Ödön von Horváth’s plays, although popular in Germany, are notoriously difficult to translate due to the stylized speech and cultural references von Horváth used in his desire for a realistic portrayal of the bourgeoisie of the Weimar Republic. Under the guidance of the skilled Scottish director and writer Alan McKendrick, students in GER 352 will perform a dramatic reading of their own translation of von Horváth's Kasimir und Karoline. There will also be a Q&A with the students and director after the reading. Reception with refreshments to follow.

Viewer discretion is advised. Both the original text and the translation contain phrasing that is sexual in nature which might make some viewers uncomfortable. 

The event features Dr. Anne Prescott, Director of Five College Center for East Asian Studies, Smith College, and will be the combination of koto performance and commentary of the music she will play.  This event is free and open to the public, and is organized by the UK's Japan Studies program with support from the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures & Cultures and the International Studies Program.





Dr. Anne Prescott has a BM (music education) from Cornell College in Iowa and an MM (clarinet performance) and PhD (ethnomusicology) from Kent State University. She has been studying the koto since she was a sophomore at Cornell College, and she spent eight years living and studying koto and shamisen in Japan, including one year as a research student at Tokyo University of the Arts. While in Japan she performed with Kisokai and Group Aya, and she is a member of the Miyagi Koto Association. Her dissertation focused on the life and works of koto master and composer Miyagi Michio. She is currently the Director of the Five College Center for East Asian Studies located at Smith College in Northampton, MA, and previously worked and taught at the University of Illinois, Indiana University, and Augustana College in Illinois.

August 2014: my activist, academic, and journalistic lives collided in a digitized split-second. Online, I came face-to-surreal-face with ISIS’ execution of a colleague, terrified for the haunting film’s second captive—a friend. Although immersed professionally and personally in graphic image wars, this video proved especially disturbing, but why? Marketing’s analytical frame, strategic deployment of popular culture, and the intended audience of young, digitally networked “global citizens” best contextualizes the ISIS phenomenon: a propaganda blitzkrieg rooted in commodified rebellion’s consumption (Che t-shirts), not theology. ISIS exemplifies the paradoxical power of cultural production in contemporary geopolitical combat theater—war’s increasingly symbolic terrain.

Amanda E. Rogers holds a PhD from Emory (2013). She is an academic, journalist, artist, and political analyst whose work appears in numerous forums, including the BBC, Al-Jazeera, and the New York Times. Her forthcoming monograph, Semiotics of Rebellion From Morocco to Egypt: Advertising Revolution and Marketing Allegiance, focuses on the critical use of politicized cultural discourse for international alliances, regional stability, and intra nation-state image warfare.

With funding from Chellgren Center.

http://finearts.uky.edu/events/art/black-flags-isis-%E2%80%9Cswag%E2%80…;

Israel is a microcosm of the sign language world.  Within a country about equal in area to New Jersey, Israel contains both a widely dispersed deaf community sign language used in schools, Israeli Sign Language, and a number of much smaller village sign languages, each confined to a single community and used only within its confines.  Our research team was formed to study Israeli Sign Language, but we have also spent the last decade studying and documenting the sign language of the Bedouin village of Al-Sayyid, located near Be’er Sheva, the ancestral home of Abraham.  I will compare the history and structure of these two languages and show how the study of their emergence has provided a variety of insights into language and human nature.

Joe Goodkin's Odyssey is a 30-minute original musical composition for solo acoustic guitar and voice, a folk opera that tells the story of Homer's Odyssey in a series of 24 short songs.