The Department of Economics and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program present the first in a series of talks on Latin American Economics on Tuesday, March 4 at 5 p.m. in the Honors Center.
Economics Lecturer Franciso Martinez-Hernandez will speak on the topic, “Income Distribution and Economic Growth in Mexico: Vulnerabilities and Challenges in the Development Process.”
Students are encouraged to attend.
Students of all majors are invited to learn more about international affairs internships in New York City during a presentation on the SUNY Global Engagement Program. The event will be held Monday, Feb. 24 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. in the Honors Center.
The SUNY Global Engagement Program in New York City provides students with the opportunity to spend a semester immersed in international affairs in the world’s most important global city. Enrolled students intern with one of many international organizations, and an integrated class and research program provides a full semester’s worth of credits and a truly unique educational experience.
“Our goal at the GEP is to have students work in an environment where they will be truly challenged, but also one for which they have the talent and ability to contribute to the real needs of the organization for which they are working,” said SUNY Global Engagement Program Director Ş. İlgü Özler. “The organizations involved in the inaugural year of the Global Engagement Program provided a high quality experience for the students, and in turn, the GEP interns made meaningful contributions to the important work of these organizations.”
Past SUNY Global Engagement Program participants will be answering students’ questions about their internships and experiences in New York City. “Several students describe their experience in the Global Engagement Program as personally, professionally and intellectually transformative. I look forward to a new cohort of GEP participants, and I invite all interested students to with an interest in global affairs to apply for next fall’s program,” said Özler.
Free pizza will be provided.
For more information about the SUNY Global Engagement Program, visit www.newpaltz.edu/gep.
The SUNY New Paltz Graduate School will host an Open House on Tuesday, Feb. 25 from 5:30-7 p.m. in the Student Union Building Multi-purpose Room.
Representatives from every graduate program will be available to discuss applications, deadlines, degree requirements, financial aid, job prospects and more.
For more information, email gradschool@newpaltz.edu or call 845-257-3285.
Students are invited to participate in the First World Diasporas of Color Undergraduate Conference, held April 25-26 at the State University of New York at Geneseo.
This year’s conference theme is, “Global(izing) Identities and Migration across Diasporas of Colors.” Students are invited to present papers or posters that are concerned with all issues relevant to the diasporas of color in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States. Presenters may offer scholarly research or participate in panel discussions from all academic disciplines and social sectors.
To be considered, students must submit a 150-word abstract and short biographical statement by Tuesday, Feb. 25. Submissions should be made online, at www.diasporas_of_color.geneseo.edu.
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
The conference is sponsored by the State University of New York at Geneseo Departments of English, History and Languages and Literatures, and by the Africana Studies, Americana, Asian Studies and Latin American Studies Programs, in collaboration with the State University of New York at New Paltz’s Black Studies Department and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.
For more information, contact Dr. Rose McEwen at mcewen@geneseo.edu.
The Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures will host a video screening and conversation with acclaimed visual artist Liliana Porter on Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 6:00 p.m. in the Coykendall Science Building Auditorium.
Porter is an Argentinean artist who has resided in New York for many years. In her work, she places found objects in different situations, constructing small “vignettes” that endow things with an interiority and identity, inviting and activating the spectators’ curiosity and desire. Porter’s work with these objects invites us to think about the role of the gaze in contemporary material culture, interrogates our relationship with commodities and plays with our different notions of value.
During her long and prolific trajectory, Porter has used and moved swiftly thorough different media—printmaking, works on canvas, photography, video, installations or public art projects. Her work has been commented on profusely in Latin American cultural criticism and is represented in many important collections, such as the TATE Modern Collection, London, UK; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The event is co-sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program and Campus Auxiliary Studies.
The African Diaspora Film Series begins Wednesday, Feb. 12 at 5 p.m. in Lecture Center 100 with the campus screening of the film, Better Mus’ Come, and discussion with acclaimed film director Storm Saulter. The event is free and open to the public.
Better Mus’ Come is a coming of age drama set in Jamaica’s turbulent 1970s, against the backdrop of the Cold War, a national water crisis, an energy crisis, corruption, and numerous murder scandals that gave birth to the polarized violence gripping the streets of Kingston both then and now.
After months of incarceration as a suspected political agitator, Ricky is released. Haunted by the tragic death of his devoted young wife and paralyzed by conflicting feelings of guilt and loyalty to his political tribe, he tries to navigate his way through the minefields created by the constant social upheaval that seems to be ubiquitous in his community, while providing a better life for his 5-year-old son.
At his homecoming party, Ricky meets Kemala, a book smart country girl, who lives in the opposing neighborhood, enemy territory. In many ways they are opposites, but what starts as antagonism quickly turns into burning passion.
Kemala encourages Ricky to convince his old friends in the community to adopt a more passive approach. To defy the status quo of confrontation, this leads to the inevitable cycle of violence. The big question is, can Ricky and his crew beat the odds and ensure that Better Mus’ Come?” ( Excerpted from http://www.affrm.com/bmc-press/better-mus-come-production-notes/)
About the Filmmaker
Saulter is a visual artist and filmmaker. Born in Negril, Jamaica, he received formal film training at The Los Angeles Film School graduating in 2001 with a focus in Cinematography and Editing. His commercial clients include companies such as: ROOTS Canada, Red Bull, Nestle, Red Stripe Beer, Atlantic Records, Warner Music Canada, Sandals Resorts International, Martha Stewart, and The Hilton. His images have appeared in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and Trace magazine. Saulter has also directed several music videos for popular Jamaican Reggae/Dancehall artists.
Critics have recognized his award winning film Better Mus’ Come as heralding a new movement of independent filmmaking throughout the Caribbean. Saulter is the co-founder of New Caribbean Cinema (www.newcaribbeancineam.com), a pioneering effort to showcase the next generation of talented Caribbean filmmakers through the use of “communal filmmaking” as a means of creating world-class documentary and narrative works. He recently produced New Caribbean Cinema’s RING DI ALARM! alongside co-founder Michelle Serieux.
Saulter received the 2011 Jamaica Gleaner Honour Award for his work in developing Jamaica’s Film Industry. The Jamaica Observer has named him one of his country’s most influential people, and in 2012 he was identified by the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica as one of the 50 Under Fifty business leaders shaping Jamaica’s future.
“Navigating Space and Time with Digital Humanities Geographical Information Systems (GIS),” a talk by digital scholarship and pedagogy search candidate Dr. Charles Travis (Trinity College, Dublin), will be held Monday, Feb. 10 in JFT 1010, from 4-5 p.m.
Lev Manovich predicts that the “systematic use of large-scale computational analysis and interactive visualization of cultural patterns will become a major trend in cultural criticism and culture industries in the coming decades.”
One visualization technique associated with digital humanities GIS is the concept of “Deep Mapping” originally coined by the writer William Least Heat Moon in PrairyErth (1991). “Deep Mapping” can be described as a “vertical form of travel writing” employed to “record and represent the grain and patina of place” through juxtapositions and interpenetrations of the historical with the present, the political with the poetic and the discursive with the sensual.
Conflating oral testimony, anthology, memoir, biography, and natural history, deep mapping techniques are confluent with eco-critical tropes which Serpil Oppermann argues transcend the duality of art and life, human and the natural, to focus on the interconnections between various dualities and constructions.
Travis’ presentation will focus on deep mapping narrative and visualization techniques such as ergodicity, deformance and bricolage made possible with proprietary and open-source GIS methodologies and approaches.
The Asian Studies program, in cooperation with the East-West Living and Learning Community, will be hosting a celebration of the Lunar New Year in Crispell Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 19 at 6 p.m. Culturally relevant food, stories, music and fun will be provided.
The event is enabled by funding support from Campus Auxiliary Services.
For more information, contact Asian Studies Director Jonathan Schwartz at 845-257-2627 or schwartzj@newpaltz.edu.