Lisa Karrer (b. 1957), Station 1 from SHELTER, 2020; Courtesy of the artist
SHELTER: A Conversation with Susan Abulhawa
Feb 11, 2021 7:00pm — 9:00pm
The Burchfield Penney Art Center is excited to present a conversation with renowned author Susan Abulhawa and Dr. Lorna Perez as part of our upcoming exhibition by Lisa Karrer, SHELTER. SHELTER seeks to illuminate the critical role played by the City of Buffalo, where refugee organizations intersect with local communities in vitally important ways, by chronicling human truths and experiences of displaced people who lack safe homes or communities to function within. Individuals in these traumatic circumstances quickly lose their sense of personal identity: they become disconnected, vulnerable to mental and physical states of deterioration and dissociation. SHELTER seeks to heighten public awareness of the importance of Buffalo, which serves as a critical sanctuary for refugees. The event will be streaming from the Burchfield Penney Art Center Facebook page, as well as on Zoom. The Zoom link is attached below:
You are invited to a Zoom webinar.
When: Feb 11, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: SHELTER: A Conversation with Susan Abulhawa
When: Feb 11, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Topic: SHELTER: A Conversation with Susan Abulhawa
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
Passcode: 492392
Or iPhone one-tap :
US: +16465588656,,87149232174# or +13017158592,,87149232174#
Or Telephone:
Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):
US: +1 646 558 8656 or +1 301 715 8592 or +1 312 626 6799 or +1 253 215 8782 or +1 346 248 7799 or +1 669 900 9128
Webinar ID: 871 4923 2174
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kLU5c39Vf
US: +16465588656,,87149232174# or +13017158592,,87149232174#
Or Telephone:
Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):
US: +1 646 558 8656 or +1 301 715 8592 or +1 312 626 6799 or +1 253 215 8782 or +1 346 248 7799 or +1 669 900 9128
Webinar ID: 871 4923 2174
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kLU5c39Vf
About:
susan abulhawa is a novelist, poet, essayist, scientist, mother, and activist. Her debut novel Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury, 2010), translated into 30 languages, is considered a classic in Anglophile Palestinian literature. Its reach and sales has made abulhawa the most widely read Palestinian author. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water (Bloomsbury, 2015), was likewise an international bestseller. Against the Loveless World (Simon & Schuster, 2020) is out in August. She is also the author of a poetry collection, My Voice Sought The Wind (Just World Books, 2013), contributor to several anthologies, political commentator, and frequent speaker. Abulhawa is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization dedicated to uplifting Palestinian children. She is also co-chair of Palestine Writes, the first North American Palestinian literature festival.
susan abulhawa is a novelist, poet, essayist, scientist, mother, and activist. Her debut novel Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury, 2010), translated into 30 languages, is considered a classic in Anglophile Palestinian literature. Its reach and sales has made abulhawa the most widely read Palestinian author. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky and Water (Bloomsbury, 2015), was likewise an international bestseller. Against the Loveless World (Simon & Schuster, 2020) is out in August. She is also the author of a poetry collection, My Voice Sought The Wind (Just World Books, 2013), contributor to several anthologies, political commentator, and frequent speaker. Abulhawa is the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization dedicated to uplifting Palestinian children. She is also co-chair of Palestine Writes, the first North American Palestinian literature festival.
Dr. Lorna Perez is an associate professor of English, teaching courses in Latina/o literature, ethnic minority literatures of the United States, women's literature, contemporary literature, 20th century American literature, and popular culture/cultural studies. She specializes in Latina/o literature, though her research interests also include ethnic literatures of the United States, postcolonialism, diaspora, feminism, borderland theory, cultural studies and the literatures of the global south. Her critical work has appeared in numerous encyclopedias, and journals including Chicana/Latina Studies, Ethnic Studies Review, and others. Her most recent critical work "Out of Time: Resisting the Nation in One Hundred Years of Solitude" appears in the newly published Palgrave Handbook of Magical Realism in the Twenty-First Century. Her creative work has been published in elimae, The Mississippi Review, Label me Latina, BlazeVox18, and The Buffalo News.
In addition to her work in the English Department, Dr. Perez also works with a variety of interdisciplinary committees and boards, including the Honors' Program Board (where she served as a faculty fellow from 2018-2019). In the summer of 2014, she was elected interim Chair of the English Department for academic year 2014-2015. She was the recipient of the Muriel A. Howard Presidential Award for the Promotion of Equity and Campus Diversity for 2017-2018 and the EOP Faculty Merit Award for 2019.
Beyond the campus, Dr. Perez served as the guest editor for the Label me Latina/o Special Summer 2020 issue (Un)Natural Disasters: Sites of Resistance. She has also been appointed the permanent Special Issues Editor for the journal, beginning in Fall 2020.
More about SHELTER:
SHELTER is a gallery-sized installation by interdisciplinary artist Lisa Karrer, a Buffalo native, for the Burchfield Penney Art Center. This multi-arts project incorporates audio soundtracks and green screen video projections embedded within a “city” of ceramic architectural forms.
SHELTER is a gallery-sized installation by interdisciplinary artist Lisa Karrer, a Buffalo native, for the Burchfield Penney Art Center. This multi-arts project incorporates audio soundtracks and green screen video projections embedded within a “city” of ceramic architectural forms.
SHELTER seeks to illuminate the critical role played by the City of Buffalo, where refugee organizations intersect with local communities in vitally important ways, by chronicling human truths and experiences of displaced people who lack safe homes or communities to function within. Individuals in these traumatic circumstances quickly lose their sense of personal identity: they become disconnected, vulnerable to mental and physical states of deterioration and dissociation. SHELTER heightens public awareness of the importance of Buffalo, which serves as a critical sanctuary for refugees.
SHELTER presents us with the content and confluence of lives, much like our own, disrupted by vicissitudes of displacement caused by fear and global terrorism. The installation offers us opportunities to recognize ourselves in the narratives of people who find themselves displaced, and who desperately seek what many take for granted: a home, in a community where one can participate, contribute, and evolve on a daily basis.
In its totality, SHELTER links viewers to the shared familiarity of everyday life, and leads them to contemplate what for most of us is unthinkable: existing for months or years without home or status, unable to contribute towards the well-being of family and community, with selfhood essentially unrecognized. The untenable and life-threatening situations of refugees, unthinkable to most of us, should be revealed and understood in light of who they are: our fellow human beings, with the same rights as we have.