2008 Ray Smith Symposium

Presented by SU’s College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Council with funding from the Gifford Foundation

Quick Links:
Benefit Concert, 4:30 p.m. April 20
Art Works Opening Ceremony, 7 to 9 p.m. April 22
Film showings, 1 to 2 p.m.:
April 23 and
April 24
Dramatic performance, noon to 1 p.m. April 22
Wednesday, April 23 daytime events
Esther Cohen, Bread and Roses, Keynote address, 7 to 9 p.m. April 23
Thursday, April 24 daytime events

The 2008 Ray Smith Symposium will bring together leading artists, scholars and labor activists to examine how workers and labor leaders have used the arts to tell their stories and to forge solidarities in the struggle for dignity and social justice. The symposium will include music, dramatic performances, public readings, panel discussions, and film showings. All events are free and open to the public.

PRE-SYMPOSIUM EVENTS

Benefit Concert:

Strength from the Roots/Fuerza de la Raiz
Featuring Francisco Herrera, Latin-American acoustic guitarist and
Colleen Kattau, bilingual singer-song writer.
Sunday, April 20
4:30 p.m.
Plymouth Congregational Church, 232 E. Onondaga St., Syracuse.
Free-will donations to benefit the Syracuse Worker Rights Center

Dramatic performance:

Who We Are, a play written and performed by Syracuse University SEIU 200 United Workers
Tuesday, April 22
Noon to 1 p.m.
Hendricks Chapel, Syracuse University Campus Free and open to the public

Who We Are was created with the guidance of performance artist Marty Pottenger, writer and director of the Abundance Project. The Abundance Project is a community arts performance project about money as told through the stories of common folks in the United States, which culminated in an Off-Broadway production in the spring of 2003.

ART WORKS OPENING CEREMONY

“Working: A Celebration of Syracuse Workers in Words, Photography, and Music” An evening of music and readings featuring:
• Latin-American acoustic guitarist Francisco Herrera
• Singer-song writer Tom Juravich, professor of Labor Studies and director of the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts and
• Readings from Working: An Anthology of Writing and Photography (SU Press, 2008)
Tuesday, April 22
7 to 9 p.m.
Syracuse University’s Maxwell Auditorium
Free and open to the public

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE:

Wednesday, April 23 and Thursday, April 24

All symposium events outlined below are free and open to the public and will take place in Syracuse University’s Schine Student Center, Room 304 A, B, and C unless otherwise noted. Please register for the sessions using our online registration form.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23

8:30 to 9 a.m.:
Refreshments

9 to 10:30 a.m.
Panel Discussion:
“Workers and Writing,” an examination of how the working class uses writing and publishing to support labor struggles for economic and social justice.

Presenters:
• Nick Pollard, board member of the FED, an alliance of working-class writers in Great Britain, will present “Writing Groups and Working-class Identity”
• Anne Marie Taliercio, president and business manager of UNITE HERE Local 150, will present “Writing Groups and Labor Unions”
• Helena Worthen, novelist, playwright and associate clinical professor, Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will present “The Art of Text Structure: Bakhtin and the Markham A. Yard.”

10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
Panel Discussion:
“Workers, Photography, and Struggle,” a presentation by Unseen America, a national project that enables workers to record their lives through photography.

Presenters:
• Esther Cohen, executive director of the New York City-based Bread and Roses workers’ cultural project, will present “A Visual History of Workers Lives”
• Gertrude Danzy, Syracuse University service worker and representative of SEIU 200 United, will present “Changing Through Art: How Learning Photography Affected My Life”
• Tamara Kay, assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University, will present “Visualizing Labor Rights and Social Change in Documentary Photography”

12:15 to 1 p.m.
Lunch

1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Film Showing and SU Special Collections Artworks Presentation (these events will run concurrently)

Documentary:
A Day’s Work, A Day’s Pay. The film follows three welfare recipients in New York City from 1997 to 2000 as they participate in the largest welfare-to-work program in the nation. When forced to work at city jobs for well below the prevailing wage and deprived of the chance to go to school, these individuals fight back, demanding programs to help them move off of welfare and into jobs (Schine Student Center, Room 304)

University Special Collections:
“Visual Arts and Labor Activism,” a presentation of materials related to labor and arts with particular emphasis on 20th-century artists Fred Ellis, Hugo Gellert, William Gropper, Rockwell Kent, Giacomo Parti, Diego Rivera, Art Young and photographer Margaret Bourke White. Participation is limited to 20. Please register for this presentation by e-mailing Stephen Parks. The presentation will be held in the Antje Bultman Lemke Seminar Room, 6th Floor Bird Library.

2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Panel Discussion:
“Workers and Documentary Filmmaking” will examine how documentary filmmaking in both traditional and new media formats record and support workers’ struggles in the United States.

Presenters:
• Kathy Leichter, co-director of A Day’s Work, A Day’s Pay, will co-present “A Case Study in using this Documentary to Build Awareness and Inspire Action”
• Yvonne Shields, board member of Community Voices Heard, Manhattan soup kitchen chef, and former welfare recipient, will co-present with Leichter.
• Vivian Price, assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies California State University, Dominguez Hills, will present “Visualizing the Invisible from Construction to the Fields”

4 to 4: 30 p.m.
Assessing the Day

Discussion leaders:
• Harvey Teres, associate professor of English in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences
• Peter Sawchuk, associate professor/Department of Sociology & Equity Studies in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

5 to 6:30 p.m.
Dinner reception

ART WORKS KEYNOTE EVENING EVENT

Musical performance by Latin-American acoustic guitarist Francisco Herrera

Symposium Keynote Address by
Esther Cohen, executive director of the New York City-based Bread and Roses workers’ cultural project and
Maria Castaneda, 1199SEIU Secretary-Treasurer
Wednesday, April 23
7 to 9 p.m.
Stolkin Auditorium, SU Physics Building
Free and open to the public

THURSDAY, APRIL 24

8:30 to 9 a.m.
Refreshments

9 to 10:30 a.m.
Panel Discussion:
“Graphic Arts and Labor Struggle” will focus on the major aesthetic and artistic traditions that inform graphic labor art today.

Presenters:
• Mike Alewitz, internationally renowned muralist and labor movement activist, will present “Up Against the Wall: Agitprop Murals and the Fight for Working Class Power”
• Lincoln Cushing, Digital photo cataloger, Kaiser-Permanente Labor-Management Partnership, will present “Art/Works—A Survey of American Labor Posters”
• Peter Sawchuk, associate professor/ Department of Sociology & Equity Studies in Education,?Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, will present “The Hidden Potential for Art for Expansive Labor Education”

10:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
Panel Discussion:
“Music and Labor Struggle” will examine the role of music in fostering and supporting labor rights.

Presenters:
• Elise Bryant, a faculty member at the National Labor College in Washington, D.C.
• Tom Juravich, professor of Labor Studies and director of the Labor Center at the University of Massachusetts, will present “We Fight for Roses, Too: Music, Working Class, and Union Culture”
• Francisco Herrera, Latin-American musician, and Maria Christina Perez.

Moderator: Carol Babiracki, associate professor fine arts in SU College of Arts and Sciences

12:45 to 1 p.m.
Lunch

1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Film Showing and SU Special Collections Artworks Presentation (these events will run concurrently)

Documentary:
Films by Vivian Price: Hammering it Out or Transnational Tradeswomen (Schine Student Center, Room 304) Hammering it Out spotlights the experience of women in the building trades, specifically those women involved in the Century Freeway Women's Employment Project in Los Angeles. Framed by the story of a community-initiated lawsuit that resulted in hundreds of women getting trained to work on a billion-dollar freeway project, the film evolves into a primer on the feminist issues of equality, identity, and changing gender roles.

Transnational Tradeswomen—Inspired by organizers at the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995, former construction worker Vivian Price spent years documenting the current and historical roles of women in the construction industry in Asia, capturing footage that shatters stereotypes of delicate, submissive Asian women. Their stories disturb the notion of “progress” that many people hold and show how globalization, modernization, education and technology don’t always result in gender equality and the alleviation of poverty.

University Special Collections:
“The Written Word and Labor Activism,” the story of the labor movement as portrayed through novels, poetry, drama, and song. The Library’s Special Collections Research Center will introduce a sampling of material related to labor and literature in their collections with particular emphasis on proletarian noel, radical children’s literature, and Union songbooks. Participation is limited to 20. Please register for this presentation by e-mailing Stephen Parks. The presentation will be held in the Antje Bultman Lemke Seminar Room, 6th Floor Bird Library.

2 to 4 p.m.
Panel Discussion:
“U.S. Workers: Making a Scene,” will examine the ways in which drama is being used to tell workers’ stories and enrich labor consciousness.

Presenters:
• Marty Pottenger, performance artist, writer and director of the Abundance Project, will present “Creating Workers’ Performance Art: The Challenge, the Process, and the Impact”
• Jan Cohen-Cruz, director of Imagining America and University Professor, will present “U.S. Workers: Making a Scene”

4:15 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Final Processing
Discussion leaders:
• Linda Alcoff, professor of philosophy in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences
• Peter Sawchuk, associate professor/Department of Sociology & Equity Studies in Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto