Are the Arts Essential? (NYU Florence students only) - April 26-27, Villa Sassetti
The John Brademas Center of New York University is asking an international group of scholars, artists, and cultural practitioners to deliberate a question: “Are the Arts Essential?” Beyond “leisure” or “entertainment,” beyond art’s personal impacts, beyond contributions to tourism, community building, or the classroom, do the arts and culture power progress? This convening will ask if (and how) the arts provide structures and strategies for social change, how they help define peoples and nations, how they deal with actual matters of life and death. Are the arts essential in ways that economics and medicine and politics are? If so, how is this manifest? What are the theoretical bases that ground the arts and govern our expectations of them?
A Dialogue with Angela Davis and Gina Dent - April 23, Spazio Alfieri
Activist and scholar Angela Davis has been deeply involved in movements for social justice around the world. Her work as an educator has always emphasized the importance of building communities of struggle for economic, racial, and gender justice.
Gina Dent teaches in the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her research interests include Africana literary and cultural studies, legal theory and popular culture. Her most recent book project is called Prison as Border.
Writers and Human Rights - April 20 at 5PM, Palazzo Strozzi, Sala Altana
PEN International is a worldwide association of writers founded in 1921. It operates in over 100 countries promoting and defending freedom of expression and the safety and security of writers defending human rights around the world. The Board of PEN International, comprised of internationally renowned writers, will meet in Florence and have agreed to a series of public dialogues about their work and the work of PEN.
This year is the 50th anniversary of 1968: a ‘Year of Revolt’ across Europe and the United States. Keep checking in for updates on upcoming events in this series.
Join us as special guest Angela Davis joins us this April.
Middle East Now Festival
Happening from April 10th to 15th this year. The 2018 edition reveals, through an unusual observation lens, the contemporary Middle East, with its theme this year, #MiddleEast. The festival wants to shift the attention, for the first time, on the storytelling that millions of individuals - from the Palestinian mother to the jihad fighter, from the professionals of the great urban realities to the young people curious about new life experiences. Middle East Now deals with cinema, art and contemporary culture , focused on strong themes of the contemporary world, as a powerful tool for knowledge of reality and cultural integration in the Middle East.
