On May 9, 2016 at 7 p.m. a public forum connecting the communities of Kansas City, Missouri and Garden City, Kansas will offer diverse humanities perspectives about stories of migration to mid-America. The forum will leverage the power of teleconferencing technology to foster productive discussions between the two audiences, divided by 376 miles but both hubs of recent resettlement for Africans in the region. The gathering in the heart of Kansas City at the popular and welcoming Unity Temple will bring together Nigerian-born Chris Abani, a best-selling novelist and poet, with two humanities scholars, Marta Caminero-Santangelo (University of Kansas) and Garth Myers (Trinity College), both experts in the field of immigration. Byron Caminero-Santangelo, Interim Director of KASC and professor of English and Environmental Studies at KU, will serve as the moderator. A video recording and transcript of the forum will also be provided on this website for those unable to attend.
Speakers:
Chris Abani
Chris Abani is an acclaimed novelist and poet. His most recent books are The Secret History of Las Vegas, The Face: A Memoir and Sanctificum. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Hemingway Award, An Edgar Prize, A Ford USA Artists Fellowship, the PEN Beyond the Margins Award, a Prince Claus Award, the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors. Born in Nigeria, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Board of Trustees Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago.
Garth Myers
Garth Myers is a cultural and urban geographer who examines issues of urban and global studies as a distinguished professor at Trinity College in Connecticut. When Myers was a faculty member at the University of Kansas, he was part of a team of scholars and community activists that developed a research project, “African Immigrants in the Land of Oz,” to investigate the effects of recent eastern African immigration on diversity and multiculturalism in Kansas. His research targets three specific areas of concern: (1) settlement patterns, institution-building, and community organizing for social services among Eastern African communities in Kansas; (2) social service agency responses to the immigrant communities; and (3) intercultural relations, both between and among African and host communities, as well as relationships with other recent migrants from Asia and Latin America. As a former Director of KASC from 2006-2011, Myers has a deep understanding of both its outreach mission and connections to African communities in the region. He will provide the audience with contexts to consider when approaching the topic of recent immigration.
Marta Caminero-Santangelo
Marta Caminero-Santangelo, a Professor of English at KU, is an expert on literature and migrant experiences. Her work focuses on narratives of immigration and documenting the stories of migration and immigrants to the United States. She regularly presents her research on undocumented immigration, border crossing deaths, and human rights issues to scholarly audiences and local organizations that work with these populations. Her humanities research on Latino/a experiences informs and enhances an understanding of African migrant issues. At the public forum she will speak about public activism and migrant stories to demonstrate that in these stories ethnic identity often takes a back seat to political need and to other kinds of imagined collective identities. She will illustrate, through the use of video clips and interview excerpts, how migrants are redefining what it means to be American by telling distinctly American stories. Her remarks will emphasize how the storytellers she worked with see themselves as Americans.
Byron Caminero-Santangelo
Byron Caminero-Santangelo has experience moderating interdisciplinary scholarly presentations that speak to humanities concerns as the Director of the Nature and Culture Seminar at the Hall Center for the Humanities at KU. He brings diverse humanities interests and expertise to the project as a scholar specializing in African and Diasporic literatures. Drawing on work in environmental studies, he integrates ideas about social justice, sustainability, and global poverty as they apply to African contexts in terms of both literature and lived experience.