Poetry is not a Luxury

Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow Dahlia Li will host artist Jaamil Olawale Kosoko for three body and performance-based workshops drawing from their collaborative practice centering Black feminist poetics. Offered in conjunction with GSST 1: “Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Life Across Generations,” workshops explore productive frictions between personal feelings of sexuality, space, and gender as they meet social expectation, restriction, and possibility. Open to the public; no prior poetry or performance experience required.

Bye Bye Tiberias

In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, the world-renowned actress (Succession, Ramy, The Lemon Tree) returns to the village with her filmmaker daughter to explore her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives.

Set between past and present, Bye Bye Tiberias pieces together images of today, family footage, and historical archives to portray four generations of daring Palestinian women who keep their story and legacy alive through the strength of their bonds, despite exile, dispossession, and heartbreak.

Featured in numerous international festivals and nominated for Independent Spirit and Cesar Awards, Bye Bye Tiberias was Palestine’s 2024 Oscar submission.

Queer Shakespeare Workshop

This workshop will revisit and queer Shakespeare's work through performative means. Using strategies from Mexican Cabaret, we will develop playful modes through which performance helps audiences navigate the more serious LGBTO+ social topics of today. Our goal will be to find moments in Shakespeare's work that allows us to create queer narratives and characters that offer better representations of queer experience while questioning and challenging the political state of equal rights for queers in the contemporary world. Free and open to the Swarthmore Community; no prior performance or theatre experience necessary.

Presented by the Program ni Gender and Sexuality Studies with Sponsorship from the Clark Fund for Gender Discourse

Artist Bio: Mariano Ruiz (they/she) is a trans nonbinary cabaret artivist from Mexico City. They use humor, pop culture and satire to talk about Othered bodies and their experiences. With over 20 shows created Mariano has molded a career creating projects that question the social segregation created by the rejection of the identities or sexualities that leave the so-called "norm".

Christian Cooper Walks and Talks

Christian Cooper is the NY Times-bestselling author of Better Living Through Birding and an Emmy winner for his work on National Geographic’s Extraordinary Birder with Christian Cooper. Cooper serves as a vice president of NYC Bird Alliance, where he advocates for greater, safer access to green spaces for all, with a focus on outreach to youth in underserved communities. A longtime activist on issues of racial justice and LGBTQ equality, Cooper combined his passions in the BLM short story “It’s a Bird” from DC Comics. He continues to seek synergy at the intersections of storytelling, progressivism, and environmentalism.

Co-sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Peace & Conflict Studies, the Intercultural Center, McCabe Library, the Office of Sustainability and, the Black Cultural Center.