Feminist Autobiographical Fictions: Performing the Self on Stage & On the Page

A book talk with Barbara Browning, Linda Schlossberg, & Alina Troyano (aka Carmelita Tropicana).

February 22, Tuesday
7 to 8:30 pm

Department of Performance Studies
721 Broadway, Room 612
between Waverly and Washington Places

This panel opens a feminist space — call it genre trouble — between self and “self” to explore the tension and productive possibilities between memory and imagination, autobiography and audience, printed text and embodied performance. Reading from and discussing their own creative fictions, our three speakers reflect on the political and artistic stakes of performing identities and re-staging histories, both intimate and public.

Featuring:

* Barbara Browning, Performance Studies, NYU
author of The Correspondence Artist

* Linda Schlossberg, Women, Gender and Sexuality, Harvard University
author of Life in Miniature

* Alina Troyano (aka Carmelita Tropicana), writer and performance artist
author of I, Carmelita Tropicana: Performing Between Cultures

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the NYU Department of Performance Studies.

This event is FREE and open to the public. Venue is wheelchair accessible. If you need sign language interpretation services or other accommodations, please let us know as soon as possible.

For more information, please call 212-992-9540 or email csgs@nyu.edu.

Mubarak is out, Egypt is Free

Like many of you I have been riveted by the coverage of the revolution is Egypt. The last eighteen days have been exciting, sometimes frightening and ultimately joyful.

There is a lot to say and in the coming days it will be said (and hopefully some of it by me, here) but the most important thing to say right now is:

Today Egypt is free.

Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for the last three decades with the support of the United States, at the expense of the Egyptian people, has been forced out of office by his own people. For the last eighteen days Egyptians from all walks of life--men and women, Copts and Muslims, professionals and working people, flooded Cairo's Tahrir Square and demanded Mubarak's ouster. And when he-- predictably-- resisted they would not take no for an answer.

The Obama Administration-- predictably-- hedged it's bets until the last second with Biden delivering the veiled threats and Obama weighing in after the fact with an Inspiring Message of Support™.

The US media has-- predictably-- trotted out a seemingly endless supply of old white guy "experts" (former ambassadors, Middle East commentators, pundits etc.) on the Left and Right who have publicly speculated over the impact of the Egyptian Revolution on US and Israeli interests.

The US Christianists and Zionists (and Christian Zionists) are-- predictably-- shitting their pants at the prospect of millions of Arabs united for a common purpose.

But the facts cannot be denied: a leaderless revolution (the best example of --gasp-- anarchism at work in modern memory) that employed social media creatively has ended the reign of one of the worst autocrats of the last century. And today Egypt is free.

Free.

That is enough for now.