Berea College

Writer, professor, editor and social commentator Roxane Gay will&nbsp;speak&nbsp;at the Berea College convocations on Thursday, March 2 sponsored by the bell hooks center&nbsp;as part of the&nbsp;center’s March 2023&nbsp;programming calendar.

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Gay will join bell hooks center founder and director, M. Shadee Malaklou, for a conversation about hooks’ fearless feminism.&nbsp;Entitled “Writing Toward a Better World,” the pair will think and dream with hooks about how to write toward a better world, addressing&nbsp;topics ranging from trauma to love to how we dismantle the intersecting structures of oppression that hooks names&nbsp;“imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”

Gay’s writing appears in “Best American Mystery Stories 2014,” “Best American Short Stories 2012,” “Best Sex Writing 2012,” “A Public Space,” “McSweeney’s,” “Tin House,” “Oxford American,” “American Short Fiction,” “Virginia Quarterly Review” and many&nbsp;more publications. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books “Ayiti,” “An Untamed State,” the New York Times bestselling “Bad Feminist” and “Hunger,” and the nationally bestselling “Difficult Women.” She is also the author of “World of Wakanda” for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also working on television and film projects.&nbsp;In addition,&nbsp;she&nbsp;has a newsletter, “The Audacity” and a podcast, “The Roxane Gay Agenda.”

The convocation begins at 3 p.m. in Phelps Stokes Chapel and is free and open to the&nbsp;public.

On Wednesday,&nbsp;March&nbsp;15, the bell hooks center&nbsp;will host&nbsp;Jennifer Marley for its Gender Talk&nbsp;series. Gender Talk is a monthly series for which the&nbsp;bell hooks center invites distinguished feminist scholars to speak with Berea’s campus and community about contemporary issues. Marley&nbsp;is the co-founder of a popular podcast about indigenous life-worlds, named&nbsp;“<a href="https://therednation.org/">The Red Nation</a>&nbsp;Podcast” and is&nbsp;a doctoral student specializing in queer indigenous studies and indigenous feminism.&nbsp;The event will be from noon to 1 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

The following week, on Thursday, March 23,&nbsp;the bell hooks center will host a&nbsp;colloquium event with poet and writer Damaris Hill, who was a friend of bell hooks’. The colloquium series provides an opportunity for students to learn more about how they might apply feminism to their personal and professional practices.&nbsp;The event will be from noon to 1 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

Finally, on Wednesday, March 29, the bell hooks center will&nbsp;host a student activist talk with international&nbsp;Ukrainian&nbsp;Berea College&nbsp;student Anya&nbsp;Kasianova, a member of the Class of 2024. The event will be from noon to 1 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

More information about the bell hooks center can be found&nbsp;<strong><u><a href="https://legacy.berea.edu/bhc/">here</a></u></strong>.

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Esteemed New York Times best-selling author Roxane Gay to speak at Berea College convocation

BEREA, Ky. – Visual artist, social activist and writer Robert Shetterly will present at the Berea College weekly convocations on Thursday, March 28 at Phelps Stokes Chapel.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and based in Brooksville, Maine, Shetterly started with an English Literature degree from Harvard. After taking courses in drawing, Shetterly realized his artistic desires and changed the direction of his creative life from word to image.

In 1970, Shetterly moved to Maine and taught himself drawing, printmaking and painting. While growing as an artist, he illustrated for newspapers and books.

In 1993, “Speaking Fire at Stones,” a collection of Shetterly’s drawings and etchings was published. He has worked on 70 painted etchings based on William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell,” and 50 more etchings inspired by the metaphor of the Annunciation.

One of Shetterly’s longest and most prominent projects has been an ongoing series of portraits called “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” The project began as a response to the actions taken by the U.S. government after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers.

For Shetterly, the portraits were a way to cope with his grief and anger.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” Shetterly said. “I wanted to fight for social, racial and economic justice, and I chose to do it through the medium I am most articulate in, that is, painting.”

The subject of each portrait is an American who has been a profound truth-teller. One of the portraits is Berea College graduate Carter G. Woodson.

“Shetterly’s portraits are a stunning presentation of what it means to be American,” said Pamela Corley Slowkowski, a Berea College alumna ’71 who graduated with an art degree and brought Shetterly to her alma mater. “I want Berea College students and the community to see his works not only as an inspiration, but also as an important representation of society and art as a form of therapy.”

The accessibility of art and education through art is vital for Shetterly. “I want my art to be where the people are,” he said, hoping to use his paintings as doors to discussion about important issues.

A total of 12 portraits are currently exhibited across the Berea College campus—six portraits at the Doris Ulmann Galleries and six others at Hutchins Library. Students and community members can see the portraits at the library until March 31 and at the galleries until March 28.

“We are very excited to collaborate with artist Robert Shetterly, the Convocations program and Hutchins Library to showcase Mr. Shetterly’s work in the Galleries,” said Dr. Kelsey Malone, director of the Doris Ulmann Galleries and curator of the Berea College Art Collection. “We’re always looking for unique opportunities like this to bring art to campus and share it with our students and broader community.”

After the convocation, a new portrait of a subject that has helped the Berea community will be revealed at Hutchins Library.

The exhibits, convocation and portrait reveal are all free and open to the public.

Berea College, the first interracial and coeducational college in the South, focuses on learning, labor and service. The College only admits academically promising students with limited financial resources, primarily from Kentucky and Appalachia, although students come from 45 states and 70 countries. Every Berea student receives a Tuition Promise Scholarship, which means no Berea student pays for tuition.&nbsp;Berea is one of nine federally recognized Work Colleges, where students work at least 10 hours a week to earn money for books, housing, and meals.&nbsp;The College’s motto, “God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth,” speaks to its inclusive Christian character. <a href="http://www.berea.edu">www.berea.edu</a>

American Artist Robert Shetterly to present at Berea College Convocation

The holiday season is marked by many wonderful traditions, from handmade Christmas cards to baking cookies to Secret Santa gift exchanges with family, friends and colleagues. Hanukkah is a time for the inspiration from light when days are short and nights are long. Kwanzaa celebrates the harvest and culminates in joy and gratitude through a communal feast.

As Christmas cards begin to arrive at my home, I’m reminded of familiar messages this time of year: goodwill toward others, and the hope and joy that result from such kindnesses.&nbsp; Goodwill toward others is something we can practice every day—in big ways and with small gestures. In fact, this notion of goodwill stems from an emphasis on impartial love—of treating others as you would like to be treated—upon which Berea was founded. It also echoes the motto of Berea, “God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth,” from Acts 17:26 in the Christian New Testament. If we remember that we are all connected through one blood, it makes it easier, perhaps, to take care of our neighbors as a way of affirming our common kinship.

Goodwill is therefore built into the eight Great Commitments to represent the mission of Berea College. Our Seventh Great Commitment, supportive and sustainable living, calls for us “to maintain a residual campus and to encourage in all community members a way of life characterized by mindful and sustainable living, health and wellness, zest for learning, high personal standards, and a concern for the welfare of others.” In mindful living, we are conscious of what’s happening to us and others, and we have a keen awareness of our surroundings. We can see when someone is hurting or in need and we can provide comfort and support. At Berea, we demonstrated the Seventh Great Commitment during our Homecoming activities in November. Through our Center for Excellence in Learning through Service (CELTS), we partnered with the Berea Food Bank to host the Better Together 5k Run. Participants and donors raised nearly $1,200 to keep food on the shelves of the food bank for community members in need.&nbsp;

At Berea, we try to express the ideals of goodwill, wellness, and welfare throughout the year, not just at the holidays. Students and staff in CELTS and in the Francis and Louise Hutchins Center for International Education and other campus organizations and individual members of the campus community show their concern for the welfare of others by collecting winter coats, hats and gloves for students during the colder months; making care packages for students who remain on campus during the winter break and Christmas holiday; and offering rides to and from the airport for students traveling home for the holidays.

These gestures—acts of kindness—certainly bring people joy—both the givers and the receivers.&nbsp; And that joy and the hope of both a holiday season and a coming new year can result in goodwill throughout the months to come, not just at the holidays, so that goodwill is sustained throughout the year.

I hope your holiday is marked by this same kind of goodwill, hope and especially joy.