territory, one replete with stereotypical images gleaned from Gone With the Wind, Hee Haw, and faded black and white news footage from the 50s and 60s. The effect of these stereotypes is that students often reduce the South's complexity to simple categories of black and white, rich and poor. In addition, students may only understand gender roles and issues of sexuality within the South as traditional and one-dimensional. Our programming seeks to explore the ways that the South is, and always has been, a site of remarkable political diversity, resistance, and struggle for progressive ideals. In particular, the creative arts of the South are frequently a misunderstood or overlooked catalyst for social change, thus our focus on the arts.
Our programming explores a variety of creative genres produced by a broad, but certainly not exhaustive, range of Southern artists. Our aim is to raise questions about the degree to which creative expression in the South has participated in the struggle for social justice within that region. Our challenge is to read these works as examples of the political and cultural work, both covert and overt, that Southerners have produced, and continue to engage in, through their art.
Southern Accents: Representation and Resistance through the Arts
Join us for a panel discussion to launch our series, "Southern Accents." Participants will comment on using the South as a focal point for an examination of the role that the arts play in political and resistance movements. The specific issue of accent and dialect in artistic works will also be discussed.
September 7 Panel Discussion: "Southern Accents: Representation and Resistance through the Arts" with
Mark Cryer, Gillian Gane, Lydia Hamessley, and Catherine Gunther Kodat, 4:00 pm, Emerson Gallery followed the Kirkland Project Opening Reception at 5:00 pm.Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble
September 13-16
With "Incredible Feets," Footworks presents a uniquely American story: an exuberant fusion of live music, comedy, singing, and a dazzling array of percussive dance forms rooted in different cultures. In search of the origins and relatives of Southern Appalachian clogging and flatfooting, Footworks has studied many forms of traditional percussive dance, including Irish, Scottish, English, Canadian, African and African American. Today, Footworks remains true to the traditions of Southern Appalachian music and dance while celebrating all the connecting roots and branches. Hamilton Classes:
September 13: Intro to Dance, 9-10:20, 10:30-11:50, List 104; Intermediate Dance, 2:30-3:50, Kirkland Dorm Loft.
September 14: Intro to Dance, 10:30-11:50, List 104; Women in Music, 2:30-3:45 Schambach 201.
September 14: Open Workshop/Demonstration of Appalachian Clogging and Flatfooting. 4:15 pm, Events Barn.
September 14: A Conversation with Footworks: "African, Native American, and Celtic Roots of Appalachian Clogging." Catherine Gunther Kodat, moderator. 8 pm, Events Barn.
September 16: "Incredible Feets." 8 pm, Wellin Hall. Sponsored by the Departments of Music and Theatre and Dance for the Contemporary Voices and Visions Performing Arts Series).
Sharon Bridgforth
September 22-23
Join us for a performance-reading of gifted African-American lesbian poet/playwright Sharon Bridgforth, author of the bull-jean stories. Using traditional storytelling and nontraditional verse to chronicle the course of love returning in the lifetimes of one woman-loving-woman named bull-dog-jean, the bull-jean stories give cultural documentation and social commentary on African-American herstory and survival. Set in the rural South of the 1920s, and using the accent and dialect of everyday Southern speech of the times, this work is about community, past times, and spiritual binding.
Hamilton Class: September 22: Coming of Age in America, 12:30-4 pm, KJ Auditorium.
September 22: "Soul Cycling": A reading by Sharon Bridgforth, author of the bull-jean stories. 8 pm, Events Barn.
September 23: Writing Workshop. 1-5 pm, Browsing Room.
Quilts of Color: Three Generations of Quilters in an Afro-Texan Family
October 1-29
This quilt exhibition surveys the tradition of quilting, since the Civil War, across several generations of an Afro-Texan family. The aesthetic of Black quilting treats pattern, color, and piecing playfully and asymmetrically. As a result, African-American quilts are frequently compared to African-American music. However, Black needle workers are also aware of and skilled at practicing the style more identified with Anglo-American quilting tradition, in which precise patterns and so-called complementary colors are the standard. As one of the quilters notes, "African American quilters are versatile. It's like they know two languages .... We make the Black quilts for our families and ... we make the white quilts to sell."Dates & Hours of Exhibition:
October 1-29; Tues.-Fri., 9:30-5 pm, Sundays, 2-4 pm.
Kirkland Art Center, Clinton, NY.
October 8: Opening Reception. 3-5 pm, Kirkland Art Center, Clinton, NY.
Sheila Kay Adams
October 5-6
Sheila Kay Adams comes from a small mountain community in western North Carolina where for 7 generations her family has passed down the English, Scottish, and Irish ballads that came over with her ancestors in the late 1700s. Whether singing the ancient story-songs, playing the banjo, performing an original composition, or telling a story, she spellbinds audiences of all ages. Her understanding of the Appalachian mountain life, people, and social fabric has a universal appeal and touches all of us ... even those not from the area. As her Great-Aunt and mentor, Dellie Chandler Norton, has said, "She may not always know where she's going, but she sure knows where she comes from...." Hamilton Class:
October 5: Women in Music, 2:30-3:45, Schambach 201.
October 6: Storytelling Workshop, 2-4 pm, Browsing Room.
October 6: "Appalachian Ballads, Banjo Tunes, and Storytelling: A Performance by Sheila Kay Adams." Special guest performance prior to featured artists Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer. 8 pm, Kirkland Art Center, Clinton, NY.
Hazel Dickens
October 12-13
West Virginia native Hazel Dickens, the incomparable "first lady" of old-time country and bluegrass, is the subject of a documentary, produced by Appalshop Film and Video and directed by Mimi Pickering. In this portrait, Hazel talks about her life - growing up in the coalfields, working in the shops and factories of Baltimore, playing music with other mountain migrants, trying to survive as a woman artist. Following the film, Hazel and a group of musicians will perform in a concert. Don't miss this outstanding assembly of musicians and meet and hear the legendary West Virginia born Hazel Dickens, performer, activist, songwriter and singer, for whom the song, the life, the instrument and the message are one in the same. October 10: Matewan. A showing of the John Sayles film which features Hazel Dickens. 7 pm, Red Pit.
Hamilton Class:
October 12: Women in Music, 2:30-3:45, Schambach 201.
October 12: "It's Hard to Tell the Singer From the Song," a documentary about Hazel Dickens directed by Mimi Pickering, followed by a discussion with Dickens and Pickering. 8 pm, Red Pit.
October 13: "An Evening With Hazel Dickens." A showing of the documentary by Mimi Pickering at 7 pm followed by a performance by Dickens and her band at 8 pm, Chapel. Co-sponsored with the Kirkland Art Center, Clinton, NY.
Dorothy Allison
October 13-16
Dorothy Allison is a renowned novelist, essayist, poet, and activist. The New York Times Book Review has called Allison's most acclaimed novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, "As close to flawless as any reader could ask for and any writer could hope for and aspire to." In her work, Allison resists the tendency towards romanticized and oftentimes flat narratives of poor white American and insists on writing hard-edged truths. Students who have read her fiction at Hamilton College have been mesmerized by the power, pain and beauty of her narratives and profoundly changed through the experience of connecting to the characters in her books. Hamilton Class:
October 13: Coming of Age in America, 12:30-4 pm, KJ Auditorium.
October 16: "The Working Girl Blues: When You Are Not What They Think They Want." 8 pm, Chapel.
Carolyn L. Mazloomi
October 19-20
Carolyn L. Mazloomi is a fiber artist, author, historian, and lecturer acknowledged to be one of the most creative quiltmakers in the United States today. In 1985 she founded the Women of Color Quilters' Network, an international organization with a membership of 1700, which has been a major force in fostering the fiberart works of African American people. About her work, Mazloomi writes, "The foundation for my inspiration is drawn from the endless richness and diverse creativity which exists throughout the African Diaspora. Traditional influences enable me to create narrative quilts that reflect my heritage and multicultural interest. It is my aim to let the viewer feel 'the spirit of the cloth.'" October 19: "From the Country to the City: Change in African American Quilt Design." 8 pm, Red Pit.
Hamilton Class:
October 20: Women in Art, 10:00-10:50 am, List 218.
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