Join us for a reading and discussion group in conjunction with our current exhibition, JEROME WITKIN: THIS TIME, THIS WORLD.

We will read short stories and excerpts by contemporary authors such as Grace Paley, Joan Silber, and Valeria Luiselli and discuss the relationship between displacement and identity. We will be asking: how do the structures of art capture or complement the chaos of personal identity? How is our sense of self shaped by the outside world? How might art allow for social engagement with the larger world, superseding the limitations of more literal modes of communication?

By thinking about these stories in relation to Jerome Witkin’s exhibit we hope to think about the role of art (both visual and narrative) in creating portals into worlds beyond our own.

Register by emailing flauria@syr.edu. Readings will be provided ahead of time by the facilitators.

About the facilitators:

Florencia Lauria is an English PhD student at Syracuse University, where she studies magical realism and its use in diasporic narratives. She has lived in Buenos Aires, Minnesota, and New York, and she holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota.

Jason Zencka writes and teaches in Syracuse, NY. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, a criminal defense investigator, and a high school English teacher. His story “Catacombs” opens the 2018 Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Voir Dire, an opera with a libretto by Zencka, premiered in April 2017 in Fort Worth, Texas.

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