Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

As the world changes, there is increasing talk of globalization—but have we truly begun to be able to see the "Other" as ourselves, and yet to appreciate differences?

In this performance, the performers use their own, and faraway popular stories, to explore power structures in all our lives, to express different versions of reality, and also the possibilities of change.

This program is created by students of The Claremont Colleges and Professor Nita Kumar's class on Bollywood. The director, Irfana Majumdar, is a theatre artist based in Varanasi, India, and is funded by the Mellon Global Visiting Scholars Program.

The Claremont Chamber Choir will perform its annual holiday celebration. The choir, part of the Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges, is an auditioned, mixed ensemble of 20 students and will be led by guest conductor David Rentz, associate professor of music at Chaffey College and music director of the Orange County Symphony.

The program will include a Missa fragmentata consisting of a cappella Mass movements and motets from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, as well as holiday favorites. Audio clips of the choir's previous performances are available online. A complete playbill will be available at the concert.

Please note that we will be collecting toys for the Center for Community Engagement’s holiday toy drive to benefit patients at Loma Linda Children’s Hospital. Unwrapped toys will be collected in the Athenaeum lobby before the dinner. Gift cards also welcome. Bringing holiday cheer to those in need is an important part of CMC’s outreach to the community. We thank you for your support.

David Sedaris is a humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. A regular on NPR and in the New Yorker, he is the best-selling author of, among many other books, Me Talk Pretty One Day and When You Are Engulfed in Flames. With sardonic wit and incisive social critique, Sedaris is one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition today and has become one of America’s pre-eminent humorists and a master of satire.

Sedaris is currently on a U.S. tour that is getting rave reviews around the country.

(Photo credit: Hugh Hamrick)

SPECIAL NOTES:

The Athenaeum will not serve dinner on the night of Mr. Sedaris’ appearance.

Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.

Mr. Sedaris will begin signing books in the Athenaeum lobby at 6:45 pm. The show will begin at 7:30 pm. He will speak for about an hour, followed by 20 to 30 minutes of Q & A. He will continue to sign books (for as long as it takes) after the show.

Seats for this event will be extremely limited and restricted to CMC students, faculty, and staff. Faculty and staff are limited to bringing one additional immediate family member.

Seating is on a first come-first serve basis only.

Seats cannot be held for others.

Scott A. Schoettes, who is openly HIV-positive, is the HIV Project Director at Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization dedicated to making the case for equality on behalf of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people, and people living with HIV, through impact litigation, education and policy work.

Schoettes litigates impact cases involving discriminatory denial of employment and services based on a person’s HIV status, as well as in the areas of HIV criminalization and access to care. He does a significant amount of amicus work on issues of importance to people living with HIV, notably twice co-authoring amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of the Affordable Care Act.

On the policy side, Schoettes was the point-person for Lambda Legal's work on the repeal of the HIV travel ban, works on the legislative reform of laws criminalizing conduct based on HIV status, and was recently appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, where he co-chairs the Disparities Committee. He has presented on various topics related to HIV discrimination at forums across the country, including the White House.

Schoettes graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law and clerked for the Honorable J. Frederick Motz of the U.S. District Court of Maryland.

Read more about Scott A. Schoettes...

View Video: You Tube with Scott Schoettes

Theresa Williamson is the founder of Catalytic Communities (CatComm) based in Rio de Janeiro. An outspoken and respected advocate on behalf of Rio’s favelas, Williamson is also editor-in-chief of RioOnWatch, a watchdog news site and favela news service which tracks the impact of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games on Rio's favelas.

Williamson will give an overview of Rio’s recent mega-event driven boom and bust, and the hope of and actual implementation of policies directed towards favelas. She will examine how favela communities have responded, developed, and grown resistance strategies in response to recent boom development policies in Rio.

What does pre-Olympic Rio teach us about poor urban planning and development policies, as well as effective community organizing and resistance? What can we learn from Rio's favelas about how to organize, and how not to organize our own communities and what would truly inclusionary policies look like? Case studies include the communities of Vila Autódromo, Favela do Metrô, Indiana, Horto, and Providência.

Dr. Williamson’s Athenaeum talk is sponsored by funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

View Video: YouTube with Theresa Williamson

Emilie M. Hafner-Burton is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of International Justice and Human Rights, director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation, and a joint professor for the department of political science at UC San Diego. She is the author of Making Human Rights a Reality, which takes a look at why it's been so hard for international law to have much impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk.

Most recently, Hafner-Burton served as professor of politics and public policy at Princeton University, where she held joint appointments in the department of politics and the Woodrow Wilson School for International and Public Affairs. She also served as a research scholar at Stanford Law School and fellow of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) with additional appointments at Oxford and Stanford.

Hafner-Burton's research examines ways to improve protections for human rights, the design of international and regional trade policy, and a wide array of other topics related to the use of economic sanctions, social network analysis and international law.

In her Athenaeum talk, Hafner-Burton will explore what social science is teaching us about how to protect human rights around the globe.

Professor Hafner-Burton’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies and the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights.

View Video: YouTube with Emilie Hafner-Burton

Karen Rosenfelt ’80 is a producer based at 20th Century Fox, where she is executive producing Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. While at Fox, she has also produced Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters.

A 1980 graduate of CMC, Rosenfelt began her career at ICM Partners as an assistant to talent agent Sue Mengers. She went on to become a creative executive at Jerry Weintraub Productions and a senior vice president at MGM.

Her career as executive producer and producer spans many successful movies, including the megahit Twilight series. Rosenfelt has also produced The Big Year, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and Marley & Me for Fox, and her executive producer credits include the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise, and The Devil Wears Prada. Rosenfelt also produced Yogi Bear for Warner Bros., and Max and the upcoming Me Before You at MGM. 

For 16 years, Rosenfelt was a production executive at Paramount, where she oversaw live-action features such as The First Wives Club, Indecent Proposal, Runaway Bride, Save the Last Dance, Coach Carter, and Mean Girls. She was instrumental in setting up Paramount's partnership with Nickelodeon Movies, overseeing film adaptations of the Nickelodeon television properties Rugrats and SpongeBob SquarePants as well as Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, based on the bestselling children’s books.

Yaki Lopez is the Consul for Political Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles. He joined the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2010 and began his work at the Division of Strategic Affairs, where he managed issues of regional security; he was also posted in Nairobi, Kenya. Prior to his diplomatic career, he served in an elite intelligence unit in the Israeli Defense Forces and also worked in the private business sector in Israel.

Read more about Yaki Lopez...

View Video: YouTube with Yaki Lopez

Yii Kah Hoe is a Malaysian composer and Chinese dizi player. Bold and avant-garde, his music and composition use sounds and rhythms of many traditional instruments from various ethnic cultures. He is also active in music education and the organization of a contemporary music collective, concerts, and a festival in Kuala Lumpur.

Besides working artistically as a musician and composer, Yii has a strong commitment to environmental activism in Malaysia. In this Athenaeum appearance, Yii will address the question of whether music, and his music in particular, can be engaged with environmental protests while at the same time detached from them and stand alone as a “pure art.” He will show videos of activist performances that involve traditional Chinese music as well as contemporary takes on Chinese music and explore the impact of these performances on the movements.

A leader in his field, he served as the festival director of Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival 2009, the festival director of SoundBridge festival 2013, and the vice-president of Society of Malaysian Contemporary Composers. Yii has been a senior lecturer at SEGi College Subang Jaya, Malaysia, since 2000.

Yii is also the recipient of many international music and arts awards. His works have been performed widely in the U.S., London, Trinidad, Germany, Mexico, Paris, Italy, Russia, Australia, Bangkok, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.

Mr. Yii’s Athenaeum appearance is co-sponsored by EnviroLab Asia and the Mellon Global Liberal Arts funds.

Shyam Selvadurai is a Sri Lankan-Canadian writer, editor, and winner of many literary awards. Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to a Sinhalese mother and a Tamil father, two conflicting ethnic groups whose troubles are a major theme in his work, he immigrated to Canada at the age nineteen. 

Selvadurai’s works reflect his cross-cultural, hyphenated life. Selvadurai will read from his new novel The Hungry Ghosts, his anthology Story-Wallah, and various other works, and he will speak about the advantages of writing from the hyphen between Sri Lankan and Canadian.