Culture and Arts

A different Russian Revolution, occured ten years before 1917, tells us more about Russian politics and society than the one being commemorated in its centenial and is linked to global developments in deeper ways than the latter. This was the argument  developed by Columbia’s history professor Catherine Evtuhov  in a lecture entitled “Was There a Revolution in 1917? A View from Russia’s Imperial Period”.

Chilean poet Raúl Zurita was invited to Columbia University in September to participate in a series of events marking the launching of the Sawyer Seminar on  “Global Language Justice” organized by the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS) and financed by a two-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 

In mid-October, Wellesley College’s professor Marjorie Agosin – also a poet, human rights activist, and literary critic—spoke about Akhmatova´s life and work in the context of the series the commemorate the one hundred years of the Russian Revolution jointly organized by the Santiago Center and local universities Católica de Valparaíso, Católica de Chile and Universidad de Chile.

With an extremely successful festival on Film Noir –featuring presentations, reviews and commentaries on “Double Indemnity” (1944), “The Lady from Shanghai” (1947) and “Kiss me Deadly”(1955)-- Richard Peña ended his one-week visit to Chile in late August.

In early August, Joshua Furst, adjunct assistant professor of writing, and Alicia Meier, Communications and Global Programs Manager, both from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, travelled to Chile in an exploratory mission to discuss possible joint projects with local authors and universities. Their visit followed a very successful Advanced Creative Writing Workshop held in conjunction with the Rio Center and Instituto Vera Cruz in São Paulo.

Pizmon, a Jewish a cappella group from Columbia, Barnard College, and the Jewish Theological Seminary visited Chile in a mission led by University’s Chaplain, Jewelnel Davis, and partly funded by the Kraft Global Fellows Program. They sang in several public events, surprising and moving audiences with their extraordinary voices and, and, especially, by the charm of its ten members.