American Com 05

For immediate release:

* * * M * E * D * I * A * * * A * L * E * R * T * * *

"“Re-mapping '‘American' Community: Representing Bodies, Space, and Place"

Free Cal State L.A. Seminar Is Open to the Public TODAY, Wednesday, May 11

LOS ANGELES, CA—Three humanities fellows at California State University, Los Angeles will explore the courageous and inventive ways in which Americans use their bodies and voices to create new communities and put down roots in often unfriendly soil as the theme of this year's American Communities Spring Seminar, TODAY, Wednesday, May 11 from 2-4 p.m. in the CSULA Music Hall.

The event, which explores the ways in which American communities represent, embody, and perform the spaces and places they call home, represents the second annual installment of the American Communities seminar series. This year’s seminar features the most recent Arts and Letters faculty to be awarded American Communities fellowships: Lauri Ramey (English), San San Kwan (Theatre Arts and Dance), and Michelle Hawley (English).

Dr. Ramey will present: “Body, Space and Place In The African American Spirituals,” an investigation of how spirituals enabled slave-poets to transform their physical experience into a conceptual space in which they could achieve a sense of African American community, individual identity, and hope. Dr. Kwan’s “Chinese Los Angeles: Choreographing Community” applies her knowledge of dance to discuss the ways ‘Chineseness’ in Los Angeles embodies the intersection of local and global cultural flows. Dr. Hawley’s, “There Is No Place Like Home: The Geography of Multicultural Picture Books,” examines how a new generation of culturally conscious authors have created narratives of Latino, African-American, and multi-ethnic community life that challenge the idealized homes of classic American children’s fiction.

The American Communities Program focuses on the intersection of individual and community identity in American cultures. The program sponsors research that examines the impact of that process on the evolution of American cultures and values. Through research, teaching, and the sharing of insights, this program analyzes and assesses the evolving nature of what it is to be an American by investigating the ways individuals and communities invent and change American culture.

Admission is free and open to the public. For event further information call the Cross Cultural Centers at (323) 343-5001 or email Victor Valle at: <vvalle2@calstatela.edu>.

# # #

Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 170,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds--reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12. Among programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include a noted alternative energy technology initiative; an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, to be housed in the Los Angeles Regional Crime Lab now under construction. www.calstatela.edu