Wendy Ewald

Challenging traditional notions of documentary photography and the role of the artist, Ewald uses creative collaboration to focus on questions of identity and cultural difference. A MacArthur Fellow, Ewald encourages children to use cameras to create portraits of self and community and to articulate their own personal fantasies, dreams, and hopes. She has traveled throughout the world working in communities in Appalachia, South America, India, Saudi Arabia, Holland, and Mexico.

Bernard Kouchner

Kouchner is co-founder and intellectual architect of the Nobel Prize-winning Medécins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). He is internationally known for his commitment to humanitarianism and to placing the emergency medical needs of people in distress before all else, including national borders.

Mira Nair

Nair is a critically acclaimed, award-winning film director, writer, and producer. Fearlessly crossing creative, intellectual, and economic borders as an independent filmmaker in an industry dominated by large studios, she emerges as a unique voice with her riveting examinations of the invisible borders associated with culture, race, and class.

Lynn Margulis

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Margulis is highly acclaimed for her contributions to the study of evolution and the perceived borders between organisms and the environment. Margulis has co-authored books with Dorian Sagan and is noted for her work on the Gaia theory of life and how it can be detected. She is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is recognized for her ability to bring the wonder of science to non-scientists.

Sharad Devarajan

Artist, storyteller, and businessman, Devarajan is founder and CEO of Gotham Entertainment Group, the Indian licensee of Marvel Comics and leading publisher of comic books in southern Asia. In 2004 Gotham released Spider-Man India. Devarajan, one of the creators of Spider-Man India, describes this new narrative form as a “transcreation,” where Western characters have been recreated to reflect the local customs, culture, and mythology of India. Devarajan started Gotham while an advertising design student in The College of Visual and Performing Arts at SU.

Sweet Honey in the Rock

Entering their fourth decade of creating “music with a conscience,” the women of Sweet Honey in the Rock, a Grammy Award-winning a cappella ensemble, weave together striking vocal harmonies and messages for change from the many traditions of African American music: blues, spirituals, gospel hymns, African chants, rap, reggae, hip hop, ancient lullabies, and jazz improvisation.

Ulali

Ulali is widely considered the first native women’s group to create a unique musical sound from their traditional roots and contemporary experiences as First Nations women. Their music is political, humorous, and powerful and speaks eloquently about the accomplishments and struggles of First Nations peoples. The trio has toured and recorded with the Indigo Girls and has been featured on soundtracks of Smoke Signals (Miramax) and the documentary Native Americans (Turner).

Imposed Borders:
Haudenosaunee Perspectives

A distinguished panel will examine how, prior to the arrival of European colonists, the Haudenosaunee confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca Nations formed their union with respect for the existing borders among the nations, and the new border between the confederacy and all foreign nations. Given this history, the panel will discuss how borders imposed by non-Haudenosaunee after the formation of the confederacy have influenced current land claims.

Anne Garrels

Garrels is NPR foreign correspondent who received international recognition for being one of only 16 journalists to remain in Baghdad during the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Her around-the-clock reports gave listeners outside the Iraqi borders remarkable insight into the impact of the war on those who chose to remain in the city during the siege.

Chinese Theatre Works

Chinese Theatre Works uses the story of Little Red Riding Hood — a young girl’s journey to her grandmother’s house and her encounter with a wolf — as a way to introduce audiences to characters from several Chinese classics. The result is a cross-cultural artistic extravaganza that integrates the music, acrobatics, pantomime, face painting, and elaborate costumes of Chinese Theatre with a humorous rendition of a well-known children’s fable.