Library News

Please join us for a presentation by Andries Fourie (Dept. of Arts) this Friday, April 12th at 3:00 pm in the Library Hatfield Room. The title of his talk is: “Ancestral Voices: From Slaves to Matriarchs”

In 1652 the Dutch East India Company (VOC) established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope. The VOC almost immediately began importing slaves, about half of which came from South and South East Asia (primarily Sri-Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bengal, the Coromandel Coast and Malabar Coast of India). Male colonists vastly outnumbered women in the early part of the colony’s history. Consequently male, white colonists frequently purchased, manumitted and married Asian slave women (the average Afrikaner today has about 8% Asian ancestry). In this way several slave women became the matriarchs of today’s Afrikaner families, and played an important role in shaping Afrikaner culture.

In this talk Andries Fourie will discuss his research on this subject and his recent installation and performance that explore the role of South and Southeast Asian slave women in shaping Afrikaans language, culture and foodways.

Please join us for a presentation by Inga Johnson (Dept. of Mathematics) this Friday, April 5th at 3:00 pm in the Library Hatfield Room. The title of her talk is: Topology, Homology, and Applications to Data

Abstract: Topology is the subfield of mathematics that is concerned with the study of shape. Mathematicians have studied topological questions for the past 250 years. However, in just the past 15 years topology has been found to have many different applications to real world problems. One of these is to use a topological tool called persistence homology to understand and analyze high dimensional and complex data sets.

This talk will be an introduction to topology and the concept of homology. We will then use homology to a look at examples of how topological ideas can be used to give new and surprising insight towards understanding data. This talk will emphasize examples and concepts. Prerequisites will be minimal.

As always, light refreshments will be provided.

Title: “From Clay to Music: Making and Playing a 7000-Year-Old Xun Musical Instrument”

Presenters: Juwen Zhang, Dept. of Japanese & Chinese / Heidi Preuss Grew, Art Department

Date/Time: Friday March 15, 2013, 3:00 PM

Location: Room 212, Art Building

Abstract:

The xun (塤; xūn) is a Chinese globular flute made of fired clay. It is one of the oldest Chinese instruments with a history of over 7,000 years. This presentation will discuss why the xun was essential to Chinese cosmology and cultural values, how it has become a core marker in the construction of Chinese national identity, and why the instrument has recently been revived in China and in the United States in Salem, Oregon. Guests to the lecture will see and hear the pieces Prof. Grew and Prof. Zhang made together that push the traditional xun form into artistic representations of the earth, the heavens, and animals. Willamette students will also participate in the musical presentation from these creations. “The xun replica Juwen Zhang first brought to the ceramics studio was a modest, egg shaped form,” Professor of Art Heidi Grew recalls, “but the audible projection from that humble object was simply remarkable. The entire atmosphere of the studio dramatically changed with its penetrating sound. Those gathered were silenced, transfixed, and transported to another place. We were in China.” Thus began the ongoing collaboration between two faculty members from the Art Department and Department of Japanese and Chinese. We look forward to sharing this work with the Willamette community.

As always, light refreshments will be provided. See you on Friday.

Bill Kelm and Stasinos Stavrianeas
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators

Please join us for a Faculty Colloquium with Sarah Bishop (Russian) who will present her talk titled: “Kama Ginkas and Contemporary Russian Theater”

My talk will introduce the work of Kama Ginkas, one of the most celebrated theater directors currently working in Russia, as well as provide a general sense of the vibrant and diverse theatrical scene in Moscow today. Born in 1941, Ginkas survived his early childhood in a Jewish ghetto in Lithuania and moved to Leningrad to study directing in 1962. His independent, innovative style made finding work difficult, and he nearly gave up on the theater in the 1970s. With a move to Moscow and the new openness of perestroika in the 1980s, however, Ginkas found his place in the Moscow Theater of the Young Spectator (MTiuZ).

Since the mid-1980s Ginkas has rarely staged traditional plays. Instead he has created his own shows based on literary texts, primarily prose. Rather than simply portraying the action of the text on the stage, however, Ginkas plays with the language itself. I will discuss Ginkas’s innovative use of language, and I will place him in the broader context of contemporary Russian theater, particularly the “new drama” movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Video clips from a variety of productions will be shown.

The talk will take place on Friday February 22at 3 p.m. in the Library Instruction Room. As usual, cookies and refreshments will be served.

Title: “Curricular Innovation: Sustainability as a Catalyst for Pedagogical Creativity and Institutional Change”

Presenters: Wendy Petersen Boring, Associate Professor of History and Marshall Curry, Senior, Sociology Major

Abstract:

What does it mean to teach with a focus that is simultaneously bio-regional and global? What might a place-based curriculum look like? What good ideas are out there for courses that cross multiple disciplines to address divergent problems, or engage significantly with community partners, or develop student’s ethical, civic preparation, personal growth and self direction? How can universities function as centers for public political discourse and catalysts for political action and social change?

This presentation, which grows out of research for our LARC project (2012), “Ritual, Sustainability and Community” and (Wendy’s) forthcoming book, Teaching Sustainability: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences, aims to address these questions by surveying a range of pedagogical innovations across the country that fall under the rubric of “sustainability curriculum” Nationally, sustainability has begun functioning as a key innovator and instigator of systemic change across the university, causing a re-orientation of curriculum, research, pedagogy, university-community relationships, organizational change, policy, and institutional ethos. Sustainability curricular projects are on the cutting edge of pedagogical innovation, including project-based learning, place-based pedagogy, transformational learning, and partnerships with community, business, and non-profit partners. Integrating sustainability into the liberal arts provides a particularly compelling opportunity to integrate theory and practice into the liberal arts in a way that addresses increasing need for curriculum relevance, salience, and practicability.

Date/Time: Friday March 1, 2013, 3:00 PM
Location: Hatfield Room, Hatfield Library