newsletter0708

.. M.A. Program in Cultural Production

=Cultural Production Newsletter: 2007-08=

//(Draft Version: In Process)//
//Mark Auslander Director, M.A. Program in Cultural Production and Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brandeis University//

//**The Year in Brief: 2007-08**//
Our second year of operation has been an exciting one for Cultural Production. We have seen six members of our first cohort graduate, and have witnessed a growing array of collaborative efforts linking Cultural Production graduate students and faculty in scholarly, artistic and community-building projects, on campus and off. We’ve gathered together in stimulating symposia and roundtables, deepening our relationship with the Rose Art Museum. The program graduate students are poised to develop a new e-journal, “Making Culture: A Multimedia Journal of Theory and Practice,” showcasing emergent artistic and critical work by students, faculty and other practitioners of Cultural Production.

//**Our Graduates: Spring 2008**//

 * Claire Alexander** wrote a delightful Master's paper on appropriations of the indigenous and the primitive in tatoo parlors. Claire has returned to Perth, Australia to continue her work at the intersection of arts, activism and the martial arts.


 * Lily Bonga's** Master's paper is a comprehensive exploration of the history of Greek photography. She presented a paper "Can Football save the (Art) World" at the Cultural Production roundtable, //Channel Surfing: Collapsing Cultural Boundaries in Contemporary Art and Culture. (February 14, 2008)// at the Rose Art Museum.

This fall, she begins doctoral work in Art History at Temple University.

For her capstone project, **Rosella Camte-Bahni** returned to northern Luzon, Philippines, to develop a collaborative exhibitionary project with members of her own indigenous group, the Ibaloi people. Her MA paper reflexively explores the exhibition project with close attention to struggles over the meaning and deployment of photographs in the project. During her time as a Cultural Production graduate student, supported as an International Ford Fellow, Rosella conducted internships at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and the Anacostia African-American community museum. Rosella was honored with the Cultural Production Engaged Scholarship award and delivered an address at the 2008 mini-commencement exercises. She has returned to the Philippines to pursue activist and development work with indigenous communities.


 * Faris Khan's** MA paper explores the cultural politics and poetics of Gay and Lesbian weddings in the South Asian diaspora. This fall, he begins doctoral work in Anthropology at the University of Syracuse.


 * Adi Grabiner-Keinan**'s Master's thesis examines the cultural politics of memorial ceremonies for fallen soldiers in Israeli schools; the thesis explores the history of these memorials and envisions alternate, inclusive memorial rites of the future, encompassing Jewish and Arab, Israeli and Palestinian histories of loss, pain and mourning. We are delighted that Adi is returning to Brandeis, as the University's Coordinator of Experiential Learning, responsible for catalyzing new forms of interactive pedagogy across Arts & Sciences.


 * John Hyland** completed a Master's paper on postcolonial poetics. This Fall he starts a doctoral program in English literature at SUNY-Albany.

//**Student Work in Process**//
In Fall 2007, **Leigh Branson** curated an exhibition of Tibetan Buddhist Tanghka in the Schwartz Gallery. She writes, "This past year I have continued researching contemporary Tibetan Refugee culture and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and iconography in addition to focusing much of my course work on museum studies. I am developing a keen interest in museum education, programming and collections management. This summer I am a museum development intern at the new Tasha Tudor Museum and a gardener at the Tasha Tudor and Family residence in Marlboro, Vermont. Next year I hope to continue to connect with New England area cultural institutions and further pursue my interest in museum studies. At this point, I plan on spending part of the year in Dharamsala where I would complete capstone project research and collaborate on a local art exhibition."


 * Christine Del Castillo** presented a paper,"Part and Parcel; The Guggenheim's Young Collector's Council," at the roundtable, //Channel Surfing: Collapsing Cultural Boundaries in Contemporary Art and Culture. (February 14, 2008)// at the Rose Art Museum. In spring 2008, she undertook an internship with The Rose's Development office.


 * Cathy Draine** has developed innovative programming for at-risk adolescents at Freedom House in Dorchester, helping them create public service announcements about school avoidance. She performed a reading from Octavia Butler's novel //Dawn// at the roundtable H//ybrid Powers: The Recombinant Fiction of Octavia Butler// November 19, 2007, at the Rose Art Museum; she also presented at the symposium, Pedagogy of the Imagination. March 4, 2008 at The Rose.

She was a Featured Artist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha Malcolm X Festival Milo Bail StudentCenter April 1-3, 2008 University of Nebraska at Omaha, and served as Guest Director/Performer, Urban Bush Women 2nd Annual Mother's Day Celebration May 11, 2008 at the The Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center (New York, NY). This summer she will be a Fellow in the Urban Bush Women Summer Institute at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Brooklyn, NY). During 2008-09 she will serve as Graduate Student Coordinator of the Prospect Hill Terrace community learning center in Waltham, MA.

memorial in the United States, the democracy of the Open Source movement, and the effectiveness of activist-artists practices. Since matriculating at Brandeis University, she has presented papers, engaged in conversation, and been exhibited widely, including participating in the Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference, In the Conversation: Art Talk Outside the White Cube, Open Engagement: Art After Aesthetic Distance, and the CRUMB (Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss) conversations. She also had her first solo art exhibition on the East Coast this spring for a project "The Freedom Trail: Economic and Cultural Pilgrimage in Boston." She presented a paper, "The Mythology of Minimal Infrastructure, Maximum Flexibility: The Open Source Phenomenon" at the Cultural Production roundtable, //Channel Surfing: Collapsing Cultural Boundaries in Contemporary Art and Culture. (February 14, 2008)// at the Rose Art Museum.
 * Katie Hargrave** is currently researching the politics of landscape an

This summer, Katie is planning a month long road trip and artist project with collaborator Hope Hilton across the Western half of the US. She plans to research the memorials to Theodore Roosevelt, including Roosevelt Dam, Rushmore, and the Natural History Museum in New York. Finally, she intends to begin conversation with the city of Boston and the National Park Service regarding the Black Heritage Trail, petitioning for increased public awareness and a painted line similar to the treatment given to the Boston Freedom Trail.

More of Katie's work can be viewed at [|http://katiehargrave.us]

This year, **Nadia Hemady** undertook an internship on community digital literacy at the new Commnunity Learning Center at Prospect Hill Terrace, the city of Waltham's largest public housing development. During spring semester 2008 she served as Graduate Student Coordinator of Brandeis programs at Prospect Hill. Nadia has continued her research on doll symbolism, mange and anime in contemporary Japan.

In Fall 2008 **Carol Prost** coordinated Project Exposure, a cultural enrichment partnership between Cultural Production graduate students and urban youth at the Waltham Boys and Girls Club. For her captone project in Cultuaral Production, Carol created a series of sculptural installations, Ambient Isotopy” and “Ganglia” at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, and "Turbulence and Tenderness," in the Schwartz Gallery. Two of her recent lithographs have been accepted into the Danforth Museum's annual juried show. During Summer 2008, she will complete an internship at the the American Textile History Museum, Lowell Massachusetts

**Cultural Production Faculty Accomplishments: 2007-08**

 * Mark Auslander** (Anthropology) continued his research on memories of slavery in rural African-American communiteis in the American South. he contributed an essay to the Rose Art Museum catalog for the exhibition //"Spiraling Inward: Steve Miller."// He serves as faculty co-supervisor for Brandeis programs at Prospect Hill Terrace, Waltham's largest public housing devlopment, where Cultural Production graduate students and faculty members are developing diverse arts and cultural enrichment programs for local low-income families.


 * Judy Eissenberg** (Music) directed two world music residencies for the Intercultural Residency Series: //Ologunde:Afro-Brazilian Music and Dance// (October 2007) and //Chinese Modulations: Jiebing Chen and Yangqin Zhao// (March 2008).


 * Jane Hale** (Romance Studies and Comparative Literature) oversaw a family literacy project in the southern African nation of Lesotho to develop children's literature in the vernacular language of SeSotho. She has founded a new organization, //Global Family Literacy,// to promote creative efforts to extend literacy to families around the world.


 * Paul Jankowski** (History) published a new book, //Shades of Indignation. Political Scandals in France, Past and Present// (Berghahn Books, Oxford and New York). He is currently working on a book project on the World War I battle of Verdun.

On April 4, 2008, **Charles McClendon** (Fine Arts) was awarded the Haskins Medal by the Medieval Academy of America at their annual meeting for his book //"The Origins of Medieval Architecture"// (Yale University Press, 2005). This is the oldest and most prestigious book award in the field of medieval studies.

the Move"// (Princeton University Press, September, 2008), which attempts to theorize how conceptions of selfhood, religious, national and familial identity are made "portable" for global circulation by way of cultural artifacts, like mementoes, pictures, diaries, and novels. He is beginning work on a new project tentatively called "//A History of Antisocialism, Mill to Arendt"// which looks at the history of antipathy towards the idea of "the social" or "social pressure ot conform" in Anglo-American liberal thought.
 * John Plotz** (English and American Literature) has recently completed a new book, "//Portable Property: Victorian Culture on


 * Ellen Schattschneider (**Anthropology) continued her research on memories of the Pacific War in Micronesia and in Japan. With her students, she worked closely with affordable housing activists in Waltham and helped developed a community learning center in the Prospect Hill Terrace public housing development.


 * Mangok Bol** joined us as the Cultural Production program Administrator in January 2008. A 2007 graduate in Business of the University of New Hampshire, Mangok is deeply interested in economic empowerment and business development in sub-Saharan Africa. Mangok, from the Bor Dinka community of the southern Sudan, came to the United States in 2001 as part of the "Lost Boys and Girls of the Sudan" program. He is a leader of the southern Sudanese community in Massachusetts, and has been active in human rights and anti-genocide campaigns.

Cultural Production and Community Engaged Learning: 2007-08
Although Community Engaged Learning (CEL) at Brandeis is primarily an undergraduate program, graduate students in Cutural Production have made important contributions to diverse CEL initiatives this year. In the core graduate course in Cultural Production CP201 (Making Culture: Theory and Practice) in Fall 2007, our students developed a partnership with a group of Waltham adolescents through the Waltham Boys and Girls Club, assisted by Wayside Youth and Family Services. We termed this effort “Project Exposure,” a play on words evoking our shared interests in photography and self-representation and in deepening our “exposure” to new ideas and perspectives on the world. Our class met on a weekly basis with the teens, who took photographs of Waltham street scenes and developed ‘zines (hand-made underground magazines) about areas they cared passionately about, ranging from fashion to the environment. We also brought the young people to campus for a wonderful session of college counseling with our University Admissions staff. A vital part of our team was Hannah Chalew, a junior at Brandeis, who served as the course’s Community Engaged Fellow; Hannah, an experienced visual artist, guided us as we worked with the young people on a range of artistic projects.

Project Exposure culminated with the painting of large mural on two walls in Thompson Park on Charles Street, a location a selected about the teens. The teens designed a mural, entitled “Kids’ Declaration of Independence”, around two pathways, one on each wall. The two paths are visibly contrasted, one leading to wordly success and autonomy (fixing one's own car, opening a store, writing a "Kid's Declaration of Independence"), the other to a monochromatic nightmare of gravestones and the jail house.

In our seminar discussions, it occurred to us that this design could be fruitfully interpreted in light of objects relations theory. The radical opposition in the paths might be regarded, in Melanie Klein's terms, as a form of "splitting", in which the psyche projects varied aspects of the self onto externalized, deeply polarized images. Once objectified in these external media, the most disturbing aspects of self are rendered relatively safe, subject to being worked on, neutralized or transcended. Is something comparable happening along the mural's monochromatic sinister pathway (appropriately, located to the left), past dessicated trees and the graveyard to the prison?

Meanwhile, a number of graduate students became actively involved in the CEL program’s emerging initiative at Prospect Hill Terrace, Waltham’s largest public housing development, initially clustered around Ellen Schattschneider’s Anthropology of Gender course. Hannah and a number of graduate students worked with Prospect Children as they designed and executed a large mural, “The Future is a Grand Place”, reflecting their hopes for the community. Other graduate students worked on gardening and brush clearing. Partnering with the Waltham Alliance to Create Housing and its TORCH (Tenants Organized to Reform Community Housing) initiative we worked closely with tenants as they created a tenants association, held election, and successfully campaigned with the Waltham Housing Authority for a Community Learning Center.

During Spring 2008, our CEL efforts concentrated on the new community center, as we developed a daily after school program of arts and cultural enrichment. Cultural Production student **Nadia Hemady** served as the overall coordinator for the Center, concentrating on developing imaginative approaches to computer and digital literacy. **Cathy Draine** trained undergraduates in responsible community-oriented pedagogy. Sharon Newton-Denson videoed collaborative art projects and worked with children on creating their own video works. During 2008-09, **Cathy Draine** will succeed Nadia as the Center’s coordinator, and will guide undergraduates as they learn to foster the “pedagogy of the imagination” in their work with children, teens and adults.

Cultural Production Public Events during 2007-08
We began our year with a community theater workshop with the Peruvian theater collective Yuyachkani on storytelling, gender and justice, and performance of Rosa Cuchillo, held in collaboration with Coexistence International's conference on Peacebuilding on the World Stage and the Community Engaged Learning program. Eighteen new immigrant women from the Waltham Family School participated with Brandeis students and faculty in the workshop. Saturday, October 6, 2007. 6:00 p.m. Shapiro campus center theater, Brandeis University. Cultural Production faculty members **Fernando Rosenberg** and **Mark Auslander** led a conversation with the audience and the actress Ann Correa after the performance of the play Rosa Cuchillo.

Cultural Production faculty member **Jane Hale** spoke on her ongoing efforts to develop a children's literature in the southern African nation of Lesotho in the SeSotho vernacular. October 9 at 4:00 p.m. //"Family Literacy and Community Empowerment: Tales from Lesotho."//

//As part of the Intercultural Residency Series// residency of Ologunde (an Afro-Brazilian Performance group) October 18-20, 2007, Cultural Production faculty and students participated in roundtables with the artists on improvisation as social practice and secrecy and revelation in Afro-Brazilian religions.

Cultural Production faculty member **Ellen Schattschneider** organized a Symposium on Sexualities in Asia. co-sponsored with the Asian and Asian Diaspora Studies, November 6, 2007. 1:40-4:30 p.m. in the Women's Studies Research Center. **Harleen Singh** and **Ulka Anjaria** served as respondants to papers on the politics of sexuality in South Asia. CP faculty members participated earlier that day in a roundtable on Video Art by South Asian Women Artists, at The Rose Art Museum.

Also during Fall 2007, the Cultural Production program partnered with The Rose Art Museum on a series, entitled "//Mirrors of Science"// inspired by the exhibitions of the art of Tom Sachs and Steve Miller:

1. Cultural Production faculty members **Andreas Teuber and** **Mark Auslander** organized a symposium on Visualizing Science: Image-Making in the Constitution of Scientific Knowledge. (Rose Art Museum) October 24, 2007. Peter Galison (Harvard) delivered a stunning keynote address, "Images of Objectivity," based on his collaborative work with Lorraine Daston. We discussed the significance of visual representation in the formation of scientific knowledge, in conversation with the artist Steve Miler, whose recent work explores the structure of DNA and protein crystalization, and with Brandeis molecular biologists, complex fluid theorists and quantum physicists, including John Lisman, Dagmar Ringer, Greg Petsko, Daniela Nicastro, Seth Fraden, Zvonmire Dogic, Bob Meyers, and Albion Lawrence; we were joined by American Scientist writer and editor Rosalind Reid and historian of science Natasha Meyers (York).

2. Cultural Production faculty members **Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman**, **Mary Baine Campbell** and **Mark Auslander** presented papers in the symposium, Hybrid Powers: The Recombinant Fiction of Octavia Butler. Interdisciplinary roundtable. November 19, 2007. 3:30-5:00 p.m. Rose Museum. We considered Butler's visionary science fiction, which re-imagines the dynamics of race through mediations on the symbolism of DNA, in reference to Steve Miller's extraordinary paintings of protein structure. The symposium include a reading by Cultural Production graduate student **Cathy Draine** of passages from Butler's novel //Dawn//, accompanied by jazz bassist Bob Nieske, director of the Brandeis Jazz ensmble.

3. The //"Mirrors of Science"// series concluded with a roundtable titled, Bricolage Revised. Rose Art Museum, Tuesday, December 4, 2007. Mark, CP faculty members **Peter Kalb** (Fine Arts), **Ellen Schattschneider**, and **Mark Auslander** presented papers reflecting on the status of Levi-Strauss' classic essay, //The Science of the Concrete,// in conversation with artists Tom Sachs, Anne Lambert and Michael Mittelman. Papers were also presented by anthropology faculty member Elizabeth Ferry and graduate students Casey Golomski (Anthropology) and Lydia Fash (English and American Literature).

Cultural Production co-sponsored two events for Valentines Day 2008, built around the visit to Brandeis of noted anthropologist Bradd Shore (Emory University). Cultural Production graduate students **Katie Hargrave,** **Lily Bonga** and **Christine Del Castillo**, and Cultural Production faculty members **Andreas Teuber**, **Ellen Schattschneider** and **Mark Auslander** presented at the interdisciplinary symposium //Channel Surfing: Collapsing Boundaries in Contemporary Art and Culture// at the Rose Art Museum. Later that afternoon, Dr. Shore presented a colloquium, //"Just For Play: Unmasquing A Midsummer Night's Dream,"// followed by a commentary by the noted Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt (Harvard).

On March 4, 2008 Cultural Production faculty member **Dirck Roosevelt** organized an exciting symposium, cosponsored with the Education Program, at the Rose Art Museum. Following a keynote address by Michael Armstrong (author of "Children Writing Stories) responses were delivered by Cultural Production graduate student **Cathy Draine** and by CP faculty members **Dirck Roosevelt, Ellen Schattschneider**, **Andreas Teuber** and **Mark Auslande**r

Our year of events concluded with a talk by the noted Japanese Environmental artist, designer and landscape engineer, Mariyo Yagi, Environmental Social Art: Trauma, Healing, and Community Building. March 26. 4:00 p.m. Working closely with **Ellen Schattschneider** Mariyo also held a special workshop at the Prospect Hill community center, working with local youth and with Brandeis students as they collaborated create a sacred nawa rope sculpture out of mutlicolored T-shirts. Graduate student **Sharon Newton Denson** documented Mariyo's visit on video.

E-Journal: Making Culture
A group of Cultural Production graduate students are developing a new e-journal, "Making Culture: A Multimedia Journal of Theory and Practice." The journal will have its initial roll out in September 2008. Submissions of articles, literary works, and multimedia works are most welcome. Please contact editors Katie **Hargrave** and **Cathy Draine** for more information.