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Posts from the ‘Featured’ Category

Feb 2

Plastic Bag Quilting! Fri, Feb 2 at 2:00 pm

Ever wonder what to do with all those plastic bags lying around your house? Did you know that they can’t be combined with your regular recycling? This spring, to raise awareness about the serious environmental challenges that plastic bags present, the Center is partnering with Carolina Performing Arts and campus sustainability partners to turn plastic bags into art. We’re also issuing a Plastic Bag Challenge to see if UNC students, staff, faculty, parents, and friends can recycle 10,000 plastic bags through the special collection points that can help turn those old grocery bags (and other types of plastic film) into sustainable lumber and reusable plastic products.

Join us next Friday, as CPA DisTIL Fellow Robin Frohardt shows us how to craft a plastic bag quilt! Building on her previous work in visual arts, theater, and puppetry, Robin’s current project focuses on the ubiquity of plastic, which is non-biodegradable and therefore becomes a permanent part of our planet. Our plastic bag quilt will be exhibited on April 21 at “PLASTICON” in CPA’s new artspace CURRENT. We’ll have southern snacks, friendly instruction for newcomers, and a new spin on old-fashioned quilting. You can also bring in those old plastic bags, which we’ll collect and recycle as part of our Plastic Bag Challenge.

This event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs to Alex Ripp at aripp@unc.edu will be appreciated. Special thanks to our co-sponsors and quilting buddies: Carolina Performing Arts, Sustainability@UNC, EcoReps, the Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling, and the Three Zeros Initiative. Deviled eggs and other southern snacks will be served!

Jan 9

RISING: On view through Spring 2018

RISING is a collaborative multimedia research project, using photography and oral history to better understand coastal communities’ beliefs and understandings regarding climate change. What changes have coastal residents witnessed due to recurring coastal hazards? How have they adapted to the changes? How have these past experiences with hazards affected their perceptions of future climate change and sea level rise?

Join us for the opening reception on Friday, February 16th, featuring remarks by project directors Baxter Miller and Ryan Stancil as well as snacks by Bill Smith of Crook’s Corner.

This project is made possible by a Community Collaborative Research Grant, a program of North Carolina Sea Grant in partnership with the William R. Kenan Jr. Institute for Engineering, Technology and Science at NC State University. Special thanks to our co-sponsors, Food For All, the Coastal Resilience Center, and the Department of American Studies.

Nov 16

Charleston Lecture by Philip & Pierce Freelon, Thurs, Nov 16 at 7:00 pm

 

Join us in the Stone Center Theatre for the 2017 Charleston Lecture in Southern Affairs by Philip and Pierce Freelon, titled “Black Space Making and the Built Environment.”

Philip Freelon is a renowned architect who served as the lead designer for the Stone Center as well as the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Pierce Freelon is a musician and social entrepreneur who founded Blackspace and ran for Mayor of Durham in 2017. These two visionary leaders will discuss past and present challenges and opportunities in the struggle to create spaces for creative expression and social justice, and Renee Alexander Craft will lead the conversation.

This event, co-sponsored by the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, is free and open to the public. Free parking is available after 5:00 pm in the Bell Tower parking deck.

Oct 10

Confederate Symbols in the Public Square

What do people choose to see or not to see about the American South? What should we commemorate as southerners/Americans? Whose history do Confederate symbols represent? Even if you can’t attend in person, you can watch the roundtable online via Livestream here. You can also listen to our latest episode of Press Record about Confederate monuments here and check out the Southern Cultures syllabus on Monuments and Memory here.

If you are nearby, please join us at the Friday Center Auditorium for a roundtable discussion on “Confederate Symbols in the Public Square.” Our panelists are Sheffield Hale, President and CEO of the Atlanta History Center; Blair L.M. Kelley, Associate Professor of History and Assistant Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies at N.C. State University, and Grace Hale, Commonwealth Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Virginia. This event, co-sponsored by the Department of American Studies, the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, and the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education, is free and open to the public. Register here!

Image courtesy of Susana Raab/INSTITUTE.

Sep 26

On Display Through December 2017

Drop by the Center and check out our Fall 2017 art exhibit, featuring story quilts based on the deployed experiences of Native American military veterans. Inspired by oral history interviews with veterans from each of North Carolina’s eight state- and federally-recognized tribes, these quilts are artifacts of lived experience and material culture from the American South. Their stories from World War II through ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan reflect the strength and complications of patriotism, as well as the struggles that sometimes continue after leaving the combat zone.

This project was conceived and directed by Karen Harley, a member of the Haliwa-Saponi Indian tribe. The exhibit is made possible with funding from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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