Please join us Tuesday October 18 from 5:30-7:30 in the Pratt Library for the next speaker in the Symposium Series!

Michael Taussig's talk took place last Tuesday at Pratt Institute. He went over some of his writings and encouraged the students and other attendees to challenge the way they view observation and language. Everyone was truly engaged and a wonderful Q&A followed the talk. Afterwards the students and a few others went on to have dinner and further discuss the seemingly abstract ways that Mr. Taussig encourages others to view the world. All for the goal of us reaching a new, higher perspective, one that has the potential for changing the way we all think.

Come join us next time!

Vignoli will begin with a informal discussion shining a light on a Cuban citizen's reality of living on a average salary of $20 a month. Based upon journalist Patrick Symme's travel account in Cuba. Much of it is central to the rationing system in Cuba and its failed infrastructure, as Symme's states, "It is commonly agreed that a monthly food ration now contains just twelve days of food. I was here to make my own calculation: how could anyone survive the month on twelve days of food?" 

He will then proceed to speak on his ethnographic work that follows the informal economy in Cuba and its affect on private self-entrepreneurship. Along with the current dynamics of Cuba-US normalization.


Presentation will be this Thursday, Oct. 13th from 2:00- 4:50 and again from 5:00-7:50 in North Hall Room 110 at Pratt Institute. 


Click here to read Patrick Symmes article, "Thirty Days As A Cuban" from Harpers Magazine. 

This past weekend some students in the program took the hour and a half train ride up to Beacon, New York to visit Dia: Beacon. Everyone agreed how therapeutic it was to get out of the city for a short time to somewhere quieter. The students enjoyed each others company, beautiful art, and the opportunity to escape the rush of the city for a afternoon. 

"Dia was founded in New York City in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, Heiner Friedrich, and Helen Winkler to help artists achieve visionary projects that might not otherwise be realized because of scale or scope. To suggest the institution’s role in enabling such ambitions, they selected the name “Dia,” taken from the Greek word meaning “through.”'

To find more on the gallery, click here. 

Some of the artists we saw included:

• Dan Flavin (pictured above) 
• Blinky Palermo 
• Robert Irwin

HYPHENATED IDENTITIES /
DISCOURSES, QUESTIONS, AND POLEMICS conference

Please join the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies and the Memory Studies Group at the New
School for Social Research, the East Central European Center of Columbia University, and the Yiddish
Studies Program, and Polish Studies at Columbia University, for a conference on hyphenated identities.

Our inspiration was Horace M. Kallen, Jewish-American philosopher and one of the founders of the
New School. As a proponent of cultural pluralism, in his 1915 essay “Democracy Versus the Melting
Pot”, he resoundingly espoused the concept of hyphenated identities: “a chorus of many voices each
singing a rather different tune.”

A century later, the number of “hyphens,” or multiple identities one embraces, continues to grow
worldwide. Today, academic engagement with identity runs into ongoing real-world negotiations of
self and community: throughout ethnic conflicts, migrations, and political transformations; in wartime
landscapes, and even in stable democracies. Are these hyphenated identities affirmative or limiting?
What happens when one’s identities are in conflict? What are the key discourses — political, cultural,
artistic — that are informed by hyphenated identities? How do minorities negotiate their shifting identities?

The conference will explore the debates on hybrid and complex identities, examining the meanings
that the hyphenated identity carries today within established democracies as well as within those that
have emerged in countries undergoing political transformations.

December 4, 2015, 8.30am-6pm
The New School for Social Research
Orozco Room, A 712, Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, New York

Please join the Crit Viz program, coordinators, and students on Tuesday, November 17 at 12:30 in Dekalb 308 for a lunch featuring a talk from our visiting Fulbright Scholar, Andrea Průchová! 

You are invited to attend the third lecture in this fall’s SSCS Lecture Series, on Wednesday, October 21, at 5:30–7:30 PM, in the Alumni Reading Room at the Pratt Library. Richard Shusterman, Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy, Florida Atlantic University, will present his work on "Somaesthetics: From Pragmatism to Contemporary Art." The SSCS lecture series is sponsored by the program in Critical Visual Studies. The Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies invites faculty and scholars from around the world to present their work to the Pratt community. Students in the Critical Visual Studies Symposium seminar will introduce speakers and prepare questions for a Q&A session after each presentation. The lecture is free and open to the public.

You are invited to attend the second lecture in this fall’s SSCS Lecture Series, on Wednesday, September 30, at 5:30–7:30 PM, in the Alumni Reading Room at the Pratt Library. Christoph Lindner, Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, will be presenting his research on "Slow Art, Fast Architecture, and the End of the High Line." The SSCS lecture series is sponsored by the program in Critical Visual Studies. The Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies invites faculty and scholars from around the world to present their work to the Pratt community. Students in the Critical Visual Studies Symposium seminar will introduce speakers and prepare questions for a Q&A session after each presentation. The lecture is free and open to the public.