Event details
Finding Home in Language
October 9, 3:30-5:00 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time (MDT)
Featured Speaker: Amal Kassir
Sponsored by the Adult Education Special Interest Group
(Co-Chairs Sarah Dahleh, Ryan Yates, and Jackie Zvejnieks)
Abstract: This talk is about the journeys our languages can take us on, making stories accessible, and how we can use both the spoken and unspoken to connect the world around us.
Bio: Amal Kassir is a Syrian American international spoken word poet. She has performed in 12 countries, and over five dozen cities. She has lectured, performed poetry and taught workshops in venues ranging from orphanages to refugee camps to youth prisons to universities to community centers to churches to city sidewalks. Her work is heavily influenced by the war in Syria, her experience as a minority in the United States, and the plight of the oppressed all over the world.
She designed her own undergraduate major, titled Community Programming in Social Psychology, where she has been able to create programs for a range of causes and communities, from businesses threatened by gentrification to poetry workshops for refugee students. She envisions a world of accessibility and literacy for all, and all her efforts work towards this vision. She is working on her first book, Scud Missile Blues, due for publishing by the end of this year.