Skidmore College Hosts Interesting Discussions This Week
SARATOGA SPRINGS – Two opportunities to expand your perspectives are being hosted at Skidmore this week:
Wednesday, March 22: Award-winning journalist presents lecture about Russian and American relations dating back to 1917
Pulitzer, Polk and Overseas Press Club Award-winning journalist Will Englund will present a lecture discussing the content of his newly published book titled March 1917: On the Brink of War and Revolution.
The book tells parallel stories about the US and Russia during the time of World War I, arguing that March 1917 was a foundational month for our current relationship. Englund’s narrative recaptures these anxious days and provides an often-overlooked origin story of contemporary America, modern Russia, and the state of affairs the rivalry created that we confront to this day.
In early 1917, America and Russia both faced the possibility of unprecedented transformations. As the “war to end all wars” ground into its third year, and technological slaughter engulfed Europe, Americans steadfastly maintained their neutrality in the conflict, while Russia teetered between autocracy and democracy. The book looks at some of the problems both countries faced: poverty, prejudice, the Jim Crow south with its white supremacist violence, social stratification, economic instability, prohibition and women’s suffrage.
The lecture and book signing is free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and can be signed by the author.
Wednesday, March 22
5:30 pm
Palamountain 202
Skidmore College
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Tang Hosts Accelerator Series Discussion: Whiteness and ‘Default Culture’
This year’s inaugural event in the Tang Teaching Museum’s Accelerator Series – Whiteness and “Default Culture” – will take place on Thursday, March 23, at 6:30 pm. The focus of the evening’s discussion will be an exploration of race in America through the lens of a majority perspective about what it means to be white and the concept of a “default culture” in a multicultural society.
The panelists for this Accelerator talk will be Dr. Treva B. Lindsey, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University; Matthew Cooke, filmmaker and editor of the Oscar-nominated documentary Deliver Us From Evil (2006); and Dara Silverman, founding director of Showing Up for Racial Justice, a national network of groups and individuals organizing white people for racial justice. The discussion will be moderated by the Tang’s Curator-at-Large Isolde Brielmaier.
As part of the Accelerator Series, a work of art from the Tang’s collection will be on view as a catalyst for conversation. Four lawn jockeys from Willie Cole’s To Get to the Other Side, 2001, will be on view. The complete work of art features 32 cast-concrete black lawn jockeys and a 16-by-16-foot galvanized steel chessboard.
The Accelerator Series is the Tang Teaching Museum’s dynamic conversation series on big ideas and big issues that seeks to find new entry points into discussions that veer from traditional paths. As an open and inclusive public forum for dialogue, exchange and questioning, the Accelerator Series ignites a collective sense of intellectual curiosity and fosters thoughtful engagement with a deeper understanding of compelling issues that have the potential to spark radical transformations.
The series features key cultural influencers from the arts and culture sector as well as academia, entertainment, government, journalism, media, politics and beyond, who present new perspectives and disrupt the status quo by encouraging a “getting comfortable with discomfort” attitude in order to think and work through big ideas it to drive change.
