An online creative workshop with the title 'Damnatio Memoriae and Black Lives Matter' will take place on Friday May 21st, 2021, with the participation of Megan Coates (Stockton University/Princeton University, U.S.).
The workshop will be held between 18:30-20:30 via the ZOOM platform.
The particular event is organized as part of the Stockton U-AUTh bilateral agreement and collaboration.
Language of the workshop: English.
**A certificate of attendance will be provided**
In order to ensure your online participation in the event, please fill in the form available here.
There are certain online spaces available. The ZOOM LINK to be used for the event will be sent to everyone registered the day before (20/5).
This event is organized by the Creative Workshop Series 'Transparent Windows' (School of English, AUTh).
Event Coordinator: Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou (trapatz@enl.auth.gr)
For any further inquiries, do send your emails to: trapatz@enl.auth.gr (Tatiani Rapatzikou) and svergopo@enl.auth.gr (Stavroula Vergopoulou).
ΕVENT ABSTRACT
We have become so accustomed to remembering the violent images and videos of African Americans being bloodied and brutalized, that we often forget to remember the lives that were lived up until the moments that they were stolen. I started working on my calendar project after having felt a sense of powerlessness for so long: having to watch history repeat itself over and over again. And yet, turning away from the endless montage of traumatic images to protect my own inner peace felt more like willful ignorance, than anything else. The faces that you see on these calendar pages are more than the hashtags and case numbers to which they have been reduced. They were human beings: Mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, and friends.
The workshop will teach modern aspects of damnatio memoriae and they relate to the present day. We will then evaluate written works by artists of the Black Arts Movement that reverse the effects and trauma that damnatio memoriae has caused the black community. Examples such as Jacob Lawrence and Amiri Baraka will be used.
The students will then be prompted to recall and reflect upon an event in which they feel should be properly memorialized.
BIO INFORMATION:
Megan Coates is from Atlantic City, New Jersey. She is an artist and scholar of Byzantine and Early Christian Studies from Stockton University in Southern New Jersey. She will be pursuing a PhD in Archaeology at Princeton University this Fall.
