Department of Music Lecture: André de Quadros, Distinguished Visiting Scholar

Free Admission.

“From Prisons to Slums to the West Bank: Mobilizing the Arts for Social Change”

The arts have largely served middle class interests in Western society and increasingly in the rest of the world. Recently, however, more attention has been paid to the potential contribution of the arts to a range of social change projects and collaborations, particularly in public health, incarceration, and conflict resolution. In this presentation, conductor and human rights activist André de Quadros will argue that many professionals have not yet fully realized the potential of music and the other arts to mobilize poor communities and to provide meaningful contexts for health education, community transformation, and empowerment. Dr. de Quadros contends that artists have a social justice responsibility to work collaboratively to explore fully the power of personal and community agency, self-knowledge, and social change in dealing with extreme societal problems. Through narrative illustration and interrogation, the presentation will focus on work in American prisons and sites of conflict and poverty in Israel, the Arab world, and Latin America.

The post-talk discussion will be facilitated by Dr. Denise Elif Gill (Dept. of Music, Dept. of Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Women Gender and Sexuality Studies Program).

André de Quadros, conductor, ethnomusicologist, human rights activist, and music educator has conducted and undertaken research in over forty countries and is a Professor of Music at Boston University where he also holds affiliated faculty appointments in the African Studies Center, the Center for the Study of Asia, the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations, and the Prison Education Program. His research interests lie in arts and health, incarceration, music of the Muslim world and Indonesia, community choruses, and peace and conflict.

http://www.andredequadros.com/

Download event flyer here

Sponsored by the Department of Music with generous support through funding from the Distinguished Visiting Scholar Program of the Office of the Provost.

Co-Sponsors: Edison Theatre, Gephardt Institute for Public Service, George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute, Performing Arts Department, and the Washington University Political Review

For more information, please contact Jennifer Gartley
jgartley@wustl.edu or 314-935-9226