Category: Past Events

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Negin Farsad

Theater

Thursday
November 1, 2018
8 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
317 Hamilton Street (at High Street)
College Hill, Easton, PA

Negin Farsad occupies a place at the vanguard of social justice comedy, taking on Islamophobia and bigotry with outrageous, insightful humor. In crafting her hilarious message, she draws on a bottomless repository of anecdotes from the frontlines of prejudice—and offers a prescription for how to change the discourse. The Austin Chronicle calls Negin Farsad a “master humorist who is equal parts academic and amusing”; you’ll call her a vital panacea for the Trump era. She delivers real-world activist wit with a touch of public policy reproach for a rollicking look at today’s issues.

Tickets are available through the Williams Center for the Arts.

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Riyaaz Qawwali

CONCERT

Wednesday
October 17, 2018
7:30 p.m.

Farinon College Center
Marlo Room
College Hill, Easton, PA

FREE

Few of the world’s traditional musics are as captivating as the 700-year-old form of qawwali. With lively rhythmic cycles, gripping melodies, and inspirational poetry, Riyaaz Qawwali weaves new song and texts from Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, and other religions into the fabric of this venerable devotional music. The musicians, who come from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, embrace their diverse linguistic and religious backgrounds to extend qawwali to new, enthusiastic audiences. Returning to the roots of this ecstatic, mystical mysic, Riyaaz Qawwali conveys a universal message of oneness and joy that transcends religous and political boundaries.

The South Asian Students Association wants to exhibit the true atmosphere of a Mehfil-e-Sama (session of Qawwali) by having the audience seated on a carpeted floor and the performers on a raised platform. Bring your own blanket or cushion!

Brown Bag Lecture

Wednesday
October 17, 2018
Noon

Skillman Library, Gendebien Room

“Poetry and Philosophy of Qawwali and Sufi Music”
Featuring guest speaker Sonny Mehta, Artistic Director of Riyaaz Qawwali

Brown bag lunch will be provided while supplies last.
Admission is free.

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Amirah Sackett

Dance Performance

Thursday
September 27, 2018
8 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
317 Hamilton Street (at High Street)
College Hill, Easton, PA

Amirah Sackett wants to reframe the dominant narrative about Muslim women in this country, and she’s doing it through dance. Founder of the collective We’re Muslim, Don’t Panic, she believes in hip-hop culture’s ability to give voice to those often unheard. Through the poetry of the 13th-century Sufi mystic Rumi, interpreted by Aja Black (The Reminders), and with original sound design by Chicago DJ Nevin Hersch, Sackett’s new solo work explores the barriers we create within ourselves and the walls that others build around us. A heartfelt appeal to always choose love.

Program: Love Embraces All (2018), music by Nevin Hersch, poetry of Rumi interpreted by Aja Black, choreography by Amirah Sackett. Additional works to be announced.

Tickets available at the Williams Center for the Arts.

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Visiting Artist Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh Akbar
Poetry Reading

Thursday
May 3, 2018
4:00 p.m.

Kirby Hall of Civil Rights
Room 104
Sullivan Road
College Hill, Easton, PA

Kaveh Akbar‘s poems appear recently in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, and elsewhere. His first book, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, is just out with Alice James in the US and Penguin in the UK. He is also the author of the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic. The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches in the MFA program at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College.

Read some of his poems online:

“Despite My Efforts Even My Prayers Have Turned Into Threats”
“River of Milk”
“Against Dying”

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Niyaz

The Fourth Light Project

Concert

Wednesday
April 11, 2018
8 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
317 Hamilton Street (at High Street)
College Hill, Easton, PA

A heady blend of acoustic and electronic, East and West, poetry and politics, Niyaz’s richly textured arrangements, sweeping choruses, and velvety vocals—courtesy of front woman Azam Ali—take inspiration from Sufi poetry, Middle Eastern folk music, and the musicians’ experiences as 21st-century global citizens. It’s “Los Angeles meets New Delhi meets Tehran,” notes NPR, yet The Fourth Light Project is a world unto itself—a modern-day global trance experience, featuring one of the first female whirling dervishes and hypnotic body-mapping projections that respond to sound and movement in real time.

Tickets available at the Williams Center for the Arts.

Residency Activities

Tuesday
April 10, 2018
Noon

Skillman Library, Gendebien Room

“Feminism in the East”
Featuring guest speakers
Azam Ali and Loga Torkian of Niyaz

Moderated by Professor Tara Gilligan (Women’s and Gender Studies, Lafayette College)

A discussion of gender inequality and the growing feminist movement in the East, exploring the gulf between the Western and Eastern definitions of female liberation when examined within the context of history, geography, and cultural traditions; and illuminating the contributions of women who have helped reshape their roles in a modern Eastern society.

Lunch will be provided while supplies last.
Admission is free.

Tuesday
April 10, 2018
3 p.m.

Williams Center Gallery
317 Hamilton Street (at High Street)
College Hill, Easton, PA

Facebook Live Interview
With Azam Ali and Loga Torkian of Niyaz

Kamini Masood ’19 poses your questions to the musicians. Watch on the Lafayette College Facebook page or join us in person in the art gallery. Admission is free.

Tuesday
April 10, 2018
4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Studio Theater
248 North 3rd Street
Downtown Williams Arts Campus, Easton, PA

Sufi Whirling Meditation Workshop

Sufi whirling meditation or sema is a fusion of mystic audition, sacred music, poetry, and movement. It is a powerful, challenging, and ecstatic meditation based on the practices of Rumi, the Mevlevi Whirling Dervishes, and beyond. The future is ancient. Rememberance is a practice. Come with passion, patience, loose clothing, good socks, and a bottle of water. Eat lightly beforehand.

Tawhida Tanya Evanson has over 15 years of study under Turkish Rifa’i Marufi Sheikh Sherif Baba Çatalkaya and Canadian whirling teacher/semazenbashi Raqib Brian Burke. She has performed and taught across Europe, Turkey, Japan, Canada and the U.S. as part of the Vancouver Rumi Society, Rumi Canada and music groups Mercan Dede (Turkey) and Niyaz (Iran-US). She is also a poet and producer.

Space is limited. The event is free, but participants must sign up with Joyce Wallace at the Williams Center for the Arts, at wallacej@lafayette.edu or 610-330-5010.

Wednesday
April 11, 2018
7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts, Room 108
317 Hamilton Street (at High Street)
College Hill, Easton, PA

Pre-concert Talk
With Loga Torkian of Niyaz

Loga Torkian reveals Niyaz’s influences and inspiration. Join us before the concert begins at 8 p.m. for an enhanced view of the performance.

Admission is free.

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Lalla Essaydi

Lalla Essaydi - Harem
Gallery Show

February 3 – April 11, 2018

Williams Center Gallery
Williams Center for the Arts
317 Hamilton Street (at High Street)
College Hill, Easton, PA

Lalla Essaydi isn’t afraid to appropriate Orientalist imagery from the Western painting tradition in order to invite viewers to reconsider the Orientalist mythology. Her sumptuous explorations of the image of woman in Islamic society address the complex reality of Arab female identity from the unique perspective of personal experience. As Essaydi puts it, “In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses—as artist, as Moroccan, as traditionalist, as liberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite viewers to resist stereotypes.”

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Playwright Ayad Akhtar

Playwright Ayad Akhtar
LECTURE

Wednesday
March 28, 2018
7:00 p.m.

Colton Chapel
College Hill, Easton, PA

“From Islam to Capitalism: A Conversation with Pulitzer Prize Winner Ayad Akhtar on the Soul of America” will cover a range of timely and relevant issues that define America today — from the place of Muslims in America to the ways Wall Street has shaped our perceptions of money, and to the enduring role of theater in American culture.

Akhtar’s play, Disgraced, won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, ran on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre, and was nominated for the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play. Disgraced is one of a seven-work cycle on the Muslim-American experience, and part of the Lafayette Department of Theater’s 2017–18 season.

Akhtar’s latest play is Junk: The Golden Age of Debt. Set in the eighties, it puts a corporate takeover on stage. Junk premiered on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, produced by Lincoln Center Theater.

Admission is free.

Presented by the departments of Religious Studies, Economics, Theater, English, and Anthropology & Sociology, and the Provost’s Office, the Office of Religious & Spiritual Life, and Intercultural Development; with generous support from the Staubi Family Theater Fund.

 

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Fatima

Fatima
Film

Thursday
March 22, 2018
7 p.m.

Oechsle 224
Hamilton & High Streets
College Hill, Easton, PA

Writer-director Philippe Faucon’s long-running project of making films about those members of the French population traditionally left off-screen reaches a state of grace in Fatima, perfectly balancing sharp observation of the realities of the immigrant experience with an inspiring story of individual resilience. Fatima is a middle-aged, divorced Algerian woman, cleaning houses and offices from dawn to dusk to provide her teenage daughters with a better future. It takes a workplace accident for Fatima to finally pay attention to her own needs and discover a powerful means of expressing them through poetry.

View the trailer.

Admission is free.

Part of Foreign Languages & Literatures’ Tournées Film Festival.

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Visiting Artist Laila Lalami

Lecture

March 21, 2018
7 p.m.

Colton Chapel
College Hill, Easton, PA

Join us for an evening with Laila Lalami, author of this year’s Community Reading Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. Dr. Lalami will present a keynote speech at 7 p.m. followed by a book signing.

Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco, a place whose past and present permeate her writing. A novelist, short story writer, and essayist, Lalami is a unique and confident voice in the conversations about race and immigration that increasingly occupy our national attention. Lalami is a regular contributor to publications including The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times Magazine, weighing in on contemporary issues in the Arab world and North Africa. With what Junot Díaz calls “spare elegant prose” and Paul Yamazaki terms “carefully-wrought characters,” Lalami’s fiction confronts the same questions of race, displacement, and national identity that she addresses so eloquently in her essays and criticism.

Her first book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was inspired by a brief article buried deep within a French newspaper’s website. It mentioned, in just a few lines, that fifteen Moroccan would-be immigrants had drowned crossing the Straits of Gibraltar. Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is a collection of short stories about a group of immigrants attempting to escape Morocco for a better life in Europe. Lalami explores the intriguing, sometimes uncomfortable closeness between her own experiences and the lives of these fictional immigrants, while offering up a lens through which to view our own immigration issues.

Lalami speaks on immigration, the Middle East and North Africa, Islam, Muslim women, and Arab uprisings. She also discusses race in America, especially forgotten histories, exploration, and cross-cultural encounters.

For more information on Laila Lalami, please visit lailalalami.com.

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A Separation

A Separation
Film

Tuesday
March 20, 2018
7 p.m.

Landis Cinema at Buck Hall
219 North 3rd Street (at Snyder Street)
Easton, PA

A family’s choice between caring for an ailing parent and providing a better life for a child throws their world into chaos. Roger Ebert observed, “‘A Separation’ is a film in which every important character tries to live a good life within the boundaries of the same religion. That this leads them into disharmony and brings them up before a judge is because no list of rules can account for human feelings.” This Iranian film won a 2012 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, as well as a seemingly endless litany of raves from critics around the world, landing at #9 on the BBC’s list of the most important films of the 21st century.

View the trailer.

Admission is free.

Part of Film and Media Studies’ Faculty Film Favorites Series.