The ongoing, urgent need for resistant practices, in local and global contexts, continues to be at the forefront for scholars, students, artists, and activists: how do we make a difference in the world? What can we do to make the world different?
Antigone has been invoked as an archetype of resistance in times of social and political unrest, bridging the work of activists and artists – appearing in Nazi-occupied France in 1944; apartheid-era South Africa in 1973; Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank in 2011 (this work unfinished after the murder of Jenin Freedom Theatre’s founder Juliano Mer-Khamis); alongside Black Lives Matter activists in Ferguson, Missouri in 2016; among healthcare workers in 2020 at the height of Covid lockdowns. Milo Rau & members of Brazil’s Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) have brought a new Antigone to the stage, with “Antigone in the Amazon” – centered around land reform, agrobusiness, climate change, and the genocide of Indigenous people in Brazil.
Join us, before opening night of “Antigone in the Amazon,” to discuss Antigone’s legacy, mythology and pedagogy, and how and why this archetypal character continues to resonate in so many different contexts. How do we learn to value our own convictions, despite the disciplinary power of the law? What is worth risking the wrath of Creon? & how do we find other Antigones, in all their varied contexts? What can these many Antigones teach us about the potential for global solidarity against interlocking structural oppressions?
Speakers:
Amelia Bande
Debra Levine
Laura Slatkin
Vasuki Nesiah
Amelia Bande is an playwright, artist, writer and performer from Chile living in New York. Her work has been shown at Artists Space, The Poetry Project, Storm King Arts Center, Participant Inc., BOFFO Performance Festival, EFA Project Space and more. She’s been an artist in residence at Shandaken Projects, Yaddo, Fire Island Artist Residency, Human Resources, and MacDowell. She was co-editor of Critical Correspondence, an online performance publication of Movement Research. Her plays “Chueca” and “Partir y Renunciar” were published in a Spanish-English bilingual edition by Sangría Editora in 2012. Belladonna Collaborative released her 2017 chapbook “The Clothes We Wear”. A sound archive of her early performances was released by Infinito Audio in Chile. She’s currently Writer in Residence at NYU’s Creative Writing in Spanish MFA at the Spanish and Portuguese Department.
Debra Levine was Director of Studies for Theater, Dance & Media at Harvard University from 2018-2024, and Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance at NYU Abu Dhabi from 2012-2018. Her scholarship focuses on transnational, global, and transdisciplinary performance, disability arts and culture, social practice art, and HIV/AIDS performance culture, and protest. She has published in PAJ: Performing Arts Journal; The Baffler, Movement Research Journal; TDR: The Drama Review, Dance Research Journal; Fourth Wall: Walker Arts Center; GLQ; Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory; Disability Studies Quarterly; Studia Dramatica; kyklàdia press; and Theater Research International. Debra has also contributed catalog essays for artists Lola Flash, Vikram Divecha, Julie Tolentino, and Trajal Harrell, and worked as a dramaturg for Harrell’s production of O Medea, produced by the Manchester International Festival. Debra currently teaches a course in Contemporary Global Performance at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts which features Milo Rau’s production of Antigone in the Amazon.
Laura M. Slatkin is Gallatin Distinguished Professor of Classical Studies at Gallatin, NYU and Visiting Professor in the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. Her research and teaching interests include ancient Greek and Roman poetry; ancient Greek and modern drama; wisdom traditions in classical and Near Eastern antiquity; anthropological approaches to the literature of the ancient Mediterranean world; and cultural poetics. Among her publications are her book The Power of Thetis and Selected Essays (Harvard U. Press, 2011) and articles on Greek epic and drama. She has served as editor-in-chief of the journal Classical Philology, and was co-editor of Histories of Post-War French Thought: Antiquities (New Press, 2001). She has held fellowships at Columbia University’s Institute for Scholars in Paris, the Liguria Study Center for the Arts and Humanities in Bogliasco, Italy, and has been a Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in D.C. Laura also offers courses at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and teaches in NYU’s Prison Education Program.
Vasuki Nesiah is Professor of Practice at the Gallatin School, New York University. She taught at the 2024 Global Scholar Academy convened by Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy; she was also a 2024 Yip Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge University. She teaches and writes on international law and literature, human rights and the politics of memory, decolonization and racial capitalism, and global feminisms. Her current focus is on a book project tentatively titled Reading the Ruins: Slavery, Colonialism and International Law. She recently completed International Conflict Feminism (UPenn 2024) and is co-editing the Handbook on Third World Approaches to International Law (under contract with Elgar). Her previous co-edited work also speaks to international law from a global south perspective: A Global History of Bandung and Critical Traditions in International Law (Cambridge 2017). She is part of the editorial collective for the journal Humanity and is currently its lead editor. Her most recent publications include: “Re-enchanting the world”: Feminist Critiques of Liberal Theories of International Law” in the Oxford Handbook on Women in International Law and “Sanctions and Bio-Necro Collaboration”, The Yale Journal of International Law (June 2024).