Welcome to "Changing the World: The Meaning of Revolution"! Spring semester, 2009, will feature a rich medley of forums, exhibits, presentations, and courses across KU's four area studies centers. The goal of the semester is to consider the meanings and outcomes of revolution across the societies and cultures of the world. Three major forums will be devoted to change in society, science, and the arts, gender, and the environment. Events and exhibits are open to the KU community and the general public.
"Changing the World: The Meaning of Revolution" is presented by the International Area Studies Centers: the Center for East Asian Studies; the Center of Latin American Studies; the Kansas African Studies Center; the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the Spencer Museum of Art as part of a year-long program devoted to "protest and revolution."
Revolution in Film
October 06 - December 01, 2008
How have protest and revolution been portrayed in the cinema? Join us to see the ways different cultures have handled these controversial topics. See the poster for details of film titles and dates and times of showings (.pdf)
Vitaly Komar
Vitaly Komar, a famous Moscow Conceptualist artist, will be visiting KU for four days from Wednesday, Feb. 25, to Saturday, Feb. 28., 2009. Poster of Events. To learn more about Vitaly Komar go to http://www.artnet.com/awc/vitaly-komar.html
Art, Music and Revolution
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Spencer Art Museum, Reception Room (room 307)
K-16 Workshop
Lesson PlansThe workshop addresses the roles that music and visual art play in revolutionary movements throughout the world, particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Africa and Latin America. The goal is to develop applications of this knowledge in the K-16 classroom. (For the poster, click here. For full program, click here.)
Forum Series
Changing the World: The Meanings of Revolution
Spring 2009
"What Does 'Revolution' Mean in Our Time? Society, Science, and the Arts"
Friday, February 27, 2009, 3:00-5:30 p.m.
The Commons, Spooner Hall
"Changing the World: Revolutionary Thinking about the Environment"This first forum in the "Changing the World" series addresses the following question: Over the last century has there been a "paradigm shift" in the meaning of "revolution"? I It can be argued that the traditional understanding of revolution as radical social-political change is no longer dominant in our time. We think of revolutionary change initiated through organized social and political resistance or violent overthrow of the existing order-which is driven by some utopian vision of an ideal future. While "revolution" in the 21st century certainly involves technological innovation, it also involves rethinking and rediscovering how people interact with the environment and religion. In the arts and literature of the latter half of the 20th century, images of change are often playful, parodying rather than confronting. The question of the sources and "springs" of the "new" is always a central concern. In our "post-" era, coming after the more radical products of the Enlightenment-modernism, communism, colonialism, to name a few-although there is no artistic "avant-garde" in the modernist sense of the word, art continues to disturb, interrogate, challenge the status quo, and move audiences to change how they live. (For the poster, click here.)
Over the last 200 years the natural environment has played a crucial role in radical social thought, whether leftist or ultraconservative. In the early 21st century, however, it is the endangered environment itself that has forced thinking that is changing how humans live on this planet. This roundtable focuses on these two kinds of interaction: 1) the historical and contemporary ways that revolutionary thinking and social revolution have conceptualized the natural environment; and 2) how the environmental change of the last half century has radically changed our conceptions of our lives. (For the poster, click here.)
