Dear Faculty and Students,



We are writing to invite you to join us this Thursday, November 29, 2012 between 3:30 PM - 6:00 PM for an Artists’ Showcase: From Be Bop to Mamba to Hip Hop: Authentic Cultural Expressions & the Popular Imagination. We are very excited by our line-up of special guests who are using the arts to create change in their communities (please view attached flyer).  Their presentations will briefly showcase just some of the many artistic and cultural movements that have emerged from the communities of the South Bronx and Harlem/El Barrio, with a special emphasis on the ways in which these communities have been in the past and continue to be uplifted, mobilized, organized, and sustained by such movements.



This Thursday's showcase is part of a class we are teaching this semester, A Multi-Disciplinary Look at the South Bronx and Harlem: Two Communities in the Balance of Hope and Despair (Redux).  Throughout this semester we and our students have been engaged in an in-depth exploration of the dynamic history, challenges of the present, and hopes for the future of the communities of the South Bronx and Harlem from the perspectives of a variety of disciplines and individuals who have lived and worked there.  Guest speakers have included those actively involved in research, community organizing and community action in these urban centers.



Each class session has covered a particular theme designed to stir critical analysis and engaged discussion of class materials spanning the breadth of the social sciences and humanities including memoirs, fiction, poetry, newspaper articles, peer review journal articles, visual media, and both community and academic scholarship across several decades.  Students also participated in walking tours of the communities, created multi-media documentation of their personal reflections on the course, wrote book reviews, and are now developing research and creative projects based on their collaborative inquiry with fellow students, faculty and community members.



As one of the ways to continue our dialogue with you and others interested in the South Bronx and Harlem, we would also like to invite you to visit our Tumblr page.  If you are not familiar, Tumblr is an on-line blog and social networking platform (similar to Twitter and FaceBook).  Our vision is for the page to become a community gathering space for sharing multiple perspectives on the past, present and future of the South Bronx and Harlem.  To view or post to our Tumblr page, you can go to this link: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/sobronxharlem. Log in by entering our e-mail: [log in to unmask] and the password: hunter116.  Once there, you can click on the link to our blog which is located in the upper right hand corner and which appears as “Perspectives on th . . .” Feel free to also share this link with your colleagues and friends whom you think would also be interested in gaining new insights or sharing their perspectives on the South Bronx and Harlem with us.



We hope you will join us this Thursday, November 29th and please spread the word.



With best regards,



Lynn Roberts, PhD, Assistant Professor

Karen Binger, Evaluation Intern

Tailisha Gonzalez, MPH, Teaching Assistant

Debangshu Roychoudhury, MA, Teaching Assistant



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