College of Staten Island Center for the Arts – Recital Hall
2800 Victory Blvd, SINY 10314
An unusual, cross-disciplinary symposium on Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain.
OutLOUD’s Tom Sawyer symposium has something to interest everyone – Scholarship & literature meet performance art & painting. We welcome academics & artists, writers, critics, musicians, teachers & students, all Staten Island residents, anyone who’s interested in Mark Twain.
PANELISTS: Professor Richard Currie (College of Staten Island), Professor Ellen Goldner (College of Staten Island), Professor/Poet Marguerite Rivas (Borough of Manhattan Community College), Artist/Curator/Educator Robert Bunkin (Curator, Staten Island Museum; Adjunct Lecturer, BMCC), Performance Artist D. B. Lampman, who will present her new piece, Tom And the River
Prof. Goldner will examine masculinity in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as it relates to Westward expansion. Prof. Currie will consider contrasting views of childhood in Mark Twain and in Charles Dickens. (For example, Tom and Huck might love to join Fagin’s band of thieves.)
Prof. Rivas is a Staten Island poet whose new book Tell No One, will be released in April. She will use the vehicles of oral history and primary source documents to explore how the adventures of Tom, Becky and Huck played out yesteryear, in the forests, caves and ponds of Staten Island.
Painter/Curator Robert Bunkin will don a Mark Twain mask to critique some of the European paintings that Twain mocked in Innocents Abroad.
Performance Artist D.B. Lampman (Pollock-Krasner awardee) will debut her newest piece, Tom And the River. She will portray the Mississippi River (wearing a green wetsuit, goggles and a kinetic sculpture created from 300 feet of sparkly garden hose), while her young son Henry portrays Tom Sawyer. (www.dblampman.com)
This event will be particularly interesting to adults and young readers age 14 & older.
Artists, writers, educators and students are especially welcome – But all Islanders are invited!
For directions to the College of Staten Island via public transportation, visit www.hopstop.com