Mobility has long been associated with success, power and adaptability. However, relocation of families, neighborhoods or whole ethnic groups has often been a matter of necessity or hardship. The College of Fine and Applied Arts will address how the worlds of art, culture and commerce have been marked by recent or historical migrations at Uncorked and On Topic at 5:15 p.m. Nov. 12 in the Tryon Festival Theatre foyer at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
The event will explore “Mobilities” through the experiences of two faculty members, Faranak Miraftab and Valleri Robinson. The moderator for this event will be Kevin Hamilton, a professor in the School of Art and Design and the senior associate dean of FAA.
Uncorked and On Topic is in its second year, featuring faculty members of different disciplines engaging in an intellectual exchange about the arts. Future programs are scheduled for Feb. 4, on “Memory,” March 3, on “Mastery” and April 14, on “Mega.” The events are free and open to the public.
Miraftab is a professor of urban and regional planning and serves as the director of the Ph.D. program in regional planning and the coordinator of the Transnational Planning Stream for the department. Miraftab’s research focuses on social aspects of urban development and planning, but more specifically on the formation of cities and how different groups of people manage their lives within cities. She has researched in several countries including Chile, Mexico, Canada, Australia, South Africa, the United States and most recently Togo. In 2014, the U. of I. named her as a University Scholar. Her latest book, “Global Heartland: Displaced Labor, Transnational Lives and Local Placemaking,” is an account of diverse, dispossessed and displaced people thrown together for work at a meatpacking plant in a former sundown town in Illinois, and how they negotiate their transnational lives and relationships with each other as they make a new home in the heartland.
Robinson, a professor of theatre, specializes in Russian-American cultural exchange, Cold War performances, transnational theatre historiography and Chekhov in translation and adaptation. In her book, “Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America,” she examines the influence of Russian performance styles on modern American theatrical productions. Robinson’s articles and reviews have appeared in Theatre Review, Theatre History Studies, Theatre Journal, Contemporary Drama and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre. She received the 2012 American Theatre and Drama Society Faculty Research Travel Award and the Fulbright award to work with Nikolai Kolyada at the Kolyada Theatre in Ekaterinburg, Russia in 2014. In addition, Robinson is an affiliate faculty member of the department of Slavic languages and literatures and the Russian, East European and Eurasian Center.
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