Fordham Notes: Lincoln Center
Showing posts with label Lincoln Center. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lincoln Center. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Fordham Welcomes in the Christmas Season


Photo by Chris Taggart

A crowd of more than 700 gathered at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 1 to once again ring in the Christmas season at Fordham University.

With the Fordham choir singing and lights twinkling from every corner of the Koch Theater Promenade, the annual President’s Club Christmas Reception appeared to be joining the city in gearing up for a “megawatt” Christmas, said Fordham President Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

And yet, Father McShane said, a far smaller display captures the true sentiment of the season.

“Our eye more than anywhere else is drawn to the most unassuming, most understated of Christmas lights—the candle in the window,” he told alumni, parents, staff, and other members of the Fordham community.

However, there is more to the seemingly innocent Christmas candle than meets the eye, Father McShane said. During the time of British persecution against the Catholic Church in Ireland, Irish Catholics would place candles in their windows as a secret welcome to priests, to whom they would offer hospitality in exchange for a celebration of the Eucharist.

With this subversive-yet-sacred history in mind, the image of Christmas candle was chosen to adorn the 2014 Fordham Christmas ornament, Father McShane said, because “it is a symbol that speaks volumes about who we are, what we believe in, and what we do.”

“Fordham has been about the sacred work of being ‘subversive’ for nearly 175 years, providing a different kind of education,” he said. “At the heart of Fordham is a passionate conviction that the core of a transformative and liberating education must be the encounter between the human heart and God.”

Father McShane thanked those gathered for the generosity that has helped sustain this mission.

“Your generosity is making a Fordham education affordable and accessible,” he said. “You have made it possible for Fordham to keep the candle in the window.”

— Joanna Mercuri

Photos by Chris Taggart:










Monday, September 8, 2014

Lincoln Center Opening Day: Students Break in New Residence Hall

Opening Day at the Lincoln Center campus was at times lightning fast, as when student workers descended upon cars parked at the curb on West 62nd Street, and at times less fast, as when incoming students waited for one of the four elevators to whisk them to their rooms as high as 22 stories up. But by days end, nearly 300 students successfully found their ways to what they'll be calling home for the next year.














—Photos by Chris Taggart

Friday, January 17, 2014

Do Gooders Descend On Lincoln Center

Donna Rapaccioli welcomes attendees
Photo by Patrick Verel
The hour may have been a wee early —8:30 a.m.— but the DJ at the Lincoln Center campus's Pope Auditorium on Jan. 16 was pumping out decidedly up-tempo tunes.

And why not? The occasion was Make Impact NYC, a daylong conference dedicated to the premise, “Do Good in Your 'Hood.” 

Monika Mitchell, the founder of the online news and new media platform Good-B.com, joined Donna Rapaccioli, P.D., dean of the Gabelli School of Business, and Michael Pirson., Ph.D., associate professor of management systems at Gabelli, in welcoming attendees. 

Pirson’s Center for Humanistic Management co-sponsored the conference, which featured panels on topics such as how entrepreneurs can leverage New York City’s position in arts, design, and media to affect social impact, how food can be a force for good, and how collaborative co-working communities amplify social impact.

Katie-Hunt Morr, senior manager of values and impact at Etsy.com, kicked things off with a keynote address that contrasted the isolation inherent in simply buying stuff, with the connections that are made when we actively engage with a merchant.  

Katie-Hunt Morr
Photo by Patrick Verel
“I can’t help but think we must feel incredibly isolated from one another when we’re able to buy disposable goods made in essentially slave like labor, and most of the time, the implications of these purchases never crosses our minds,” she said.

“Over the last eight years, 90 people have been seriously injured, and seven have died during Black Friday sales. How isolated must we be if we’re willing to hurt or even kill each other to get a hold of a bargain?”

The chemical neurotransmitter dopamine is partly responsible, she said. Because it is associated with anticipation, not reward, it’s great for business because consumers don’t really care what they own--they only care about the act of purchasing. 

Fortunately, the hormone oxytocin, which is associated with affection and comfort, can also be triggered in commerce through meaningful interactions. Morr cited as an example a couple on Etsy who sells custom-made cutting boards in the shapes of U.S. states. When one is ordered, they ask the buyer to pick a place on the map that’s special to them, and the spot is marked on the board.

“If we understand the story of the people behind what we consume, then we’re able to replace isolation with connection. When people feel rewarded by their purchase, they’ll come back to make more purchases,” she said. 

The conference closed with the announcement of the winner of the “Battle of the Boro Pitch for Impact,” which pitted social entrepreneurship teams from all five boroughs of New York City against each other for $5,000 in cash and $20,000 in services. The winner was “I Am Not A Virgin,” a Manhattan-based ‘eco sexy’ denim line made with recycled plastic bottles.

—Patrick Verel




Friday, December 13, 2013

January Panel to Discuss Future of Commonsense Gun Regulation

One year ago this week, the nation reeled from tragic events that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Adam Lanza gunned down 20 children and six adults. As Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, bid farewell to students leaving for the 2012 holiday break, he said that we would normally celebrate this time of year with great joy, "but not this year."

The event galvanized a nationwide debate on guns, as gun control advocates seized the moment to reframe the conversation and gun advocates reasserted their right to bear arms. National attention on the issue waned as the year's news cycle played out and a congressional law that would have expanded background checks was defeated in the spring.

In light of the tragedy, vigorous communities of both pro-and anti-gun advocates have sprung up online in what Saul Cornell, Ph.D., the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History and leading expert on the Second Amendment calls “a new sphere of cyber space where they can continue to advocate."

On Jan. 21, 2014, at 6 p.m. Fordham University’s Department of History will get involved in the conversation when it sponsors “The Future of Commonsense Gun Regulation: Where do We Go From Here?” The event will take place in the Corrigan Conference Center on Fordham's Lincoln Center Campus. 

Cornell will moderate the conversation of panelists who include:
  • Robert Spitzer, distinguished service professor and chair of political science at SUNY Cortland, a leading authority on the politics of gun control, the presidency, and congress.
  • Kristin A. Goss, associate professor of public policy and political science at Duke University, an expert on the gun control movement, woman’s political activism, and philanthropy.
This session will take stock of the current situation and offer some insight into the future of the gun debate in America.


"It's been about a year and legislation is stalled at the federal level and all too predictable at the state level where states with high gun controls got tighter restrictions and states with low gun controls got more lax," said Cornell. "The problem is we're in a nation where there’s not a unified gun market. We'll look at what the options are, what is politically feasible, and what needs to be done."

The event is sponsored by the Department of History, Office of the Provost, Office of the Dean of Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Dean of Fordham College Rose Hill.
For more information contact Kirsten Swinth, Ph.D. at swinth@fordham.

-Tom Stoelker

Friday, October 18, 2013

Corrigan Conference Center Officially Unveiled

The Lowenstein Center’s 12th floor was officially christened the E. Gerald Corrigan Conference Center in a ceremony held on Oct. 17.

The ceremony, which was postponed from last year due to Hurricane Sandy, honored E. Gerald Corrigan, Ph.D., GSAS ’65, ’71.

Corrigan, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a managing director of Goldman Sachs, was honored at a dinner attended by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham; Stephen Freedman, Ph.D., provost; Msgr. Joseph G. Quinn, vice president for mission and ministry; David Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration; and
Nancy Busch, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Also in attendance were recipients of the endowed scholarship fund that Corrigan established in 1999 and which has provided financial support to undergraduate students for nearly a decade.

Corrigan has served on the Fordham University Board of Trustees and has been a mentor and educator to Fordham students. In 2007, he made a $5 million gift that funded the E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in
International Business and Finance in the Schools of Business, and he continues to generously support university initiatives.
Michael Sansarran, GSB '13, former Corrigan Scholar, Nicole Campiglia,
FCLC '13 former Corrigan Scholar, Matthew McDonnell, FCRH '14,
 current Corrigan Scholar, E. Gerald Corrigan, Maygan Anthony, FCRH '14,
 current Corrigan Scholar, and Mark Espina, FCRH '16, and current
Corrigan Scholar. (Photo by Bruce Gilbert)
—Patrick Verel






Media Clip of the Week: Father McShane in Crain's New York


Father Joseph McShane, S.J.
Photo by Bruce Gilbert

Crain's New York recently published an education report that included "People to Watch in Higher Education." Father Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, made the list.

The leaders profiled "play a critical role in the city's culture and economy," it said in the Oct. 14 issue.

Crain's writer Judy Messina described Fordham's growth strategy as ambitious.

"Under its president, the Rev. Joseph McShane, 64, Fordham is in the middle of a $1.6 billion, 25-year effort to expand its Bronx and Lincoln Center campuses. It is part of a larger strategic plan to raise the rankings of its graduate programs, attract a more national and international student body and turn the 172-year-old institution into the country's pre-eminent Catholic university. 

"We want to be a destination for the brightest kids in the country, Catholic and not," Father McShane said.

The article pointed out the "growing allure" Fordham's location in the heart of New York City.


"Our mission is to graduate students who are going to be the leaders in American society, and New York is a laboratory that makes it possible for us to deliver on that promise," Father McShane said. "Notre Dame has the money and the name. I've got New York City." 
Read the piece here (subscription may be required) or pick up the issue in news stands.

-Gina Vergel 


Monday, July 15, 2013

Eco-Savvy GBA Students Sow Awareness

Students from the 3CMGM Program are planting trees to mitigate the program's carbon footprint.
Photo by Philippe Surmont
 Twenty-six students from around the globe attend the Graduate School of Business Administration's (GBA) 3 Continent Master of Global Management (3CMGM) Program. The courses are taught on campuses in Belgium, India, and the United States. While this is all made possible by air travel, the carbon footprint of so much commuting became a source of concern for students, so they set out to plant a few thousand trees to mitigate the problem.

Planting a few thousand trees is no easy task when there's masters-level coursework to complete. But as the students are training to be global business managers, they sought out a global management solution to solve the problem.

Antwerp Management School in Belgium and the Xavier Institute of Management in Bhubaneswar, India, have already hosted the students for the yearlong program. The cohort arrived for the last leg of their journey at Fordham's Lincoln Center campus in May.

As physically planting the trees was an impossibility, the group decided to partner with WeForest.org, a Belgian-based NGO specializing in tree planting. They created an off-shoot called WePlant.org. After sowing the seeds of the operation in Antwerp, they planted their first tree in India this past the spring. On August 1 the group will promote the program here in New York City. 

The students mined the program's three locales for unique regional responses to the initiative. Belgium had the NGO. The advantageous conversion of dollars to rupees meant more trees could be purchased in India, thus making India a logical place to plant the trees. The August 1 event will no doubt prove media-savvy New York as the perfect place for promoting the program. But the problem of global warming is hardly limited to three regions.

"Pollution is the same in any part of the world," said student Aditya Prasad Kola. "As we are part of a global community we are obliged to clean up our mess."
Students at tree planting ceremony at Xavier in Bhubaneswar, India.

The trees will be planted on the Sirumalai Hills in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Kola, who is from India, added that as a developing nation, India has very high pollution levels, making it "a perfect place" for the initiative.

The way the program works is that students ask companies to buy trees from WeForest to offset their own carbon foot print. For each tree that companies buy from WeForest, WePlant gets a tree of their own. The trees cost about $1.50 each.

The students calculated that they produced 130 metric tons of CO2 emissions through intercontinental air travel. To eliminate their footprint, they'll need to plant about 4,300 trees this year. After four years the trees will have matured and the footprint should be eliminated.

The students have already sold more than 750 trees, bringing the total number of trees to more than 1500 so far. The ultimate goal of planting 8,600 trees would create one full time job and three temporary jobs in India.

The students said that plotting out the success of the program fed into their coursework.

"Completely detached from the environmental aspect, is that by working on this project we're also developing our skills and knowledge when it comes to fundraising and project management," said student Ahmed El-Jafoufi.

All of the students said they expect the experience to affect the way they do business in the future.

"With governments cutting their budgets, it's a good time for the companies to step in and help," said student Phillipe Surmont, adding that it's also good business. "If I have to choose between two brands and one takes responsibility for certain issues, I'm going to choose that brand." 
-Tom Stoelker

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Former Fordham Prof Makes Met Debut Via Vegas

Former Fordham professor Michael Mayer directed the new production of Rigoletto.
Photo Courtesy Metropolitan Opera.







The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Giuseppe Verde's Rigoletto, which opened Jan. 28., is a neon-infused spectacle directed by former Fordham professor Michael Mayer, in his Met debut.

Best known to Broadway audiences for his rock musicals Spring Awakening and American Idiot, Mayer brought swagger to the Met production by transposing the opera's 19th-century Venetian setting to 1960s Rat Pack Vegas.

On opening night, it may have struck a few in the Met's "Penguin section" (the tux-clad patrons of the Dress Circle) as sacrilege, indeed one traditionalist booed the setting in the second act, but Fordham Theatre Program Chair Matthew McGuire said that Mayer's M.O. isn't to provoke, but to relate.

"I think he's always had an iconoclastic approach to the classics," said Maguire. "He tries to figure out how to relate the material to audiences, often through metaphor."

Maguire shared an office with the former assistant professor for nearly two years before Mayer left to direct the national tour of Angels in America. He recalled an equally accessible approach to Moliere’s Tartuffe that Mayer directed here at Fordham.

Though not always in an obvious manner, Fordham maintains solid ties to Lincoln Center. There are, of course, official relationships, like the professor exchange between Fordham and Juilliard, such as Bill Baker's class on the Performing Arts in the 21st Century. And other quietly nurtured programs operate without much fanfare, like PCS's relationship with the New York City Ballet.

Maguire said he expects the relationship to grow. He has reached out to Rigoletto set designer Christine Jones and hopes to see her teach a class here next fall. For his part, Mayer has been back to Fordham a couple of times as a guest director, and he cast Fordham alumna Frances Mercanti-Anthony, FCLC '02, in Spring Awakening.

For now, the Fordham community will have to satiate themselves with Mayer's talent in what promises to be one of the hottest tickets of the Met's spring season.

-Tom Stoelker

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Energy Kitchen Opens at Lincoln Center Campus


Photo courtesy of Toone Communication.
The Lowenstein Center’s Ram Cafe underwent a transformation over the winter break, as workers transformed the food service area into a much more fast-paced environment.

A new menu has also been unveiled, as Sodexo, the University’s food service partner, has signed a franchise agreement with Energy Kitchen, an up and coming chain that eschews fried foods in favor of dishes that are grilled, baked or steamed. 

Among the new offerings are turkey burgers, 90% lean sirloin burgers, and chicken fajita wraps. Sides include baked sweet potato fries, and black bean and mango salads.

The company, which has seven locations in Manhattan, one in Syosset, one in White Plains and one at St. John’s University, was chosen after Fordham and Sodexo spent the past 16 months consulting with the United Student Government’s food services committee.

“It’s quick, fast, low calorie, and healthier than a lot of other fast food options. It also fit the bill as far as what students were looking for in that cafeteria,” said Keith Eldredge, Dean of Students at the Lincoln Center Campus.

Photo courtesy of Toone Communication.
“We’re so limited with space and other resources. You can’t get a food court like you might see at a big state institution, but this gives us some fast, healthy alternatives, which is what our students are looking for.”

The new layout, which eliminated a service island and a turn style, also gives greater emphasis to the preparation.

“There’s this idea of preparing the food in front of you, so people can see what you’re putting into it, it’s fresh and not stuff in the back somewhere that’s been sitting in trays, drying out,” Eldredge said.

Brian Poteat, general manager at Sodexo, said Energy Kitchen appealed to students because of its emphasis on healthy options, including vegetarian dishes.

“Today’s students are a lot more savvy when it comes to what they’re eating, and we have such a small and limited space here,” he said.

Energy Kitchen joins Red Mango as the second brand name vendor at the Lincoln Center campus. The Rose Hill campus once featured a Sbarro, and currently features a Starbucks. Poteat said a Jamba Juice Express is expected to open there in the next few weeks, at the McGinley Center.

“We’re looking where we can fit into our existing spaces those concepts that we feel match the demographics of the students. Even five years ago, students were looking for different things than they are now,” he said.

Alexa Rodriguez, president of United Student Government, Fordham at Lincoln Center, said the quality of the food and the pricing, which is lower than the Energy Kitchen’s other locations, were the biggest concerns for students.

“So far the feedback has been pretty positive. Students really like the fact that its healthier,” she said.

—Patrick Verel

Monday, November 12, 2012

New Law School Tops Out

The final beam being secured at 8:52a.m., on Monday, November 12.
Photo by Thomas Walsh
At 8:52 a.m. this morning, November 12, the final steel beam of the new law school building was fastened into place. The new structure has been gaining steady attention over the the past two and a half years as it continues to steadily rise. The cast stone panels cladding the facade are quickly racing up after the steel, leaving quite an impression on theatergoers at Lincoln Center Plaza. The $250 million building, designed by the firm of Pei Cobb Freed, broke ground on February 3, 2011, and is scheduled to be completed by Fall, 2014, and will add 468,000 square feet to the Lincoln Center Campus.

The northwest corner receives the final beam.
Photo by Thomas Walsh
A ceremony commemorating the topping out will be held this Friday and will be officiated by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., the president of Fordham, and Michael M. Martin, dean of Fordham Law School.  

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

THATCampNY “Unconference” Coming to Lincoln Center



Fordham University at Lincoln Center will play host to THATCamp, The Humanities and Technology Camp. The free event is being organized with Hunter College and New York University. The informal sessions melds technology and the humanities for researchers, students, librarians, archivists, curators, educators, and technologists.

THATCampNY: The Humanities and Technology Camp 
Friday, October 5 
4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. 
Saturday, October 6
8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. 
Lincoln Center Campus, 113 W. 60th St., New York, N.Y.

The "unconference” springs from a worldwide series that is devoted to hands-on work and discussion of the intersection of technology and the humanities. No papers are proposed or presented and the agenda is being debated online right now. The topics of discussion will be decided on Friday night and play out over the course of Saturday afternoon. The spontaneous atmosphere allows everyone involved to participate.

In addition to support from the University, the Fordham Digital Humanities Working Group, and Fordham IT, the event is being funded by Hunter College Library, the CUNY Libraries, New York University Libraries, and JSTOR/Ithaka.

--Tom Stoelker

Friday, June 22, 2012

Lincoln Center Construction Showing Progress

On a sultry June afternoon like today, the heat makes it feel as if the entire city might grind to a halt. Not so at the Lincoln Center Campus, where construction continues unabated on the new Law School and residence hall, scheduled to open in the fall of 2014.

The view from the Robert Moses Plaza, just outside the Lowenstein Center

Checking out the top floor from the 20th floor of McMahon Hall

Just one of innumerable welds holding the steel skeleton together.

The building as seen from Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park

The new looms over the old in this view from Columbus Avenue
—Photos By Patrick Verel

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Lincoln Center Construction Progress

Progress on construction of the new Law School and residence hall at Fordham's Lincoln Center campus in October.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Big Trucks at Lincoln Center


A short clip of the construction work at the Lincoln Center campus. This clip, shot on Tuesday, March 8, 2011, shows a bucket loader filling a dump truck with rocks and earth from the excavation to be carted away.

In the early part of the clip you can see a worker on the right side of the screen cutting rebar with a torch. Notice as the truck rocks on its springs when the bucket loader is tamping down the dirt in the truck bed. Though it's difficult to see on the video, the truck driver is grinning hugely—an e-ticket ride at the Lincoln Center campus.

Video by Jon Roemer.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Lincoln Center Construction

These images of the construction at Fordham's Lincoln Center campus were taken on Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011, from one of the McMahon Hall terraces and the roof of Lowenstein Center.
Click on images to enlarge.


We're facing north in this image.
The rubble is likely part of a demolished wall.






We're facing northwest here. The white structures in
Damrosch Park (
since taken down) are tents set up for Fashion Week.





Ryan is the editor of FORDHAM Magazine, the
University alumni magazine. We were scouting the
rooftops for future photography shoots of the
construction site. We're on one of the McMahon terraces,
facing east, with Lowenstein on the right side of the image.




We're facing east in this image, again taken
from a terrace at McMahon Hall.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Lincoln Center of the Past Resurrected in Student Presentation


Long before the area between West 60th and 66th streets became home to Fordham University, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Amsterdam Houses, the beat of life was very different.

On Tuesday, December 7, members of the Fordham College Lincoln Center Honors Program’s class of 2013 described just how different things were. The Lincoln Square History Project, a presentation culled from 61 essays and 400 pictures, explored historical facts that are both well known (Condemnation of 17 blocks of tenement buildings lead to the sites’ construction) and less known (McMahon Hall was once the site of the Grace Institute, a school Sisters of Charity-run school for underprivileged girls).

The School of Law? It was once the site of the 12th Regiment Armory, built in the late 19th century for the then enormous sum $750,000.

“These two buildings serve to show the character of this space before Robert Moses’ urban renewal. Think of the demographic that we serve today. A private institution, and a well to do performing arts center, and think of the buildings that became before, and it may be said, that truly this space could not have changed more under Robert Moses’ direction,” said Max Slade.

Dan Mallia admitted that he was disturbed by the readings about protests that preceded the bulldozing of the neighborhood.

“It was a tough subject to wrap my mind around, because I naturally sympathized with the residents and the lawyer of who lead the resistance,” he said, noting that the proponents of “urban renewal” were case as villains.

“I’m in the midst of my second year at Fordham, and I have yet to find any evidence that Fordham is an evil corporation which revels in displacing poor residents. In fact, I found a lot of evidence to the contrary. A lot of the administration expressed concern that the process should not be abusive and should actually help the area. Furthermore, it is even harder for our generation to feel anger about the renewal, because today we are enjoying the benefits of it.”

The Amsterdam Houses, which were built in 1947 on the other side of Amsterdam Avenue, were constructed in place of demolished tenements, and like the Lincoln Center itself, faced a numerous obstacles. From the start, tensions were high, as residents mistakenly assumed that like Stuyvesant Town, it would exclude black residents. It also didn’t help that, under the theory that more light and air, the better a family will fare, all the homes of in the neighborhood were destroyed.

“They also demolished the storefronts they frequented, the neighborhood hangouts that they were used to hanging out in, and they also demolished everything that made the community what it was. So people began to feel isolated and disoriented,” said Annemarie Gundel.
The Center has seen its ups and downs too. Avery Fisher Hall, Darrya Rosikhina noted, was finished in 1962 after three years of construction, but had such poor acoustics, that it had to be completely gutted and rebuilt nearly from scratch in 1973.

The Juilliard School building, which was completed in 1969 and is home to Alice Tully Hall, has been called a marriage of form and function, but Jacqueline Battaglia noted that the New York City Opera and the New York Philharmonic were given venues that were of lesser quality than the New York City Center and Carnegie Hall, where they came from, respectively.

“In 1959, the owners of Carnegie Hall refused to renew the Philharmonics’ lease, because they were thinking about demolishing the building to build a more profitable office building,” she said.

Still, like Fordham and the Amsterdam Houses, the she said that Lincoln Center has become an integral part of the city’s fabric.

“Despite how and why they ended up at Lincoln Center, or how they changed the Lincoln Square neighborhood once they got here, these arts institutions are an essential part of the culture of New York City,” she said. “They all began here, some almost 200 years ago, and they continue to be some of the most important arts institutions in New York today.”
—Patrick Verel

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Poets Out Loud: Performance, Symposium and Contest

Poetry, Music, and Visual Arts

Thursday, November 4, 2010 | 7 p.m.
Poets Out Loud at Fordham University
presents
featuring
Anna Rabinowitz
Bino Realuyo
with graduate student
Amanda M. Calderón
in conjunction with
Turning Tides: A Symposium on Diasporic Literature

12th Floor Lounge | Lincoln Center Campus
Reception & Book Signing to follow
Free and open to the public


Turning Tides: A Symposium on Diasporic Literatures

Saturday, November 6, 2010 | 1 p.m.
McNally Amphitheatre | Lincoln Center Campus
www.turningtides.squarespace.com

This creative and scholarly symposium which will highlight three different legacies of diaspora in the United States: Haiti, The Philippines and Puerto Rico. Each panel will feature a short scholarly talk, a reading by two writers followed by a moderated conversation. What do Filipino American writers take for granted, in terms of artistic freedom? In what political and aesthetic ways are Puerto Rican writers employing creative disobedience? Until January 2010, descendents of the Haitian diaspora could call Haiti their home—that geography has been rent. What kind of scattering will result? And, how will it be told by writers?

The principle aim of Turning Tides is to involve prominent artists and scholars in an exchange of ideas for the purpose of proactively responding to the growing phenomena of American diaspora as it is in the making and to ground and contextualize this conversation within a critical understanding of a larger global history.
Free and Open to the Public.
  • 1 p.m. Opening Remarks: Yvette Christiansë
  • 1:15 p.m. Panel on Haiti: After the Earthquake with J. Michael Dash, Denize Lauture, Yolaine M. St. Fort
  • 2:15 p.m. Panel on Puerto Rico: Creative Disobedience in New Nuyorican Writing with Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Willie Perdomo, Edwin Torres
  • 3:15 p.m. Break
  • 3:30 p.m. Panel on the Philippines: The Artist as Activist with Nerissa S. Balce, Bino Realuyo, Melissa Roxas
  • 4:30 p.m. Reading and Reception
Speakers

Nerissa S. Balce is Assistant Professor of Asian American literature at Stony Brook University’s Department of Asian and Asian American Studies. She was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. She worked as a journalist in Manila, writing articles on Philippine literature, politics, culture and the arts. She took doctoral studies at the University of California-Berkeley where she received a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies. Before joining Stony Brook University, she taught at the University of Oregon’s Ethnic Studies Program as a post-doctoral fellow, and at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst as an Assistant Professor of comparative literature. She is currently completing a book manuscript on American imperialism as a visual language and the image of the Filipino savage.

Yvette Christiansë is a novelist, poet, and scholar. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was raised in that city, and Cape Town, as well as Mbabane, Swaziland. In her late teens her family moved to Australia to escape apartheid. Her first full volume of poetry, Castaway, which was nominated for the PEN International prize. In 2006, she published the novel, Unconfessed, which was a finalist for the Hemingway/PEN Prize for first fiction and recipient of the 2007 ForeWord Magazine BEA Award. She teaches African American and postcolonial literatures, as well as poetics, at Fordham University.

Daniel Contreras is the author of What Have You Done to My Heart: Unrequited Loved and Gay Latino Culture and is Assistant Professor of English at Fordham University. His new work focuses on Latino literature and the problem of mediation.

Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Fordham University in New York. He is author of Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails (Palgrave 2007), a book about the relationship between high art and Latino popular culture in the gentrifying New York of the 1980s. He is also author of a study on the prose fiction of one of Latin America’s most important twentieth-century writers, José Lezama Lima, El primitivo implorante (Rodopi 1994), and coeditor with Martin Manalansan of Queer Globalization: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism (New York UP 2002). He teaches courses on contemporary Caribbean literatures and New York in Latino literature and film at Fordham. He has been the recipient of the NEH and Ford Foundation fellowships and has been invited professor at Harvard, Emory, and the University of Pennsylvania.

J. Michael Dash is Professor of French at New York University and director of the Africana Studies Program. He is the author of Literature and Ideology in Haiti (1981), Haiti and the United States (1988), Édouard Glissant (1995), The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context (1998), and Culture and Customs of Haiti (2001); editor (with Charles Arthur) of Libete: A Haiti Anthology (1999); and translator of Gisèle Pineau's The Drifting of Spirits (1999). He is currently at work on a manuscript entitled "Surrealism in the Francophone Caribbean."

Luis H. Francia who has lived in New York since the 1970s is the author of several other books, including Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago, which won both the 2002 PEN Center Open Book and the 2002 Asian American Writers literary awards. His poetry collections include the recently released The Beauty of Ghosts (performed as theater at Topaz Arts in 2007); Museum of Absences; and The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems. He is also the author of A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos, published this year. He edited Brown River, White Ocean: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Philippine Literature in English, and co-edited, with Eric Gamalinda, Fiippin’: Filipinos on America, and, with Angel Velasco Shaw, Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999. He writes an online column for Manila’s Philippine Daily Inquirer and teaches creative writing at the City University of Hong Kong, literature at Hunter College, and Tagalog Language and Culture at New York University.

Denize Lauture's poety has appeared in Callaloo, Black American Literature Forum, African Commentary, Drumvoices and Bomb. He has written four volumes of poetry. In Creole: The Blues of the Lightning Metamorphosis, The Curse of Sincerity River's Samba. In English: When the Denizen Weeps, The Black Warrior and Other Poems and children's books: Father and Son (nominated for the 1993 NAACP Image Award), Running the Road to ABC (winner of the 1996 Coretta Scott King Award) and Mother and Daughters.

Willie Perdomo is a prize-winning Nuyorican poet and children's book author. He is the author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (W. W. Norton & Company, 1996) Postcards of El Barrio (Isla Negra Press, 2002), and Smoking Lovely (Rattapallax Press, 2003), which received a PEN American Center Beyond Margins Award. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and recently was a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia University. He is co-founder/publisher of Cypher Books and teaches in New York City.

Bino A. Realuyo is the author of The Umbrella Country, a novel, and The Gods We Worship Live Next Door, a poetry collection. His works have appeared in The Nation, The Kenyon Review, The Literary Review, New Letters, and several anthologies. For the past fifteen years, he has worked as an Adult Educator and Community Organizer in underserved communities in New York City. He can be found on the web at binoarealuyo.com. He recently founded a social enterprise for low-skilled, low-wage immigrant workers, We Speak America.

Melissa Roxas is a Filipino American poet who has won fellowships from PEN USA Rosenthal Emerging Voices and Kundiman. She is co-founder of Habi Ng Kalinangan, a Los Angeles-based Filipino cultural organization dedicated to promoting community empowerment and progressive social change. In May 2009, while on a medical mission in Tarlac, Philippines, she was abducted at gunpoint and held against her will for six days until her surfacing in Quezon City. She campaigns today for the safety of activists in the Philippines.

Yolaine M. St. Fort is a writer of Haitian descent. In 2000, she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from Long Island University. Her thesis was a novel titled My Shadows in the Mirror. She’s had her prose and poetry published in Downtown Brooklyn, Prose Ax, Calabash, Vwa: Poems for Haiti, Poetry in Performance, General Authority: Earthquake 2010, For The Crowns Of Your Heads: Poems For Haiti, and The Caribbean Writer (forthcoming) . She has also written a second novel titled Hear Their Echoes. She’s currently working on a collection of short stories and a poetry manuscript. She teaches English at Edward R. Murrow High School and sometimes adjuncts at Long Island University. She is the adviser for the school’s literary magazine called The Magnet.

Edwin Torres is a recepient of poetry fellowships from The Foundation For Contemporary Performance Art, the New York State Foundation for the Arts, and The Poetry Fund and his CD Holy Kid was part of The Whitney Museum's exhibition, The American Century Pt. II. Edwin is currently co-editing POeP! an eJournal, and Cities Of Chance: An Anthology of New Poetry from The United States and Brazil, both from Rattapallax Press.

Free and Open to the Public. Sponsored in part by Ports Out Loud
See website for full details: www.turningtides.squarespace.com


Poets Out Loud Prize Deadline

Monday, November 15, 2010

The POL Prize awards $1,000 and publication to a full-length poetry manuscript. For the first time this year, two volumes will be published by Fordham University Press.

Judge: Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
For more information and guidelines go to: www.fordham.edu/pol
To submit online, go to: pol.submishmash.com/Submit

CONTACT:
Poets Out Loud
Fordham University
113 W. 60th Street, Room 924i
New York, NY 10023
(212) 636-6792
www.fordham.edu/pol
pol@fordham.edu

Friday, September 17, 2010

Art in Small Spaces


Photos by Gina Vergel


The Fordham College at Lincoln Center community participated in Park(ing) Day NYC on Sept. 17. Park(ing) Day is an international event in which parking spots are reclaimed and turned into people-friendly spaces for one day.

Fordham students from the theater, architecture and urban studies departments collaborated to design a public par
k and outdoor theater in two parking spaces on the corner of Columbus Avenue and W 60th Street.

The set, made of cardboard, was built by Colin Cathcart's Architecture class. Students from Matthew Maguire's acting class performed a bit of Shakespeare in the park(ing) space.

—Gina Vergel



Friday, April 23, 2010

In Praise of the Essay

Symposium: In Praise of the Essay: Practice & Form

Co-Sponsored by the English Department and Creative Writing Program at Fordham University

Saturday, April 24, 2010 | Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus Atrium

For Registration Please Call: (717) 357-9609. You will also need to complete this form (includes complete schedule) and bring it with you to the symposium. There is a $150 attendance fee.

Keynote Speaker: Robert Atwan, series editor, Best American Essays. Featured speakers include: Jerald Walker, Vivian Gornick, Brian Doyle, Lia Purpura and Emily Grosholz. Panelists include: Paul Lisicky, New York University; Mimi Schwartz, Richard Stockton College; Michael Steinberg, Pine Manor College; Elizabeth Stone, Fordham University; and Linda Underhill, Chatham University.

About the Presenters and Panelists

Robert Atwan is the series editor of Best American Essays, which he founded in 1985. He has edited five college anthologies and textbooks, seven poetry anthologies, and a short story collection. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Iowa Review, the Kenyon Review, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, River Teeth, and elsewhere.

Brian Doyle is the author of seven works of nonfiction, including The Grail, The Wet Engine, and Leaping: Revelations & Epiphanies, as well as two collections of “proems.” A novel, Mink River, is forthcoming in fall 2010. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, American Scholar, Gourmet, Harper’s, Orion, the Times of London, and elsewhere. He is the editor of Portland Magazine.

Vivian Gornick is the author of many books, including Women in Science, Fierce Attachments, The Situation and the Story, Approaching Eye Level, and The End of the Novel of Love. Her essays and articles have appeared in the Nation, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at the New School.

Emily Grosholz is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Feuilles/Leaves; three books of philosophy; and the editor of essay collections on Simone de Beauvoir, W. E. B. DuBois, Maxine Kumin, and the philosophy of mathematics. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, Hudson Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She teaches at Pennsylvania State University.

Lia Purpura is the author of two collections of essays, On Looking and Increase, and several collections of poems, including King Baby, Stone Sky Lifting, and Brighter the Veil. Her work has appeared in AGNI, the Georgia Review, Orion, the New Republic, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Loyola University and the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program.

Jerald Walker is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion and Redemption. His essays have appeared in Best African American Essays, Best American Essays, Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry, Chronicle of Higher Education, the Iowa Review, Missouri Review, Mother Jones, North American Review, Oxford American, and elsewhere. He teaches at Bridgewater State College.

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy and Famous Builder. A new novel, Lumina Harbor, is forthcoming. His work has appeared in Boulevard, Flash Fiction, Hotel Amerika, Open House, Ploughshares, Short Takes, and many other anthologies and magazines. He teaches at New York University.

Mimi Schwartz is the author of five books, including Good Neighbors, Bad Times. Echoes of My Father’s German Village; Thoughts from a Queen-sized Bed; and, with Sondra Perl, Writing True: the Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Creative Nonfiction, the Missouri Review, the New York Times, and elsewhere. She is Professor Emerita at Richard Stockton College.

Mike Steinberg is founding editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. He has written or co-written five books, including a memoir, Still Pitching, and, with Robert Root, an anthology, The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction. He is writer-in-residence in the Solstice/Pine Manor College low-residency MFA program.

Elizabeth Stone is the author of Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Our Family Stories Shape Us, The Hunter College Campus Schools for the Gifted, and A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from Her Student. Her personal essays and reportage have appeared in Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches at Fordham University.

Linda Underhill is the author of two collections of essays, The Unequal Hours: Moments of Being in the Natural World and The Way of the Woods: Journeys through American Forests. Her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA program at Chatham University and at Corning Community College.