Extra Credit Options for NR6

To compensate for missing a freewrite or lack of attendance for a Thursday discussion session, attend any of the following events, write a reflective paper in response to it, and hand it in to the box in 12 Hills Building, in the folder for your discussion leader. Be sure to include all the information that we need to record it properly. This includes your name, the date, the event, your discussion leader's name, and EXTRA CREDIT in capital letters at the top of the page to be sure we do not overlook your intent.

Follow the instructions for weekly reflective writings. Try to tie it into other activities or readings in NR 6. Remember this is a reflective piece and NOT only a report about what happened at the event.

BE SURE to indicate who your discussion leader is and that this is an EXTRA credit submission at the top of the page, otherwise you will not receive extra credit.

Extra credit opportunities to be posted as information becomes available.

Updates will be provided as the semester progresses - check back to see if events have been added. If you hear about an event that is not posted and you think is related to NR 6 topics, please let us know so we can post it.

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Latino/Hispanic migrant dairy workers in Vermont: Towards a state-wide coalition of service providers

Monday, November 14, 2011
4 to 5 pm Dean's Conference Room, Morrill Hall

CDAE master's thesis presentation by Marta Ascherio (advisor: Dan Baker)

Brother Outsider
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
6 to 8 pm Lafayette Hall L108

Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and its national broadcasts on PBS’ P.O.V. series and on Logo/MTV, Brother Outsider has introduced millions of viewers around the world to the life and work of Bayard Rustin—a visionary strategist and activist who has been called “the unknown hero” of the civil rights movement. A disciple of Gandhi, a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., and the architect of the 1963 March on Washington, Rustin dared to live as an openly gay man during the fiercely homophobic 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

The film is being shown in conjunction with a campus visit by the film's director, Bennett Singer (see next item)

Discussion with Bennett Singer

Monday, November 14, 2011

4 - 5:30 pm Grand Maple Ballroom, Davis Center (4th floor)

Bennett Singer, the director of Brother Outsider, the acclaimed film about the life of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin (see item above), will speak at the University of Vermont. Joining him will be Bayard Rustin’s surviving partner, Walter Naegle, who was with Rustin through much of the period covered by the film and until Rustin’s death in 1987.

Barry Estabrook: Slavery, Tomatoes, & Social Justice on Your Plate

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

7 pm McCarthy Arts Center, St. Michael's College, Colchester, VT

How does eating a Florida tomato in Vermont support migrant slavery? Estabrook will address that question in his talk. He writes that the modern tomato has become "as devoid of plant nutrients as a pile of moon rocks." In his book Tomatoland he interviews tomato farmers, migrant laborers, scientists, and others and presents a scathing account of what has gone wrong with industrial agriculture. The talk, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Saint Michael's College Mobilization of Volunteers (MOVE) office, Media Studies, Journalism & Digital Arts, Peace & Justice, Community Engaged Learning, Office of Sustainability, JUNTOS, Food Justice, SLAM.

Rebecca Skloot Speaks
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
5:30 pm Ira Allen Chapel
(Free Tickets from Davis Center, 3rd Floor Info Desk by 3 pm Tuesday)

Gifts of Justice: Art Exhibit at the Center for Cultural Pluralism
Open October 5 - 16, 2011 - gallery open 10 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday

Allen House Multicultural Art Gallery (461 Main St)

Mother: Caring for 7 Billion (2011)
Film screening presented by Population Media Center with support from VSTEP & Vermont International Film Festival
Tuesday, October 25th
7:30pm Fleming Museum (Rm. 101)

Mother, the film, breaks a 40-year taboo by bringing to light an issue that silently fuels our largest environmental, humanitarian and social crises - population growth. Since the 1960s the world population has nearly doubled, adding more than 3 billion people. At the same time, talking about population has become politically incorrect because of the sensitivity of the issues surrounding the topic? religion, economics, family planning and gender inequality. The film illustrates both the over consumption and the inequity side of the population issue by following Beth, a mother, a child-rights activist and the last sibling of a large American family of twelve, as she discovers the thorny complexities of the population dilemma and highlights a different path to solve it.

Social Justice Film Series sponsored by the Center for Cultural Pluralism

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 – White Like the Moon

12pm 104 Allen House
7:30pm 216 L/L Commons
(23 minutes)

A Mexican-American girl struggles to keep her identity when her mother forces her to bleach her skin. White Like the Moon is a revealing film about a dilemma not very well known outside Latino communities; that of the myth of the light skin superiority in Indigenous and Indigenous descendant communities.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - Out in the Silence

12pm 104 Allen House
7:30pm 216 L/L Commons

Joe Wilson returns to his hometown of Oil City, Pa., after his wedding announcement causes a controversy in his small town, and he receives a plea for help from the mother of a gay teen who is being tormented in school.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 – Silences

12pm 104 Allen House
7:30pm 216 L/L Commons

(25 minutes)

Silences is a personal journey into a bi-racial son's relationship with his white mother. It explores the decisions that parents make, for better or for worse, in an attempt to protect their children from an unknown world. Globally, the social themes of Silences touch at the heart of America's cultural and racial psyche. On the one hand, it exposes subconscious values, as a community that thinks of itself as racially tolerant reacts when a white woman crosses the color line. This film reveals the push and pull of American cultural and family life.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011 – In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee

12pm 104 Allen House
7:30pm 216 L/L Commons

(64 minutes)

In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee follows acclaimed filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem as she returns to her native Korea to find her 'double,' the mysterious girl whose place she took in America. Traversing the landscapes of memory, amnesia and identity, while also uncovering layers of deception in her adoption, this moving and provocative film probes the ethics of international adoptions and reveals the cost of living a lie. Part mystery, part personal odyssey, it raises fundamental questions about who we are and who we could be but for the hands of fate.

Borrow and watch one of the following movies from Bailey/Howe Library Media Resources (ground floor/basement of the library) (on your own schedule, reflective paper due by November 17)
Flow (2008)
A look at the world's water crisis and how the causes of the depleting water supply is connected to pollution, human rights, and even politics. Features interviews with scientists and activists. Includes commentary, expanded interviews, and more.

Teaching Indians To Be White (1993)

This brief but effective program chronicles the attempts to integrate native children into dominant society through educational means. As one episode in the ambitious six-part series Before Columbus, this program is told entirely from the perspective of the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere . It is purposefully expressed as a "one-sided story" - the other side of the Columbus discovery saga not often revealed in textbooks. Suitable for junior high school through general adult audiences, Teaching Indians to Be White provides a new and much-needed perspective on a historically controversial subject.

Fenceline (2002)

Depicts the struggle of an African-American community in Louisiana's "cancer alley" to be relocated from under the shadow of a Shell chemical plant. Led by activist Margie Richard, the community tries to convince the corporate bosses that the plant is a health hazard. Others in town, especially Shell employees, feel the risk is overstated.

RACE: The power of an illusion Episode Two (2003)
Video traces the origins of the racial idea to the European conquest of the New World and to the American slave system - the first ever where all the slaves shared similar physical traits and a common ancestry. Historian James Horton points out that the enslavement of Africans was opportunistic, not based on beliefs about inferiority: "[Our forebears] found what they considered an endless labor supply. People who could be readily identified and so when they ran away they couldn't melt into the population like Native Americans could. People who knew how to grow tobacco, people who knew how to grow rice. They found the ideal, from their standpoint, the ideal labor source

RACE: The power of an illusion Episode Three (2003)

The film begins by looking at the massive immigration from eastern and southern Europe early in the 20th century. Italians, Hebrews, Greeks and other ethnics were considered by many to be separate races. Their "whiteness" had to be won. But who was white? The 1790 Naturalization Act had limited naturalized citizenship to "free, white persons." Many new arrivals petitioned the courts to be legally designated white in order to gain citizenship. Armenians, known as "Asiatic Turks," succeeded with the help of anthropologist Franz Boas, who testified on their behalf as an expert scientific witness.

Race Against Prime Time (1985)

Race Against Prime Time documents how local television newsmen anoint black community spokespersons, characterize whites as victims and blacks as rioters and fail to place the disturbances within the context of and decades of civic neglect. This film reminds us that twenty-five years after the Kerner report decried media prejudice, news reporting remains very much a white view of black realities.

The Thirty-Minute Blue Eyed (1996)

Now Jane Elliott's critically award winning Blue Eyed is available in a more useful, more concise version concentrating all the drama and insight of the original into an even more powerful 30-minute video. Jane Elliott's “blue eyed-brown eyed exercise” is one or the most acclaimed and most widely used diversity training tool ever developed. It has been covered by numerous television documentaries like CBS' Eye of the Storm as well as appearances on the Today, Tonight, Donahue and Oprah shows.

True Colors (1991)

In this startling expose, ABC News Prime Time Live anchor, Diane Sawyer explores skin color prejudice in America with the help of two friends virtually identical in all respects but one-- John is white, Glen is black. Together they take part in a series of hidden camera experiments exploring people's reactions to each in a variety of situations. Acting within the scenario of moving to a new town, Prime Time Live, undercover, follows John and Glen separately as they each try to rent an apartment, respond to job listings, purchase a car, and conduct everyday activities such as shopping. The responses in other the white and racially mixed communities are shocking and consistent. In every instance, John is welcomed into the community while Glen is discouraged by high prices, long waits, and unfriendly salespeople. Diane Sawyer concludes TRUE COLORS with a discussion with John and Glen about the outcome of these experiments and their experiences with discrimination in daily life. A corVISION Media Release Produced by ABC News

The Color of Fear (1995)

The Color of Fear is an insightful, groundbreaking film about the state of race relations in America as seen through the eyes of eight North American men of Asian, European, Latino and African descent. In a series of intelligent, emotional and dramatic confrontations the men reveal the pain and scars that racism has caused them. What emerges is a deeper sense of understanding and trust. This is the dialogue most of us fear, but hope will happen sometime in our lifetime.

The Way Home (1998)

Over the course of eight months, sixty-four women representing a cross-section of cultures, (Indigenous, African-American, Arab, Asian, European-American, Jewish, Latina , and Multiracial) came together to share their experience of racism in America. With uncommon courage, the women speak their hearts and minds about resistance, love, assimilation, standards of beauty, power, school experiences, and more. Their candid conversations offer rare access into multi- dimensional worlds invisible to outsiders. The abundance of photographs, dance, and music provides a sensual richness to this provocative piece.

Skin Deep (1995)

Skin Deep chronicles the eye-opening journey of a diverse and divided group of college students as they awkwardly but honestly confront each other's racial prejudices.

Academy Award nominated filmmaker Frances Reid follows students from the University of Massachusetts , Texas A&M, Chico State , and U.C. Berkeley to a challenging racial awareness workshop where they confront each other's innermost feelings about race and ethnicity. She also accompanies them back to their campuses and on visits home in an attempt to understand why they think the way they do.

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