Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University, WGBH Forum Network, the Communication, Journalism & Media and World Languages & Cultural Studies departments, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Global and Cultural Studies Program at Suffolk University present:
A Virtual Three-Week Storytelling Series
Beyond Borders: Women’s Stories and the Art of Bearing Witness
Join us in October as four fascinating storytellers talk to three Suffolk University professors via Zoom. Laura Levitt, professor, Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender, Temple University, Alba Jaramillo, executive director, Arizona Justice For Our Neighbors and nationally recognized human rights and social justice advocate, Patricia Davis, noted author, poet, and playwright, and Phoebe Potts, director, Family Learning, Sylvia Cohen Religious School, memoirist, and comic. These four captivating women will share their work, which bears witness to struggles about human rights, memory, belonging, and love.
October 1, 2020
Live at 7:00 pm
Please register to join the conversation, click here
The Objects That Remain is Laura Levitt’s memoir and fascinating examination of the ways in which the material remains of violent crimes inform our thinking about trauma and loss. Considering artifacts in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and evidence in police storage facilities across the country, Levitt’s story moves between intimate trauma, the story of an unsolved rape, and genocide. She asks what it might mean to do justice to these violent pasts outside the justice system or through historical accounts. The evening’s moderator is Barbara Abrams, associate professor and director, Global and Cultural Studies program, Suffolk University.
October 15, 2020
Live at 7:00 pm
Alba Jaramillo and Patricia Davis talk about Digna. Written by Patricia Davis, the one-woman play follows Digna Ochoa, played by Alba Jaramillo, a prominent Mexican human rights lawyer who suffered torturous attacks following her defense of environmentalist peasants in Mexico. By the age of 37 she had met President Clinton, became close to the Kennedy family, and won a MacArthur Fellowship and the Amnesty International’s Enduring Spirit award. In 2001, she was killed in her Mexico City office. In the play Digna comes back from the dead in response to the worsening human rights crisis in Mexico. Jaramillo, an immigrant, human rights lawyer and activist herself, plays the role of Digna with conviction, passion and self-reflection. In telling her story and confronting her own doubts, Digna finds her strength and courage as she invites us to find our own. The evening’s moderator is Iani Moreno, associate professor, World Languages and Cultural Studies Department, Suffolk University.
October 29, 2020
Live at 7:00 pm
Too Fat For China: follows Phoebe Potts, comic storyteller and a self-described “professional Jew” as she tries, fails and eventually succeeds to adopt a baby. Potts is the daughter of journalists from Brooklyn, where everyone was indignant before breakfast and stories were the currency of relationships. After a U.S. adoption goes horribly wrong, Potts finds herself surprised, disgusted and ultimately resigned to the role she plays as a middle-class white lady in the business of adopting babies in the U.S. and internationally. Potts’ tragicomic journey is about looking for more – more love, more life, and more family. She will do anything to get it, including having her morals and values fold in on themselves. With humor and honesty, Potts tells the story of the terrible things she did for love. The evening’s moderator is Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, associate professor, Communication, Journalism, and Media Department, Suffolk University.
