Events By Quarter
Race Matters
The N-word: History, Race, and the College Classroom Elizabeth Pryor
MCC Lounge
This lecture grapples with a conundrum: How do we teach the difficult racial history of the U.S. past without inflicting harm in the present? The n-word, in particular--a word that is prevalent in both racist and anti-racist documents, art, literature and politics--poses a problem when invoked insensitively in academic spaces. By discussing her own experience in the classroom as well as the long history of the n-word in the United States, Pryor makes sense of a word that has been likened to an 'atomic bomb.' Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is an associate professor of History at Smith College and the author of Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War.
Music Performance
Afro-Cuban Musical Fusion Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca
MCC Theater
Ricardo Lemvo is the embodiment of the Afro-Latin Diaspora which connects back to Mother Africa via the Cuban clave rhythm. Through a blend of Afro-Cuban rhythms with pan-African styles (soukous, Angolan semba and kizomba), he has established himself as a pioneer with his innovative music. Since forming his Los Angeles-based band Makina Loca in 1990, Lemvo has refined his craft and vision, singing songs that celebrate life, and inspiring his audiences to let loose and dance away their worries. His music has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “seamless and infectious.” $5 for UCSB students and youth under 12; $15 for general admission.
Purchase tickets here: http://goo.gl/Zbr1er
Youth Event
Stories from Here, There, and Everywhere! Michael D. McCarty
MCC Lounge
Storytelling preserves and brings to life our history, traditions, and ideas. Bring your family to hear wonderful folk tales from Nigeria, Botswana, Egypt, and Rwanda told by master storyteller Michael D. McCarty. Michael is an energetic and enthusiastic storyteller of African, African-American and International Folk tales as well as historical, spiritual, and personal tales, that inform, educate, inspire, and amuse.
Resilient Love
An Evening of Spoken Word Sunni Patterson
MCC Theater
Sunni Patterson is a New Orleans based poet who combines the heritage, culture, and traditions of her hometown with a spiritual worldview to create powerful music and poetry. She is poetry in action; she is a political wordsmith. Her words capture a culture, unite people, and shed light on issues some would find uncomfortable or un-newsworthy. Most of all, she is enlightening and speaks her truth, giving other women the power and strength to do so as well. She is 'a Black woman warrior poet doing [her] work - [here] to ask you, are you doing yours?'. Sunni Patterson captures sunlight and radiates it in her being, in her words, and in her action.
