CEE #39

Still from "Sequence One", edited by Kinjal Dave and filmed by Kinjal Dave and Rabani Gang

ISSUE CONTENTS

LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR | CLAIMING BLACKNESS | FIELD NOTES FROM THE EMPATHIC UNIVERSE | IMANI UZURI | WAHZMAH OSMAN | SEQUENCE ONE | GATHERINGS |

We hope everyone in this corner of the world got some rest over the holiday weekend, and that you were able to enjoy family, food, and football (if that is your thing). Here at our house, we split the win in spades games, and turkey leftovers have been transformed into curry. In the spirit of the season and as we look forward to a new year, I wanted to offer some words of thanks. I am grateful for:

CEE colleagues who are adventurous, generous, and always down for something different;

Fellows who are inspiring, flexible, and pedagogically present;

An incomparably fantabulous staff (Alissa and Jezenia, you totally rock!);

Students who take space and make space, and who keep surprising us with new ideas;

The interest and support of people across the globe who are committed to facing the challenges of the past and the present in new ways so that we can bring new futures into being!

We are looking forward to celebrating the work of our fellows over the next two weeks, and please mark your calendars for our CEE 5th Anniversary Carnival, 1 May 2023!! Our fellows are coming back, and we have lots of fun stuff in the works – more to come! Until then, enjoy December!!

Deborah A. Thomas
R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology
Director, Center for Experimental Ethnography

Special Events

THURSDAY, DEC 1ST AT 5:00 PM
AT SLOUGHT ART SPACE
"Claiming Blackness" Film Screening, Reception & Book Launch

Damani Partridge, Riccardo Valsechhi, and Ibrahim Telly Balde

Join us this Thursday at Slought for Damani Partridge's (Fall 2022 CEE Fellow) final event! At 5:00 we will begin with a reception, to be followed by a film screening and discussion. We will be celebrating the release of Damani's newest book "Blackness as a Universal Claim". Books will be available for purchase and filmmakers and special visitors will engage in discussion after the film. >>KEEP READING<<

FRIDAY, DEC 9th AT 4:30 PM
Saya Woolfalk and "Field Notes from the Empathic Universe"

Join us for a conversation and catalog release party for "Field Notes from the Empathic Universe" with artist and CEE Fellow Saya Woolfalk on December 9th, 2022, at 4:30 PM. The event will take place in person at Morgan Gallery on the First Floor of Weitxman Hall 205 S. 34th Street. This richly illustrated catalog includes full color prints of Saya's current exhibit at the Newark Museum of Art. No registration is required! >>KEEP READING<<

Incoming Spring Fellows

Imani Uzuri

Imani Uzuri, raised in rural North Carolina, is an award-winning vocalist, composer, experimental librettist, and improviser called “a postmodernist Bessie Smith” by the Village Voice. She composes, performs, and creates interdisciplinary works (for theater, ritual performance, chorus, chamber ensemble, sound-art and film) often dealing with themes of ancestral memory, magical realism, liminality, Black American vernacular culture, spirituality and landscape. Her ritual performance Wild Cotton was cited as one “with subtlety and vision” by the New York Times. As a Jerome Foundation Composer/Sound Artist Fellow Uzuri began making international sojourns to over 30 shrines as embodied research for her forthcoming ritual opera celebrating the holy iconography of the Black Madonna. Recently in support of this new work, she was a Camargo Foundation Composer-In-Residence in Cassis, France. Uzuri has been commissioned by Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Harvard Fromm Players and The Ford Foundation. Her Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commission She Knows Suite premiered at Lincoln Center Atrium in late February 2020. Uzuri received her MFA from Goddard College Vermont and her M.A. in African American Studies from Columbia University. Uzuri was a 2019-2020 Harvard University W. E. B. DuBois Hutchins Center Fellow in support of her forthcoming experimental chamber opera Hush Arbor (The Opera). From 2020-2022 Uzuri has created various experimental solo ritual performances centering themes of sanctuary and healing.

Embodied Ethnographies: performance art, ritual performance, and poetic praxis
ANTH 366/666 | GSWS366 | AFRC666 | MUSC666

This course will investigate embodied research modalities (from mundane to ethereal), performance praxis centering Blackness, Indigeneity, queerness and cultural practices outside of the western eurocentric gaze embedded with the politics of agency, marginality, identity, mythmaking, subversiveness and sacredness. >>MORE<<

Wazhmah Osman

Wazhmah Osman is an Afghan-American academic and filmmaker. She is currently an associate professor in the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. Her research and teaching are rooted in feminist media ethnographies that focus on the political economy of global media industries and the regimes of representation and visual culture they produce.

Autoethnography in the age of online profiles and selfies
ANTH666 | CIMS366 | COMM366 | FNAR366

What drives people to make work about themselves? What qualifies as autoethnography, and what distinguishes autoethnography from other forms of autobiographical storytelling? >>MORE<<

Conversations

Kinjal Dave
Sequence One

In Summer 2022, Kinjal Dave and Rabani Garg of the newly-formed Tik Tiki Productions traveled to the Sundarbans to continue filming for their CEE-supported film project, "Retold." . The documentary will establish a connection between Jungle-nama, a graphic novel by Amitav Ghosh, illustrated by Salman Toor, Jungle-nama, the CEE workshop performance led by Brooke O'Harra, Amitav Ghosh, and Ali Sethi, and Bonbibi Johnornama, the performance in the Sundarbans on which Ghosh's adaptation is based. The film will offer a correspondence between the two ensembles of Bonbibi Johornama performers, juxtaposing student interviews, artist interviews, and rehearsal performances at Penn with interviews of performers, and their final performances, in Bonbibi Johnornama in the Sundarbans.

"Sequence One" is the audiovisual report from the first season of filming for the "Retold" project. It includes a montage of sunrise over Bally Island in the Sundarbans, West Bengal, India, a rendition of the Bonabibi Johoranama, fieldwork in conversation with local residents, and more. >>WATCH NOW<<

Gatherings

CAMRA GRADUATE GROUP
Multimodal Workshops

Join CAMRA workshop your multimodal projects, ideas, or concepts! Starting October 2022, CAMRA will be hosting a monthly workshop space on second Thursdays for people to bring in, share, and work through their multimodal projects with a community of people interested in and/ or are engaged in multimodal work. Expect visits from CAMRA mentors, faculty, members and alumni through the semester. We will be at the Center for Experimental Ethnography and will have access to video and audio technology for those who might need it.

CEE #39

LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR | CLAIMING BLACKNESS | FIELD NOTES FROM THE EMPATHIC UNIVERSE | IMANI UZURI | WAHZMAH OSMAN | SEQUENCE ONE | GATHERINGS |

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