Globalization, Performance, and the Failure of Human Rights: Encounters with Northern Uganda

Globalization, Performance, and the Failure of Human Rights: Encounters with Northern Uganda

Laura Edmondson (Theater, Dartmouth)
Thursday, March 11 / 5:00 PM
Buchanan Hall 1940

Laura Edmondson is a scholar and playwright whose work focuses on East Africa.  Her articles on Tanzanian and Ugandan theater have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International, TDR: The Drama Review, and the anthologies African Performance Arts (2002) and Violence Performed (2009). She is also the author of Performance and Politics in Tanzania: The Nation on Stage (2007).  Edmondson’s new research project, “Genocide Performed: Narratives of Violence from Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC,” explores the cultural traffic of genocide and mass violence on local and global stages.  She is also collaborating on a performance piece, “Forged in Fire,” with Ugandan performer Okello Kelo Sam and Tanzanian musician Robert O. Ajwang’.  The piece integrates music, dance, and text to explore Okello’s personal experiences of the civil war in northern Uganda.  She also co-organized “Eti! East Africa Speaks!,” a residency for East African theatre artists at Dartmouth and in New York City that occurred in July 2007.

Sponsored by the IHC’s African Studies and Performance Studies RFGs, Dept. of History, Dept. of Black Studies, the Hull Chair and Dr. Suk-Young Kim.