“Marx’s Theory of Communism”
A conversation with Paul Thomas (Political Science).
“Reviewing Art”
Acocella with Alla Efimova (Judah L. Magnes Museum), Ramona Naddaff (Rhetoric), and Joshua Kosman (San Francisco Chronicle); moderated by Anthony J. Cascardi (Director, Consortium for the Arts).
“Dancing Girls”
A discussion with Joan Acocella specifically geared toward undergraduates, on dance, gender, and life at The New Yorker.
"The Burkha and the Militant: Kashmir in the Public Imagination"
Chhachhi examines dominant media representations which construct reductionist perceptions of the conflict in Kashmir.
Panel Discussants: Joan Acocella, Joe Goode (Theater, Dance and Performance Studies), Wendy Lesser (Editor, The Threepenny Review) and Suzana Sawyer (Anthropology, UC Davis)
Joan Acocella is a dance and book critic for The New Yorker. She has served as the senior critic and reviews editor for Dance Magazine and New York dance critic for London’s Financial Times.
"Bearing Witness on Art and Feminist Politics in South Asia"
At this workshop, Chhachhi discusses the slippage between the unmediated “truth” of testimony and the highly mediated statements made by artists around the same experience.
<em>When the Gun is Raised, Dialogue Stops: Women’s Voices from the Kashmir Valley</em>
This photo installation by Chhachhi and Sonia Jabbar invites viewers to enter the private life of war, to hear voices often obscured by the clamor of stereotypes—the unheard voices of ordinary women of the Kashmir Valley. Testimonies gathered over six years break through the homogenizing divide of “Muslims” versus “Hindus.” Despite many differences, the women have one overwhelming thing in common: a rejection of the gun as a solution to political issues.
<em>Neelkanth (Blue Throat): Poison/Nectar</em>
This exhibition relocates the mythological figure of Neelkanth, in the contemporary Indian city, where each of the five elements (earth, fire, water, air, and ether), the five senses (smell, sight, taste, touch, and hearing), and the power of the word itself is poisoned. The exhibit asks if we, like the archetypal Neelkanth, can find means of containment and transformation; if we can make nectar from poison.