Events

This in-person Zoom viewing gathering is open to current students, faculty, and staff. Other members of the SLC community are welcome to view the event on Zoom by registering here.

This craft talk will explore techniques that maximize the visual impact of our prose and increase our awareness of the “sightlessness” of the reader. One of the fundamental things about the relationship between author and reader is that both must bring something to the experience in order to make for an effective story. On the one side, a reader must make an effort in order to be able to “see” what is being portrayed on the page, and on the other, the writer must work to “show.” And yet, how is this actually accomplished? If it’s not possible for an author to capture, for instance, every single detail of the living room-the way a camera would-or of a character’s face, or of a skyline, then what details must be included? Or perhaps more importantly, what details must be left out? Toward this end, we’ll examine the “black marks” on the page as well as the space in which utter silence, colorlessness and absence of detail exist. We’ll look at a range of artistic expression, including drawings, songs, and pictures.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is the author, most recently, of the story collection, American Estrangement. His memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, was selected as one of the 10 best books of the year by Dwight Garner of The New York Times, and his story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, and New American Stories, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction and a Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers’ fiction fellowship. He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and he leads the Creative Nonfiction track in Hunter's MFA program. He also teaches creative writing at Columbia University and New York University, where he received an Outstanding Teaching Award. Purchase Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s work here. 

This special screening of Sankofa will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Kishauna Soljour, history faculty.

This in-person Zoom viewing gathering is open to current students, faculty, and staff. Other members of the SLC community are welcome to view the event on Zoom by registering here.

Patricia Lockwood is the author of four books, including the 2021 novel No One Is Talking About This, an international bestseller, finalist for the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and translated into 20 languages. Her 2017 memoir Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and was named one of the Guardian's 100 best books of the 21st century. She also has two poetry collections, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals (2014) and Balloon Pop Outlaw Black (2012). Lockwood's work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor. She lives in Savannah, Georgia. Purchase Patricia Lockwood’s work here. 

This in-person Zoom viewing gathering is open to current students, faculty, and staff. Other members of the SLC community are welcome to view the event on Zoom by registering here.

Patricia Lockwood is the author of four books, including the 2021 novel "No One Is Talking About This," an international bestseller, finalist for the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and translated into 20 languages. Her 2017 memoir "Priestdaddy" won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and was named one of the Guardian's 100 best books of the 21st century. She also has two poetry collections, "Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals" (2014) and "Balloon Pop Outlaw Black" (2012). Lockwood's work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor. She lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Join Jada Benn Torres, Associate Professor of Anthropology and the director for the Laboratory of Genetic Anthropology and Biocultural Studies at Vanderbilt University, and Gabriel Torres Colón, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, for a discussion centered on genetic ancestry, “mangrove politics,” and birthing Afro-Puerto Rican futures.

Nestled in the northeastern coastline of Puerto Rico and within one of the most extensive mangrove forests in the Caribbean, most of the people of Piñones—or, piñoneros—are descendants of both formerly enslaved and self-liberated African peoples. Since 2017, the “Genetic Ancestry and Cultural Identity” project in Puerto Rico has yielded a collaborative effort utilizing genetic technology and ethnographic research to buttress the foundation for Afro-Puerto Rican recognition, autonomy, and political action.

In this presentation, Dr. Benn Torres and Dr. Torres Colon will first relate a story of how community-based research shaped the scientific agenda and design for their genetic and cultural ancestry project. They’ll share genetic ancestry results that illustrate a unique complexity of the genetic legacies of African and Indigenous peoples within contemporary piñoneros. Then, the focus of the discussion will shift to “mangrove politics,” or how genetic ancestry has been repurposed as a tool for building diaspora and environmental autonomy. Finally, Dr. Ben Torres and Dr. Torres Colon will discuss how the ways in which Afro-Puerto Ricans experience race, practice environmental conservation of their ancestral mangrove forest, and seek to effect change in governmental politics are tools for not only resisting structural racism but for imagining a future where they can flourish as equal members of society.

This event is free and open to all; register here.