Yale Bulletin and Calendar

February 8, 2008|Volume 36, Number 17


BULLETIN HOME

VISITING ON CAMPUS

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

IN THE NEWS

BULLETIN BOARD

CLASSIFIED ADS


SEARCH ARCHIVES

DEADLINES

DOWNLOAD FORMS

BULLETIN STAFF


PUBLIC AFFAIRS HOME

NEWS RELEASES

E-MAIL US


YALE HOME PAGE


Black History Month celebration
features art, music and more

The Yale campus will celebrate Black History Month with special talks, theatrical performances, musical offerings, an African food “cookoff,” a beauty pageant, a film festival, an art exhibit and more.

Among the featured participants in campus events during the celebration of black history and culture — which centers this year on the theme “Celebrating the Black Woman” — are Dr. Alexa Canady, the first black woman neurosurgeon in the United States, Yale’s chief financial officer (CFO) Gwendolyn Sykes, television and radio talk show host Tavis Smiley, and Yale professors Stephen Carter and Elijah Anderson.

Highlights of the Black History Month celebration follow. Unless otherwise indicated, the events are free and open to the public.


On stage

A musical about the life of Bert Williams, the most famous black performer of early Broadway, will be staged at the Yale Cabaret Thursday-Saturday, Feb. 7-9.

The musical is based on a novel by Yale English professor Caryl Phillips, which has been adapted for the stage by Yale School of Drama student Ken Robinson. Patricia McGregor directs the performance by School of Drama students.

A native of the West Indies, Williams performed in blackface in New York from the 1890s through the 1910s. His artistic achievements were limited by racial prejudice in the early 20th century: He wasn’t allowed to perform in public without blackface and was called a “performer” rather than an “actor.” “Dancing in the Dark” re-imagines Williams’ struggle to reconcile his identity with his art.

Performances are at 8 p.m. on Thursday and at 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St. Tickets are $15; $10 for students. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.yale.edu/cabaret or call (203) 432-1566.


Talks, lectures

Dr. Alexa Canady. Canady, the first African-American brain surgeon in the United States, will present the keynote address at the annual Black History Month Dinner, which will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 8, at Calhoun College, corner of Elm and College streets. Those wishing to attend the dinner must R.S.V.P. to joanna.gorman@yale.edu. This event is co-sponsored by the Afro-American Cultural Center (AACC).

Canady was chief of neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan from 1987 until her retirement in 2001. She earned her B.S. and M.D. from the University of Michigan and completed her surgical internship at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1975. During her 20 years as a neurosurgeon, she has treated thousands of patients, many of them age 10 or younger, whose afflictions included gunshot wounds, head trauma, hydrocephaly and other brain injuries or diseases.

Canady received the Children’s Hospital of Michigan’s Teacher of the Year Award in 1984 and was inducted into the Michigan Woman’s Hall of Fame in 1989. In 1993 she received the American Medical Women’s Association President’s Award. She was named by the Detroit News as Michiganer of the Year in 2002.

Staceyann Chin. A poet, writer and activist, Chin will give a public lecture and reading at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 17, at the AACC, 211 Park St . Her visit is co-sponsored by Word!, Prism and the Yale West Indian Students’ Organization.

A resident of New York City and a Jamaican national, Chin has been a poet since 1998. She won a Tony Award for her performance in the Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, and she has also performed at the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, off-Broadway and in poetry workshops in Denmark and London. She was the winner of the 1999 Chicago People of Color Slam and the 1998 Lamda Poetry Slam, was a finalist in the 1999 Nuyorican Grand Slam and won the 1998 and 2000 Slam This!, as well as WORD: The First Slam for Television.

Gwendolyn Sykes. Sykes will give a talk on Monday, Feb. 18, noon-1:30 p.m. in the General Motors Room, 55 Hillhouse Ave. School of Management (SOM) Dean Joel Podolny will present opening remarks, and a free lunch will be provided. For information, contact rashayla.brown@yale.edu. This event is sponsored by the Yale SOM Black Business Alliance.

Sykes joined Yale as its CFO in July 2007. She previously had been the CFO at NASA since 2003. At NASA, she oversaw the financial management and health of the $16 billion agency. She has also served as an analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense and in Congress for U.S. Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. At Yale, Sykes is responsible for the financial stewardship of the University, including budgeting, accounting and transaction management, financial reporting, internal control and the integrity of financial information.

Stephen Carter. Carter, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale Law School, will speak at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 19, in the Sterling Memorial Library lecture hall, 120 Wall St. This event is sponsored by the Yale University Library Diversity Council. For information, contact teresa.miguel@yale.edu.

Carter earned his J.D. from Yale in 1979 and began teaching at the Law School in 1982. He is the author of several books, including “Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby” and the novels, “New England White” and “The Emperor of Ocean Park.”

Elijah Anderson. Anderson will be the featured speaker at a dinner on Tuesday, Feb. 19, at 5:30 p.m. at the AACC. This event is presented by Here, Our Voices. For information, contact rodriquez.donald@yale.edu.

Anderson joined the University’s Department of Sociology in July 2007. He is considered one of the nation’s most influential sociologists in the field of black urban studies. He is the author, among many other publications, of “A Place on the Corner: A Study of Black Street Corner Men,” “Streetwise: Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community” and “The Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City.” He is currently working on a monograph on the black middle class. Before coming to Yale, he was the William L. Day Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he first began teaching in 1975.

Aaron Ship ’96. As part of the Life After Yale Series, alumnus Ship will speak during a dinner on Thursday, Feb. 21, at 5:30 p.m. at the AACC.

Ship, a life coach, will discuss his job working to help people improve, grow and reach their goals, and will offer tips to his audience on achieving what they desire.


Musical performances

Shades. Shades, a co-educational a cappella singing group dedicated to the performance of African-American music, will perform its annual Valentine’s Day concert at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 14, in the dining hall of Silliman College, 505 College St. For more information about this event, contact jean-phillp.brignol@yale.edu.

New Haven Chorale. Actors from the School of Drama will be featured in “Lift Every Voice!” — a musical and literary celebration of Black History Month presented by the New Haven Chorale on Sunday, Feb. 24, at 4:30 p.m. in Woolsey Hall, corner of Grove and College streets. Tickets are $35 for reserved seating, $20 for general seating and $15 for senior citizens; students with I.D. are admitted free. Tickets are available at the door and by calling (203) 776-SONG. Tickets can also be purchased at Foundry Music in New Haven, Books and Co. in Hamden, Sound Runner in Branford, Breakwater Books in Guilford and R.J. Julia’s Booksellers in Madison. For more information, visit www.newhavenchorale.org.

The New Haven Chorale will also be joined by The Heritage Chorale for the event, which will feature dramatic readings and vocal performances to portray “African-American expressions of the human spirit’s universal aspiration for freedom and justice.” Texts by Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou and others will be interwoven with spirituals, gospel music and contemporary compositions, including audience sing-along opportunities.

Tenor Albert Lee, an award-winning performer in opera and on the concert stage, will be a special guest for this performance.

Pre-concert discussion. A pre-concert lecture titled “What Does America Mean to Me? Citizenship in the Formation of the United States” will be offered at 3:15 p.m. in Woolsey Hall by Jonathan Holloway, professor of history and of American and African-American studies, who is also master of Calhoun College. Free-will donations to benefit the Greater New Haven NAACP’s Scholarship Fund will be accepted.


Film screenings

‘Afro-punk.’ James Spooner, director of “Afro-punk,” a documentary film exploring race identity in the punk scene, will show and discuss his film on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 7-9 p.m. at the AACC.

Spooner, who was born in Saint Lucia to a black father and a white mother, produced his film mostly out of New York. He was fascinated by the fact that no one he knew (including himself) discussed the issue of race relations or explored the untold stories of the black experience in the punk scene, despite the plethora of accomplished black artists in the genre and punk rock’s origins as an offshoot of rock-and-roll itself (and of the work of innovators such as Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Little Richard).

Spooner has toured the country showing his film, which has developed a cult following largely among punk rock fans who are members of minority groups. For more about the film, visit Spooner’s website at www.afropunk.com.

Film festival. “Black and Green — Land, Power and Sustainability in the African Diaspora” is the title of a film festival being offered 11 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 23, at the AACC. The event is co-sponsored by the Yale Sustainable Food Project.

The invited speaker is the president of the Association of Black Farmers.

Featured films include the following:

• “Darratt,” by Guy Bellinger, about a 16-year-old whose grandfather orders him to execute the man who killed the boy’s father. The murderer is among the war criminals who have just received amnesty from the government after a 40-year civil war.

• “Life and Debt,” a series of sequences focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the United States and other foreign economic agendas. The film utilizes excerpts from Jamaica Kincaid’s award-winning text “A Small Place.”

• “Homecoming … Sometimes I Am Haunted by Memories of Red Dirt and Clay,” a film by Charlene Gilbert about her family’s farm and her investigation of the social and political implications of African-American land loss in the South. She relates how, in 1920, there were nearly one million black farmers in America; in 1999, there were less than 18,000.

• “Gold Greed Genocide and Salmon on the Backs of Buffalo” explores the toxic legacy of the California Gold Rush on the Klamath River, once the third most productive salmon river in the United States. Today, due to habitat-blocking dams, poor water quality and too little water left in the river, the once abundant Klamath salmon runs have now been reduced to less than 10% of their historic size.


Art exhibit

The exhibition “Women of a New Tribe” will open on Monday, Feb. 25, at 5 p.m. at the AACC. The exhibit features 20 photographs from the collection of photographer Jerry Taliaferro that pay homage to the physical and spiritual beauty of black women. Taliaferro is a native of Brownsville, Tennessee. In addition to the black-and-white photos from his core collection, the exhibit will also include photographs of 25 local women, including New Haven leaders and Yale students, administrators, alumni, faculty and staff.


Black Solidarity Conference

The Black Student Alliance at Yale and the Black Pride Union are co-sponsoring a conference Feb. 29-March 2 titled “The Ballot or the Bullet? Revitalizing the Revolution.”

Author, journalist, political commentator and talk show host Tavis Smiley will speak at the event. There is a fee to attend, and registration is required. To register, visit www.yale.edu/bsc or contact kristian.henderson@yale.edu.

Smiley hosts “Tavis Smiley,” a late-night talk show televised on the PBS network. He also hosts a weekly two-hour version on Public Radio International radio stations. He will moderate two live presidential forums in 2007: a Democratic forum at Howard University in June and a Republican forum at Morgan State University in September.

Smiley has helped launch advocacy campaigns to highlight discriminatory practices in the media and government and to rally support for causes such as the awarding of a Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights icon Rosa Parks. He is the founder of the Tavis Smiley Foundation, which funds programs that develop young leaders in the black community. He has written eight books, including “Doing What’s Right: How to Fight for What You Believe — And Make a Difference,” “The Covenant with Black America” and “Keeping the Faith: Stories of Love, Courage, Healing and Hope from Black America.” His numerous honors include the Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award from the National Association of Minorities in Communications.


Other events

Other events being offered as part of the Black History Month celebration are:

• A party 9 p.m.-1 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 8, hosted by the Yale West Indian Student Organization and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity at the AACC. For information, contact faith.briggs@yale.edu.

• An African Cook-Off on Monday, Feb. 11, 6-8 p.m. at the AACC. This event is sponsored by the Yale African Student Association and the Yale West Indian Student Organization. For information, contact ivuoma.onyeador@yale.edu.

• “Miss Black and Gold,” a pageant on Saturday, Feb. 16, 7-9 p.m. at Harkness Auditorium of the School of Medicine, 333 Cedar St. The pageant highlights and fosters the connection between success and etiquette among young women. Hosted by the Zeta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., the pageant celebrates young women who epitomize self-confidence, communication skills, intelligence and beauty. Contestants are provided with scholarships to assist with post secondary studies.

For more information about Black History Month events, contact Pamela George, director of the AACC and assistant dean of Yale College, at pamela.george@yale.edu.


T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Study: Farming is changing chemistry of Mississippi River

Pink is the new Yale blue for teams raising funds . . .

‘Non-standard economist’ exploring motivations behind . . .

Other SOM behavior research studies explore consumers’ . . .

Yale librarian and skater passes on her passion to local youngsters

In new role at Yale, art conservator will exhance campus programs

Yale University Library starts the new year with staff changes

Drawings by European ‘masters’ are featured in gallery exhibit

Black History Month celebration features art, music and more

Yale Opera will present ‘Die Fledermaus’

Protection of cultural heritage is focus of ‘Iraq Beyond the Headlines’

In new exhibition, architects envision ‘a future that could have been’

Exhibition features unique gifts from around the globe

It takes two

First Yale BioHaven Entrepreneurship Seminar series event . . .

Memorial service will be held in Dwight Chapel

Conversation on health care


Bulletin Home|Visiting on Campus|Calendar of Events|In the News

Bulletin Board|Classified Ads|Search Archives|Deadlines

Bulletin Staff|Public Affairs|News Releases| E-Mail Us|Yale Home