Join CARE SYLLABUS for the third in a series of lectures, part of The Mind’s Eye Works-In-Progress
Colloquium.
Title: Private Performance as Caretaking
Abstract: In this exploration of performance, acts of endurance, and the role of caretaking
in the arts and recovery, Melanie Mowinski examines the idea of wilderness mindset.
Mowinski defines wilderness mindset as being present to the unpredictability of life,
a concept she developed through her walking practice. When one deliberately seeks
the uncomfortable or the opportunity to be lost while walking, resiliency, perseverance,
confidence and fortitude get exercised. What is done “alone” can be framed as private
performance, an act of endurance in the ongoing care for the body and soul within
this great unknown.
Speaker Bio
Melanie Mowinski lives and works in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts where
she is a professor of art at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA). Mowinski
holds an MFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and an MAR from Yale
University. Mowinski balances hyper control & very specific rules with experimental
investigations in her letterpress and book arts making. She gravitates towards the
creation of one-of-a-kind artist books housed in unusual and traditional enclosures.
Her books under the imprint PRESS • 29 PRESS are in private and public collections
around the world.
Join CARE SYLLABUS for the second in a series of lectures, part of The Mind’s Eye
Works-In-Progress Colloquium.
Title: Witches, Girlhood, and the Ethic of Care
Abstract: In this talk, Dr. Castro outlines childhood studies interpretations and applications
of the feminist ethic of care to expand the concept of children’s ethic of care to
their material cultures. Castro discusses the caring girlhood of young witches as
represented in examples from film, streaming media, and literature to argue that girl
witches are material culture – subsumed into the narrative and cultural imaginary,
a witch (when younger) is no longer a scary person but instead a material culture
artifact. The young witch is first and foremost carer for others around them, whether
that be animal, friend, relative, or trusted adult.
Speaker Bio
Ingrid E. Castro is Professor of Sociology at MCLA. She earned her MA and PhD in Sociology,
with two Graduate Certificates in Cinema Studies and Women & Gender Studies, from
Northeastern University. She regularly writes on children and childhood, specifically
child and youth agency, ethic of care, generationalism, and interpretive reproduction.
Her edited volumes include Researching Children and Youth: Methodological Issues, Strategies, and Innovations (2017); Representing Agency in Popular Culture: Children and Youth on Page, Screen, and In
Between (2019); Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction: Travel, Technology, Time (2019); and Childhood, Agency, and Fantasy: Walking in Other Worlds (2020).
Join CARE SYLLABUS for the first in a series of lectures, part of The Mind’s Eye Works-In-Progress
Colloquium.
Title: Imitation of Life: A Lyric Essay
Abstract: In this reading of an essay begun during this past year, Zack Finch explores whether
performance art and literature can enact the sorts of funerary, healing, and socially
cathartic care work traditionally reserved for more religious rituals and ceremonies
of mourning. Moving across a spectrum of aesthetic texts, including installation
works by Taryn Simon, sculpture by Fred Wilson, essays by Stéphane Mallarmé, and films
by Douglas Sirk and Stan Brakhage, this work-in-progress takes a personal, auto-theoretical
approach to the question of how one navigates loss and separation under the conditions
of the ongoing pandemic.
Speaker Bio
Zack Finch is a poet, essayist and scholar of modern and contemporary US poetry and
poetics. He has received awards and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in
Provincetown, the Breadloaf Writer's Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and the
Wallace Stevens Society. His work has appeared in places including American Letters
& Commentary, Boston Review, Fence, Jacket2, Poetry and Tin House. A graduate of Warren
Wilson's Program for Writers (MFA in poetry) and University of Buffalo's Poetics Program
(PhD), he currently teaches writing and literature courses in the English Department
at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
