All Events
Cup of Culture
Crazy Rich Asians
MCC Theater
Rachel Chu, an American-born Chinese economics professor, has been dating her boyfriend Nick Young for over a year when he invites her on a trip to his home country of Singapore to attend his friend Colin's wedding and meet his family. On the trip, when they're booked into first class on the plane, Rachel soon finds out Nick comes from a very wealthy family. In fact, he's one of the most sought-after unmarried men back home — and probably throughout the rest of Asia. When Rachel meets Nick's mother, Eleanor, it quickly becomes clear that the woman thinks Rachel isn't good enough for her son and never will be. Knowing that his family is very important to Nick, Rachel feels she either has to stand up to Eleanor — or let Nick go.
Race Matters Series
What is the Framework for Decolonizing HSIs?
MCC Lounge
This session will focus on moving theoretical ideas about how to best serve Latinx and other minoritized students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) into practice. With the Organizational Framework for Decolonizing HSIs, Dr. Garcia argues that in order for HSIs to achieve equitable outcomes and experiences for students, they must first acknowledge the “coloniality of power” that exists within their organizational structures that are preventing students from succeeding. In this talk, Dr. Garcia will break down the nine dimensions of the framework, talking more specifically about how to implement these ideas in practice. Dr. Gina Ann Garcia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Administrative and Policy Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches master’s and doctoral students pursuing degrees in higher education and student affairs.
Performance
The Alif Series: In Conversation With The Dead Zulfikar Ali Bhutto //Faluda Islam\\
MCC Theater
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto //Faluda Islam\\ is an artist, performer, zombie drag queen, and curator of mixed Pakistani, Lebanese, and Iranian descent. His work explores complex identities formed by centuries of colonialism and exacerbated by contemporary international politics. Bhutto unpacks the intersections of queerness and Islam and how it exists in a constant liminal and non-aligned space. Faluda Islam is less a drag queen and more a drag comrade, she is more 'extra' than terrestrial, and more dead than alive. She has traveled through time and space and been brought back to life through wifi technology from a gory encounter with American allied troops in Libya. As a time traveller and living corpse, she has many powers including being able to speak to the dead, as she herself comes back to life she will also resurrect, if only for a brief period, martyrs, comrades, allies, and family who she must engage in conversation with to understand her own struggle.
Cup of Culture
Tested
MCC Theater
The racialized opportunity gap in America remains extreme. Nowhere is this more evident than our nation's top public schools. In New York City, where Blacks and Hispanics make up 70% of the city's school-aged population, they represent less than 5% at the city's most elite public high schools. Meanwhile, Asian Americans make up as much as 73%. This documentary, in an effort to prove that this gap is systematic, not individual, follows a dozen racially and socioeconomically diverse 8th graders as they fight for a seat at one of these schools. Their only way in: to ace a single standardized test. TESTED includes the voices of such education experts as Pedro Noguera and Diane Ravitch as it explores such issues as access to a high-quality public education, affirmative action, and the model-minority myth. Post film discussion with director, Curtis Chin. himself!
