All Events
MCC in Santa Barbara
An Evening of Spoken Word with Beau Sia
508 E. HALEY ST., SANTA BARBARA, CA
Beau Sia is the son of Chinese immigrants from the Philippines and a world-renowned poet and performer. Raised in Oklahoma City, he discovered poetry as a way to express himself in an environment where he felt invisible. Beau’s style is humorous and satirical. He is a Tony Award winning spoken word artist, featured on all 6 seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and the winner of two National Poetry Slam championships.
Really Feeling It: Ambiguity and Sincerity in Egyptian Pop Music & Politics
MCC THEATER
The political music created during and after the 2011 uprising in Egypt is a dichotomy between the music industry’s importance of attracting the widest audience possible by generating vague and superficial lyrics; and Egyptian youth’s place an importance of sincere emotion as an aesthetic criteria for pop music. This talk will explore the nature of aesthetic conundrums and explain one of the major problems that activists face in trying to gain public support for systemic change. Daniel Gilman’s research is based from his time in Cairo in which he was witness to the 2011 uprising.
Cup of Culture
Two Americans
MCC THEATER
During a two-year period beginning in July of 2010, the parents of over 200,000 US children were removed from the country; the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, Arizona, run by Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio incarcerates more undocumented immigrants than any other prison in the nation. Bolstered by federal programs and draconian state laws, Arpaio has routinely conducted work site raids and saturation patrols to make arrests in neighborhoods that are predominantly Latino. Two Americans is a character-driven documentary that redefines what it means to be “American.” English, 2012, US.
Religion Today
Not Quite Conquered: Identity Politics and Free Speech in a Secular Age - Abbas Barzegar
MCC LOUNGE
From Chick-fil-A to Charlie Hebdo, the boundaries of freedom of speech and religion continue to provoke public debate. Although European social thought and practice divided the worlds of science, philosophy, and political organization over the course of its own Enlightenment experiment, similar efforts were rarely realized in the contact zones of Colonialism. Is it helpful to understand religious identity as an unconquered site of colonial modernity? This talk explores the historical and philosophical underpinnings of contemporary American and European debates on the limits of free speech and religious identity. Abbas Barzegar is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Georgia State University.
