Amitava Kumar reads from Husband of a Fanatic on Thursday, March 17, 7PM @ The Asian American Writers' Workshop, 16 West 32nd Street, Suite 10A, (between 5th Ave & Broadway), New York City.

“In Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey Through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate (The New Press, 2005), Amitava Kumar examines the Hindu-Muslim conflict in South Asia: hatreds and intimacies joining Indians and Pakistanis, Hindus and Muslims, fundamentalists and secularists, writers and rioters. With a poet’s eye for detail, Kumar draws a map of violence, moving from the wars and nuclear rivalry dividing two nation-states to the more blurred relationship between two religions and their adherents.”

Amitava Kumar is the author of Passport Photos (U of California Press, 2000) and Bombay-London-New York (Routledge, 2002) and the editor of the anthology, Away: The Indian Writer as Expatriate (2003). His writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, and the Times of India, among others. Kumar is the scriptwriter and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film, Pure Chutney.

The event is cosponsored by The New Press, South Asian Journalists Association, and NYU’s Asian / Pacific / American Studies Program & Institute.

For more information, contact the Workshop at 212-494-0061 or visit the AAWW site.

Getting to the Workshop…
Subway: N, R, Q, W, B, D, F, V trains to 34th St/Herald Sq
6 train to 33rd St | 1, 2, 3 trains to 34th St
Bus: M4 to 5th Ave/Madison | M5 to Riverside Dr/5th Ave | M6 to Broadway/6th Ave | M7 to Columbus/Amsterdam | M16 to 34th St Crosstown | M34 to 34th St Crosstown | Q32 Jackson Heights

Photographer and multimedia producer, Shana Dressler, is looking for committed interns to work on various projects associated with her multimedia installation on the Ganesh Festival in Bombay which is in development. Interns are invited to help Shana prepare for a WNYC radio show on Ganesh music on March 31st, a slideshow at the United Nations in May and the preparation for a full scale installation which is in discussion with a New York museum.

Please contact Shana about this opportunity.

Interested interns would be involved in the following:

WNYC Radio Show

– researching Ganesh music
– looking through video footage to pick out interesting audio sound clips
– helping to locate a singer in the tri-sate area to record Ganesh’s 108 names

Slideshow at the UN

– help to locate a student animator currently in art school to work on opening sequence of the slideshow
– help to produce the slideshow which may include an opening dance to Ganesh, a invocation sung to Ganesh and coordinating a light meal
– putting together a press list and marketing materials to advertise slideshow to UN employees
– outreach to invite possible sponsors to fund final trip to Bombay in September 2005 to complete multimedia installation for museum
– work on updating website so that potential donors will have access to a range of information

Multimedia Installation at NY Museum

Once the proposal has been accepted help will also be needed to work on the multimedia installation currently being considered by a New York museum. Interns wishing to work on this should contact Shana for further information.

Internship start date: ASAP for WNYC/UN event; ongoing for Multimedia Installation

Application instructions: Please send a cover letter explaining why you're interested in interning on this project and include your resume as a PDF (preferred method) or MS Word document to shana@shanadressler.com.

Background info: photos

Biography:

Shana Dressler’s career as a multi-media producer has spanned several continents and disciplines. Her recent work includes putting together an exhibition of photographs of the Ganesh Festival as celebrated in Bombay at the National Arts Club in New York; consulting for the Music and Cultural Programming Department at Link TV; working with the Global Peace Initiative of Women on their upcoming Global Youth Leadership Summit; and helping to produce The Spirit of Fes, a 17 city US tour of world sacred music.

As a photographer, Shana has worked for magazines both in the United States and abroad. “If Only It Were Love,” a photography book based on her unrequited love story with an Italian underwater photographer in Italy, is pending publication. The photographs were exhibited at New York University’s Casa Italiana in January of 2003.

As a video journalist Shana covered the “Drumming In The New Millenium” festival shot in Cairo, Egypt for World Entertainment Network and has filmed station spots of world music stars such as Baaba Maal, Habib Koité and Afro Celt Sound System for Link TV.  In 2000, Shana completed “Can't Wait ‘Til Sunday,” a documentary short which she directed and produced with National Geographic photographer/cameraman Bob Sacha, about a Harlem preacher’s last night of work as a mechanic for the United States Postal Service. This film was part of a long-term photography project about spiritual experience in a Pentecostal church in Harlem. A portfolio of photographs from this project is part of the permanent collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York.

She has also produced “Around the Globe in 10 Weeks,” a ten part world music lecture and performance series. Speakers included, among others: Robert Browning, World Music Institute; Sean Barlow, Afropop Worldwide; Prof. Gage Averill, Director of the Ethnomusicology Program, NYU; Valerie Naranjo, percussionist of the Saturday Night Live Band, and Bobby Sanabria, Grammy nominated Latin drummer. In 1999, she was hired by Ellipsis Arts, a world music label, to produce the audio CD “African Lullaby” which won the Parent’s Choice Golden Seal Award that same year.  She is currently working on a compilation of African Water Spirit songs for an upcoming exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum slated for 2007.

Shana is a 1989 graduate of Vassar College with a B.A. in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She received her photography training at the International Center of Photography in New York where she took courses in photojournalism while studying Comparative Religion and Anthropology at Columbia University. She is fluent in Italian, French and Spanish.

This is quite a feat folks. Rajan Sedalia, the illustrator behind the comic strip, “A Cookie Jar,” is having his work now distributed through uComics.com.

There is one in the series that has a group of sperm going down the wrong path while a disgruntled ovary looks on. The tag line is delivered by the sperm who collectively say “Has anyone asked for directions?” Just brilliant.

Via Sree Sreenivasan

The Bloomberg College Editors' Leadership Workshop at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University, is now accepting applications for the 2005 workshop. Details here. Application deadline is April 15, 2005. Write to workshop director Dr. Nancy Beth Jackson for more information.

Caption: For the debt-ridden farmers of Andhra Pradesh, buying seeds is expensive yet inevitable. © Surya Sen