Clark’s ‘Framing Freedom’ Series Features Jazz Ambassadors

Monday, October 21, 2013

GoLocalWorcester Features Team

American jazz stars such as Louis Armstrong were sent overseas to win the hearts and minds of developing nations and counter notions of American racism.

Under the theme of "Framing Freedom" the Higgins School of Humanities Fall Dialogue Symposium is underway at Clark University, offering lectures, screenings, conversations and exhibits that are free and open to the public.

Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War

Coming next in this series, “Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War,” a talk by Penny M. Von Eschen, professor of history and American culture at the University of Michigan. She is the author of “Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (2004).” The lecture will begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23, in the Higgins Lounge at Dana Commons.

In “Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War,” part of the Higgins’ African American Intellectual Culture Series, Von Eschen will relate how, from 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians abroad in order to win the hearts and minds of developing nations and to counter perceptions of American racism. She will focus on the early years of the tours, as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other jazz luminaries spread their music and their ideas further than the State Department anticipated. Her talk explores the freedom afforded by creativity, music, and mobility and how jazz both served and challenged political notions of freedom.

“Freedom and liberty are regular topics in public discourse, and people usually assume that they are well understood. However, big questions surrounding these terms suggest that this may not be true,” writes Amy Richter, director of the Higgins School of Humanities and associate professor of history.

For more information as well as a comprehensive calendar of events including Clark Arts, the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Friends of the Goddard Library, go to the Higgins School of Humanities website.

Upcoming events

Here are brief highlights of events coming up in the series:

“Savage Portrayals: Media Representations and the Lives of African-American Males”
Talk by Natalie Byfield
7 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 30
Higgins Lounge at Dana Commons

“The Central Park Five” (2013) film screening
6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 22 and 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24
Higgins Lounge at Dana Commons

“Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture & the Fictions of Independence”
Talk by Clark University Professor María Acosta Cruz
4 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 29
Higgins Lounge at Dana Commons

“Firearms and Freedom: Stories of Guns and American Life”
Community conversation, with John Sarrouf
7 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 5
Higgins Lounge at Dana Commons

“Funky Junk and Frugality”
Talk by Derek Diedricksen,
7 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 12
Higgins Lounge at Dana Commons

“The Mind-Body Problem: A Poetry Reading”
Talk by Katha Pollitt,
7 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 20
Higgins Lounge at Dana Commons

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