Hello!
Students
who are interested in political voice, media, performance
and the responsibilities of citizenship (or any of those!): you are invited to
have lunch with Debra Vidali this Friday, Sept. 21, at 11:00 AM in Room 272 at
800 E. Third St. [See the description of her public talk after that lunch,
below.]
We
will talk about her Re-Generation project, http://regenerationinitiative.com,
and the possibility of staging a public reading and discussion here on campus.
Lunch refreshments will be provided.
If
you are interested in attending, it would be helpful if you could reply to pace@indiana.edu, but you are welcome to
attend without notifying us. There is a limit to the number who can fit into
the room, however, so the lunch will be closed if that fills up.
Joelene Bergonzi, Associate Director
Political and Civic Engagement Program -- PACE
Ballantine Hall 132; 812-856-1747
pace @ indiana.edu; http://pace.indiana.edu
-------------------------------------------
September 21st
From Media Ethnography to Theatrical Production: Voices,
Transformations, and Instigations with Re-Generation
Debra Spitulnik Vidali (Emory University)
held at 1:15 -- Myers Hall room 130
Communication and Culture Colloquium Series
sponsored by Anthropology, Communication and Culture,
Cultural Studies,
International Studies and PACE
Abstract: This talk discusses two dimensions of my
ongoing research into
young adults' relations to news media and politics.
The first dimension
concerns the nature of ethnography and the
epistemological challenges in
attempting to document and theorize from a
person-centered,
phenomenological perspective what it means to connect
with the (or a)
public sphere. The second dimension reflects on an
ongoing experiment
in public scholarship, which includes bringing the social
science
research to the theatrical stage. In 2009-2010, I
wrote and produced a
documentary theatrical work based on ethnographic and
interview research
into young adults' engagements with media and politics in
the United
States. The play entitled "Re-Generation: A Play
about Political
Stances, Media Insanity, and Adult Responsibilities"
had three showings
in Atlanta, with a total audience attendance of 150
people. Additional
audiences have subsequently been reached with the
screening of a 60
minute DVD of the performance. My hope was, and continues
to be, that
this ongoing experiment in scholar-activism contributes
to new insights
and breakthroughs both within and across generations,
particularly in
what are increasingly complex times for public sphere
engagement in the
U.S.
--
associate professor
Department of Communication and Culture
