THE CENTER  FOR  EXPERIMENTAL ETHNOGRAPHY

futures unbound | 2020-2021 theme

CEE NEWS #17: FUTURES UNBOUND

With a letter from Deb Thomas, introductions to our Fall Fellows, and a new international collaboration...
 "On behalf of the CEE, I want to welcome you to our theme year “Futures Unbound!”  With the events of the past six months turning everything on its head, and as we mourn lives lost and precarious prospects, we also want to signal the potentiality of new and changed futures in which we are untethered from the norms of the past, unbound from the strictures of the present..." Keep reading...

FALL FELLOWS

DR. CHRISTINA KNIGHT

Christina Knight is Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at Haverford College. Before joining the Haverford faculty, she was a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at Bowdoin College as well as a Ford Foundation Diversity Fellow. Knight’s work examines the connection between embodied practices and identity, the relationship between race and the visual field, and the queer imaginary.  Keep reading...

DR. STEVEN FELD

Steven Feld, Senior Scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fé, New Mexico, is a filmmaker/photographer, sound artist/musician, and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of New Mexico. After studies in music, film, and photography, he received the Ph.D in Anthropological Linguistics at Indiana University in 1979. From 1976 he began a research project in the Bosavi rainforest of Papua New Guinea. Keep reading...

INTRODUCING THE VISUAL IDENTITIES iN ARTS AND DESIGN RESEARCH GROUP (VIAD)

The CEE  and The Visual Identities in Arts and Design Research Group at the University of Johannesburg are forging exciting transatlantic connections. Established in 2007, the VIAD research group is dedicated to deepening research around the overarching thematic of identity construction through forms of visual practice, visual culture and visual representation, and specifically in relation to African and Afrodiasporic histories and experiences. Learn more

 INTRODUCING NEW AFFILIATED FACULTY oF 2020

KRYSTAL STRONG

Assistant Professor of Education Literacy, Culture, and International Education

JASMINE E JOHNSON

Assistant Professor of Africana Studies

TOORJO GHOSE

Assistant Professor of Social Policy and Practice

RESOURCES FOR UNCERTAINTY

FEBRUARY EVENTS

ZAMA ZAMA PROJECT

Slought

Join Slought on February 20th 6:30 to 8:30 PM for Documentary for Critical Times, a conversation about the possibilities and limits of the moving image in times of crisis. Organized in conjunction with the installation The Zama Zama Project, this event will feature a conversation with artists Susan Meiselas and Rosalind Morris about what it means to produce documents and documentaries of crisis...Keep Reading

DIALOGUE

Patricia Roberts-Miller & Seth Kreimer

On February 20th, join Professor Patricia Roberts-Miller (University of Texas at Austin) and Professor Seth Kreimer (University of Pennsylvania Law School) in a dialogue about Demagoguery and Free Speech. Demagoguery has a been a frequent topic of American documentary films. Demagoguery is also seen as posing a threat to news media around the world today. But what precisely is "demagoguery"?   Read More...

THE MOVEMENT REVISITED

Christian McBride & Sonia Sanchez
Please join us for this very special discussion, moderated by Dyana Williams, and duo performance in celebration of Christian McBride’s The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons (Mack Avenue Records) at Penn Museum’s Widener Lecture Hall. The Movement Revisited grew into a sweeping four-part suite for big jazz band, small jazz group...Read More & RSVP Here...

CURRENT FELLOWS

WAYNE MODEST

Wayne Modest is the head of the Research Center of Material Culture. He is also professor of Material Culture and Critical Heritage Studies (by special appointment) in the faculty of humanities at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (VU). Modest’s work is driven by a concern for more historically contingent ways of understanding the present, especially in relation to material culture/museum collections.

EMILY CARRIS

Emily Carris is an artist and founding member of The Art Dept. Collective, a collaborative vintage store and workshop space dedicated to sharing stories and uplifting underserved artists.
Her work exploring the personal and cultural legacy of slavery and the Black female body has been exhibited nationally and internationally. 

RECENT EVENTS

SPRING FELLOW MEETUP

Emily Carris + Wayne Modest
For the first Third Thursday of 2020, students, faculty, and community friends gathered together to meet up with incoming CEE Faculty Fellows Emily Carris and Wayne Modest. Emily began her presentation  posing a question that first occurred to her in England, while contemplating an image of a slave ship in a tumultuous ocean.... "what does salt know?" Seven years after her work in England, Emily returned to Philadelphia to work on developing institutional space for art as scholarship, which culminated in her founding the Art Dept. Collective. 
Read More...

ZAMA ZAMA PROJECT

Multimodal Exhibition at Slought
The Zama Zama Project" is a multi-format installation by Rosalind Morris about the world of informal mining in the abandoned gold mines of South Africa, on display January 24 - March 20, 2020. The opening event, titled "The Cost of Gold," took place on Wednesday, January 29th from 6:30-8:30pm at Slought featured a conversation about informal mining and its representation with artist Rosalind Morris and Radhika Subramaniam, moderated by Eduardo Cadava. The exhibit and opening are both free and open to the public. 

SONIC WORLDS

Juan Castrillon (CEE Student) 
Between January 21st and the 24th, Juan Castrillon (PhD Candidate in Music and CEE Graduate Certificate Student) delivered three guest lectures at the University of Helsinki: Amazonian Indigenous Music and Communication with Non-Humans: The Sonic Worlds of the Hehenewa People, multimodal methods in ethnomusicology, and Sonic Worlds of Dervishes. In addition, the University will be hosting film screenings of Rehavi (Timekeepers) and ~Kiraiñia (Long Flutes) followed by Q&As with Juan. Check out the trailer to ~Kiraiñia here:

GET INVOLVED

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​You are also invited to contact us directly at experimental-ethno@upenn.edu.