Social Conflict Discussion February 4

 

Marianne Weems

New York, NY (January 21, 2009) – Artistic director and performance artist Marianne Weems will serve as moderator for "Art and Social Conflict," a free, public program offered jointly by New York University and Yaddo on the NYU campus Wednesday, February 4, at 6:30 p.m.

The panel discussion is the third and final segment in a three-part series – "Yaddo: Conversations about American Culture, Arts, and Social Policy" – exploring the resonance in contemporary arts and letters of key themes addressed in the "Yaddo: Making American Culture" archive exhibition on view at The New York Public Library through February 15, 2009.

Panelists for the February 4 conversation include:

Marianne Weems, artistic director and cofounder of the theater group The Builders Association. She is coeditor of Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed America and a Member of The Corporation of Yaddo.

Philip Gourevitch, editor of The Paris Review, and a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book, The Ballad of Abu Ghraib, which originally appeared as Standard Operating Procedure, will be published in paperback this spring. He is also the author of A Cold Case and We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and in England, the Guardian First Book Award. Translations of his books have been published in a dozen languages, and his short stories, essays and reportage have appeared in a number of journals.

James Hannaham, a Yaddo writer whose first novel, God Says No, is forthcoming this spring from McSweeney's Books. He has written criticism and journalism for The Village Voice, as well as Spin, Us, Out, Interview, Vibe, and others. His fiction has appeared in The Literary Review, Nerve.com, Open City, and several anthologies. He teaches creative writing at the Pratt Institute and was, until recently, a staff writer in the culture department at Salon.com.

A.M. Homes, an author of five acclaimed novels, two short story collections, and, most recently, the memoir Mistress's Daughter. She has taught at NYU, Columbia University, and The New School and is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Bomb, and Blind Spot. She is a Member of The Corporation of Yaddo.

Micki McGee, the curator of the "Yaddo: Making America Culture" exhibition at The New York Public Library and editor of the exhibition companion volume. She is a sociologist and cultural critic on the faculty of Fordham University and formerly a faculty fellow at New York University. She also is the author of Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life.

The program will be held on the New York University campus in Hemmerdinger Hall, Silver Center for Arts and Science, Room 102, 100 Washington Square East (at Washington Place), New York City. The inaugural program in the series was "Cultural Phantasms: Thoughts on Hi, Lo, and Hi-Lo Culture" on November 12. "From Patronage to Social Policy: Who Supports the Arts?," presented on December 4, was the second installment in the series. For further information, call 212.998.8100.