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Members of the Class of 2010 have begun an exploration of human security, civil society, and liberal learning that will continue during New Student Orientation Aug. 25-27.
“Imagining America” is the orientation’s theme. Students will be introduced to Lafayette’s intellectual and academic life and continue exploring issues related to the American identity, human interdependency, and shared responsibilities for securing and advancing civil society.
Thirty-three first-year students are also taking part in Lafayette’s annual Pre-Orientation Service Program, run by the College’s Landis Community Outreach Center Aug. 20-24. This program focuses on volunteering in the Easton community.
It’s the third year in which Imagining America is the theme for new students’ orientation and first-year experience, and again intellectual discussion is being sparked and catalyzed by the arts.
The students began their journey earlier in the summer by viewing the film Crash. They also read a guide to “reading” the film authored by faculty members Alix Ohlin, assistant professor of English, and Andy Smith, assistant professor of English and chair of American Studies, and came together as an intellectual community via internet-based discussions.
The recipient of Academy Awards for best picture, best original screenplay, and best editing, Crash “addresses the complexities of multiculturalism in contemporary America,” says Rose Marie L. Bukics, dean of studies.
“In examining the interplay of a film’s form and content – which is to say, in “reading” it critically – we can and should adopt an active, searching, and analytical posture – the opposite of the typical relationship with film,” write Ohlin and Smith. “Learning to read a film carefully is a conscious choice: it’s the difference between being a half-aware consumer of flashy products and a bright student doing thoughtful work in the context of an intellectual community. In our increasingly visual, media saturated culture, such critical awareness of how visual and aural texts function gives one a dramatic advantage over those who remain passive and unaware.”
Students will view the film again during orientation and engage in discussions with faculty, upper-level students, staff, and alumni.
In the August 25 edition of Inside Higher Ed, Lafayette’s summer reading and orientation program is featured in “Re-Orientation,” an article that looks at innovative ways colleges are engaging incoming students.
Lafayette, the article says, asked all first-year students to watch “Crash” before orientation “so that they could be prepared to talk about race and social issues with faculty members and peers….’We’ve always wanted to help students think about civic and civil issues,’ says Gladstone (Fluney) Hutchinson, a professor of economics and former dean of studies at Lafayette. ‘The landscape of higher education is changing in a way that students need to learn to relate to people of different backgrounds.’….’We have been moving toward these new creative genres that can combine with pedagogical engagement,’ said [Rose Marie Bukics, dean of studies at Lafayette]. ‘We wanted to focus on a serious and provocative subject, while realizing that students today have different ways of learning.’”
Ping Chong will deliver the Convocation Address at 3 p.m. Friday, the first day of orientation.
“Ping Chong is one of the premier contemporary voices in American theater,” Bukics says. “His pioneering work, as a playwright and ensemble director, places him at the forefront in the contemporary arts.” In his talk he will share perspective on the effects of history, culture, and ethnicity in the lives of individuals in the community.
Born 1946 in Canada to Chinese parents who were both artists in the esteemed Beijing Opera world, Ping Chong was raised in New York City and graduated from its High School for the Performing Arts and Pratt Institute. As a Guggenheim Fellow, Pew/Theater Communications Group Fellow, NEA Fellow, and Bessie Award Recipient for Sustained Accomplishment in Theater, he is acclaimed for his articulate and compelling presentations on American society and the dynamic interplay of diverse voices and cultural pluralism among the peoples and communities of our country.
On Tuesday, Nov. 14, Chong will lead his own company in a special presentation of Undesirable Elements at the Williams Center for the Arts. The production is an ongoing oral history project examining the lives of people born in one culture but currently living in another, either by choice or by circumstance. The performers, drawing from their real lives and experiences, offer poignant examples of people and cultures displaced in the modern world. This powerful production encourages us to confront and overcome cultural insularity by embracing a greater understanding of the human links that bind us all.
Also enriching the students’ first-year experience and drawing inspiration from Undesirable Elements will be Chong’s site-specific installation, entitled Testimonial II, Sept. 1 through Oct. 15 in the Williams Center Gallery.
Since 1992, Ping Chong has interviewed hundreds of people about their experiences of being born into one culture but living in another. The reflections of these individuals on the ironies of culture, identity, home, and history became Undesirable Elements. Originally conceived as a site-specific installation titled A Facility for the Channeling and Containment of Undesirable Elements, the installation presented a place for contemplation on the implications of being “other” in America. Chong expanded on this idea to create the original version of Testimonial for the Venice Biennale in 1995. The thematic intention of this newTestimonialpresents the continuing tensions of a multicultural society that has not come to terms with itself.
Chong will deliver a talk on Testimonial II at noon Friday, Oct. 13, in the Williams Center lobby, and there will be an artists reception there later that day at 4 p.m.