October-27-2020-Minutes

The Academic Senate Committee on Senate Committee on Cultural and Archival Resources met on October 27, 2020 3:15pm (online)

Committee Members in Attendance:

Attending: Bianca Sosnovski, Susan Agin, Laura Cohen, Huixin(Maritza) Wu, Tanya Zhelezcheva, Heather Huggins, Hsiaofang (Sharon) Huang, Madeline Ruggiero, Jose Osorio, Nathaniel Sullivan, Adam Luedtke 

Liaisons in Attendance:

VP for Advancement: Rosemary Zins

Liaison for Committee on Committees: Kebedech Tekleab

Steering Committee Designee: Carlene Byfield

Business:

The meeting was called to order at 3:15pm

Update on QPAC from Susan Agin:

• Working with student service projects
• Almost any department has an opportunity to collaborate on student service learning through QPAC. For example, some of the service learning projects relevant to QPAC theatre are: nutrition, engineering, language, budgeting, marketing, among others.
• Spring 2020 = Continue with virtual broadcasts – transition to drive-in concerts
• Social media numbers are “off the charts” / all social media (youtube, instagram and Facebook are up 
• QPAC showcases the work of students:
  • Capstone projects
  • Research presentation
  • Math challenges
  • Academic discourses
  • Literary discussions
  • Musical presentations
•  QPAC is an open house, aiding recruiting of prospective students
• These  showcases are more interactive, conversational online
• New programs in the works: Farewell Auschwitz  / Ibsen’s Dolls House with English faculty virtually reading the play for students
• 13.5 million dollar renovation / starting to move along again after spring COVID lockdown

Update on KHC from Laura Cohen

• KHC is partnering with similar institutions around the country
• All cultural centers / museums have switched to virtual programming
• KHC is co-sponsoring events with other institutions, widening audience
• Everyone is missing the space on campus, as getting a tour is not an option (for now)
• The 2020-21 KHC-NEH colloquium, Internment & Resistance: Confronting Mass Detention and Dehumanization, consists of six events that focus on global constructions of concentration camp systems and the challenges that they present
• KHC is focussing all energy on virtual materials, online exhibitions and talks
• Current exhibit: The Concentration Camps: Inside the Nazi System of Incarceration and Genocide, is presented online, KHC website has been reworked to accommodate this
• Exhibition features interviews with 13 survivors from the Holocaust
• Key takeaways for students:
  • Scope: not just about historical holocaust. This could relate to everything from the prison carceral system to ghettos. Courses could relate this to contemporary society. Also focuses on all the other communities who were affected. The Jewish experience is foregrounded but not exclusive to the conversation of who was victimized.
  • Depth: not shying away from difficult topics or disturbing images / but also not about complicity
• Connecting with Common Read: March 10 2021 event: discussing graphic novels to come out of Japanese American internment during WW2: John Yi discussing George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy, which is the common read book for 2020-21; and Dr. Aliza Atik, reviewing Mine Okubo’s Prisoner 13660 
• Every single department  can be involved with the KHC current exhibit. For example in the accounting department, looking closely at how German industries benefited from forced labor (Siemens, Volkswagen, BMW)
• KHC is continuing to leave exhibits up for longer, to extend learning period for students
• Event January 27, 2021: International Holocaust Rememberance Day event with Michael Brovner, Chief of the Queens’ District Attorney’s Hate Crimes Bureau, and Mark Weitzman, Director of Government Affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center 
  • How does antisemitism live on the left and the right?
  • This event is expected to reach hundreds of people

Conversation turned to precarious and downright scary time we are living through at the moment and that our campus cultural centers can have a positive impact:

Laura :

• Empathy, tolerance, and deep learning of history. These are virtues that the KHC prompts and are what makes it stand out in the CUNY system
• However, can the committee outreach directly to other faculty to get the message out?
• How do we break through the bubble of online classes and physical separation

Susan:

• Scary time right now and QPAC is lobbying on behalf of Inclusion and diversity
• QPAC indirectly supports financial support to college by fostering connections to political people and connections to a broader public, while enhancing the curriculum

Focus of next meeting getting word out to faculty to incorporate and plan HIPS that include the cultural centers on campus 

Laura: Would it be helpful to aid in this effort of outreach to faculty for the KHC to do virtual tours of the exhibit? Tanya Zhelezcheva asked about the possibility of a 3D tour, and Laura responded that there is a video walkthrough of the exhibit being made currently.

Last meeting of the CAR committee will be in December.

Meeting adjourned at 4:15pm

 

Respectfully submitted,

Nathaniel Sullivan
Committee on Senate Committee on Cultural and Archival Resources, Secretary

Minutes typed on October 27, 2020