Monday, January 18, 2010

Keynote Address
6:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M.
Blau Auditorium, Ross School of Business
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Linda Biehl and Ntobeko Peni, moderated by Karthy Govender
The keynote address will take the form of a chaired dialogue between Linda Biehl and Ntobeko Peni. Linda's daughter, Amy, was a Fulbright Scholar working in South Africa prior to the first democratic elections there in 1994. She was killed in a racially motivated mob attack, and Ntobeko Peni was one of the perpetrators, imprisoned for five years before being granted amnesty by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Today, amazingly, Peni is a Program Manager at the Amy Biehl Foundation (ABF), which is an NGO set up by Amy's parents in her memory, focusing on running after-school programs in dance, drama, music, and HIV peer-education for at-risk and impoverished South African youth. It services approximately 1500 schoolchildren each week.
(Ntobeko Peni & Linda Biehl)
Biehl and Peni will begin by addressing the historical aspects of their story. This entails not just details of Amy Biehl's work and tragic death, but also a discussion of the experience of black youth in South Africa during Apartheid. Peni will describe the process of politicization he and his peers underwent at an extremely young age, and elaborate on the moral dilemma faced by an oppressed people taking up arms to make a country ungovernable by an unjust regime.

The F Word: Images of Forgiveness
Art Exhibit from the Forgiveness Project
6:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M.
Blau Auditorium Lobby, Ross School of Business
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(description from the Forgiveness Project):
The F Word: Images of Forgiveness exhibition is a thought provoking collection of arresting images and personal narratives exploring forgiveness in the face of atrocity. First launched in London in 2004, it has since been displayed in over 300 venues worldwide. Drawing together voices from South Africa, America, Israel, Palestine, Northern Ireland and England, the exhibition examines forgiveness as a healing process, a journey out of victimhood and, ultimately, a journey of hope.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The F Word: Images of Forgiveness
Art Exhibit from the Forgiveness Project
2:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M.
Michigan Room, Michigan League
click here for a map

(description from the Forgiveness Project):
The F Word: Images of Forgiveness exhibition is a thought provoking collection of arresting images and personal narratives exploring forgiveness in the face of atrocity. First launched in London in 2004, it has since been displayed in over 300 venues worldwide. Drawing together voices from South Africa, America, Israel, Palestine, Northern Ireland and England, the exhibition examines forgiveness as a healing process, a journey out of victimhood and, ultimately, a journey of hope.

Panel: Public Health Perspectives
3:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M.
Michigan Room, Michigan League
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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Talk by Yazier Henry: Spectres of Forgiveness
1:00 P.M. to 2:00 P.M.
Koessler Room, Michigan League
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Yazier Henry of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies (CAAS) will present.

Talk by Nesha Haniff: Ngoism, Dependency and South African Development
2:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M.
Koessler Room, Michigan League
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Nesha Haniff of the Department of Women's Studies and Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies (CAAS) will present: The onslaught of goodwill, funding and international organizations that have poured into South Africa and its role as a site for innumerable research projects and publications have made this country the destination of choice for the western world. This talk will examine some of the reasons for this and how South Africans themselves have managed to build their country and minimized the impact of this "help".

Talk by Adam Ashforth: Spiritual Insecurity: The negative corollary of ubuntu
3:30 P.M. to 4:30 P.M.
Koessler Room, Michigan League
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Adam Ashforth of the Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies (CAAS) will address the negative corollary of ubuntu: If a person is a person through other persons, as the philosophy of ubuntu suggests, what happens when someone hates you?

Film Screening and Discussion: Encounter Point
6:00 P.M.
Hussey Room, Michigan League
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Co-produced and sponsored by the Ann Arbor Palestine Film Festival. Post-viewing discussion moderated by Amer Ahmed, Associate Director, Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs.
(Abstract from www.encounterpoint.com):
Encounter Point is an 85-minute feature documentary film that follows a former Israeli settler, a Palestinian ex-prisoner, a bereaved Israeli mother and a wounded Palestinian bereaved brother who risk their lives and public standing to promote a nonviolent end to the conflict. Their journeys lead them to the unlikeliest places to confront hatred within their communities. The film explores what drives them and thousands of other like-minded civilians to overcome anger and grief to work for grassroots solutions. It is a film about the everyday leaders in our midst.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Panel: Student Reflections on International Service
3:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M.
Anderson Room, Michigan Union
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Participants:
Flojaune Griffin, Ph.D. candidate in Epidemiology
Nate May, Undergraduate, School of Music, Theatre & Dance (concentration jazz piano) Marc Krawitz, Ph.D candidate in Mathematics
Errol Wint, Career Center representative

Lecture and Performance by Nate May: Instruments of Change: Improvised Music in Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa
6:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M.
Anderson Room, Michigan Union
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For many musicians improvisation is an embrace of – or a demand for – freedom. In South Africa, improvised music has served both the struggle against and the recovery from the restrictions on basic freedom that were in place until the fall of the apartheid regime in 1994. Jazz piano student Nate May will discuss and illustrate his personal experience and research during a year in Cape Town, with a focus on a Khoisan performance poetry group, Methodist church music, and local jazz traditions.
Read more at The Michigan Daily

Performance by Amer Ahmed: Spoken Word Interlude
7:15 P.M. to 7:30 P.M.
Anderson Room, Michigan Union
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Amer Ahmed, Associate Director, Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs will perform spoken word poetry.

Lecture and Performance by Matthew Leslie: Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika: Music as a Tool for Empowerment and Agency Development
7:45 P.M. to 8:45 P.M.
Anderson Room, Michigan Union
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While in South Africa teaching about HIV/AIDS with the group Pedagogy of Action, Matthew had the opportunity to transcribe and perform Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika, part of the South African National Anthem. He also had the fortune to watch many of his students perform. Back in the United States, he began teaching music in a not-for-profit setting in Detroit through the Sphinx Organization. Drawing from these experiences, the educational philosophy of Paulo Freire, and the concept of Ubuntu, Matthew will examine the possibility of music as a tool for empowerment.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Friday Events TBD