How or why did you first get involved in the humanities and arts and what do they mean to you? I remember you telling the class you were raised on the importance and power of stories; did that influence your passion for the Humanities?

I was lucky to grow up with literature, art, music, and dance within my immediate family and community, which is probably a major reason why the Humanities have been a central part of my life and career. I was always encouraged to explore the arts and to create. Both my parents have always loved to read and listen to or make music. My mom read to us at night and my dad played music and made musical instruments. My mom is a painter and both my parents were into photography and film. My brothers and I were sometimes the subjects of their art. Growing up in Big Sur, CA in the late 1970s, and not having a television for long periods of time, meant that storytelling, books, and dressing up and acting in our own improvised plays were our entertainments. When I was nine, a couple moved to our community and started teaching Arabic dance and drumming. They formed a community performance group and my parents joined. I started studying “belly dance” and had my first live performance when I was around 10 years old at a famous restaurant in Big Sur called Nepenthe. Later, I attended the Children’s Experimental Theater in Carmel under the direction of Marcia Gambrell Hovick (1922-2012) and joined its Traveling Troupe, bringing theater to schools around the Monterey Bay Area.

How did you get started in Flamenco dance, you recently taught us that it has roots in Romani cultures; did a study in folklore and literature lead you to Flamenco dance or the other way around?

I saw flamenco while I was studying abroad in France in 1988-9, and when traveling to Spain during holidays. I made a promise to myself to study this art form that totally captivated me with its intensity. I started flamenco dance lessons in Santa Cruz, CA in 1991. My dad told me about a teacher he wanted me to study with and offered to pay for my first month of classes–he even came and took the class which me! He had studied flamenco guitar and was exposed to flamenco as a kid by my grandfather who was stationed in Spain with the U.S. air force. My grandfather was Mexican American and his first language was Spanish. He really connected with Spanish culture and later took my dad to see Jose Greco’s Spanish dance company when they toured the U.S. I became interested in Romani literature due to a broader interest in Romani culture which I first encountered through flamenco. A number of my flamenco teachers have been Romani (or “Gitano” as they say in Spain). In graduate school I started studying representations of Romanies in western literature and completed two self-designed independent studies on Romanies and flamenco. I also wrote about this topic in both my Master’s thesis at UCSC and my Ph.D. dissertation at UO.

Similarly, how does your professional dance intersect with your involvement in academics? I know you wrote your master’s thesis and Ph.D. dissertation on dance in film and literature, what was that like?

Since dance and literature have both always been a big part of my life, it made sense to combine them. Dance has also helped me balance my academic studies since it is more physically and emotionally expressive. My academic exploration of dance isn’t just from an anthropological standpoint but also looks at epistemological and philosophical questions about ways of knowing and the relationship between self and other, which I explore through the performer-audience connection. All of this I try to understand through the lens of feminist analysis of power relations and subject-object relations. It has been my great pleasure to also be involved in educational outreach and to be an invited lecturer in different classes sharing the art and history of flamenco. This fall 2022, some flamenco colleagues and I will be collaborating with the Portland Opera to do some outreach lecture performances in support of their production of Bizet’s opera Carmen. It will be exciting! Stay tuned!

This is a purely selfish question, but how has your specialization in Women’s and Gender studies impacted you or your view of the humanities? The Chalice and the Blade was one of my favorite pieces of writing we looked at last term so I’m keen to know your thoughts on similar subjects.

My specialization in Women’s and Gender studies is undoubtedly a product of having a mother who is an artist, who struggled as a single parent to support us and to create art, and from being a dancer myself. I’m acutely aware that female dancers have been objectified and sexualized. I’ve always had a fierce conviction that women artists are important and that they are often ignored or forgotten by history. I’m deeply curious about other cultures and the experiences of people who create on the margins of the dominant culture. Feminism has been a home for me because it has given me the tools to talk about art, performance, and literature in a way that humanizes “the Other” and even questions that category altogether.

I know for a lot of students, myself included, deciding what they want to study or make a career of can feel incredibly intimidating and permanent, as someone who has more experience would you have any advice for these concerns? Did you always know you wanted to teach and study literature or was it something that evolved over time?

I see and understand the anxiety students are dealing with when it comes to educational and career choices. I recall a conversation with a student whose father wanted them to go into computer programming but they had no interest in this field and really wanted to pursue art. They were so unhappy and it made me sad that their dreams weren’t being supported. I still always tell students to pursue what they are deeply drawn to do and have faith that they will find their unique path if they stay true to themselves. This can be very challenging but you can change direction and reinvent yourself if you need to. My professional life has definitely evolved over time as I grew and encountered new learning situations. I had some vague notions about changing “the system” from within when I was in high school. I don’t recall that I set out to teach but this initial impulse evolved into a teaching and a dance career where I get to mentor and share my interests with students, who I also learn from. I initially planned to major in art but changed my declared major to French literature when I had the chance to study abroad. I just knew that I needed to travel and I was able to do this with scholarships and grants. I have always loved languages and reading and studying abroad set me on my path to investigate other cultures and become a comparative literature major with an emphasis in performance studies, feminist philosophy, and postcolonial studies. I took six years off after my undergraduate degree before going to graduate school. I realized that I wanted to push myself further. I tested the waters with a Masters program and then went on to a Ph.D. program. My final advice would be to find your passion and don’t give up! Be diligent. Stay curious. Be open to possibilities and opportunities and put your heart and soul into your endeavors. You may not become wealthy but you will have a rich and meaningful life.

If there is anything I missed or anything you would like to include or expand on, please feel free! I only know a fraction of your experience in academics and the humanities so if there is anything else you would like to talk about that you think is worthwhile, I would love to hear it. 

I think I’ve taken up enough space already but I’m happy to chat with anyone who is curious about pursuing dance or literature. They can contact me via my PCC email at:
elena.villa@pcc.edu.

Elena Villa is a lifelong dancer whose parents introduced her to Middle Eastern music and belly dance in the late 1970s. She began flamenco studies in 1991 and has pursued flamenco and belly dance with equal devotion, often seeking out intensive study with native teachers in the U.S. and abroad. Elena began teaching belly dance in 1996 and flamenco in 2001. She performs with several professional live music groups, including Flamenco Pacifico and The Bedouin Spice Orchestra of the Oregon Country Fair’s legendary Caravan Stage, where she coordinates the talent. Elena travels regionally to teach regular workshops, perform in theaters and at festivals, and work in educational music and dance residencies in schools and colleges with Flamenco Pacifico. Elena pursued her love of dance academically by looking at dance through the fields of literature, cultural studies, and performance studies and has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon, where she taught from 1998–2012. Elena currently divides her time between teaching flamenco and belly dance, collaborating with other professional performing artists, and teaching writing, literature, and film.

Elena will be performing “Dance, Music, and the Archetype” at the Tigard Library on October 22nd at 2pm.

From Erturk:

Ismet Prcic, the writer of the novel “Shards,” has been the guest resident of the Carolyn Writer House at PCC. I had the pleasure to meet with him there and to talk about his next book, a sequel to “Shards,” his other projects he is currently working on, and his writing career.

�����ٳܰ���:��Ismet Prcic, the main character of your novel, grew up in Bosnia, saw the war, and immigrated to the U.S.  After moving to the U.S., he became Izzy, but also begins to imagine what would have happened to himself if he had stayed behind. So, he creates a new character, in his mind, called Mustafa as the personification of how he would have been back in Bosnia. Instead of giving your main character a fictional name, why did you decide to give him your own name? 

�ʰ�������:��The decision to name my book’s protagonist after myself was somehow both organic and calculated. In trying to understand my new country I noticed that in United States people separated their books into fiction and nonfiction. American readers seemed obsessed with truth. Every time I went to see an author read one of the first questions during the Q and A was undoubtedly: “How much of your book is true?” Memoirs seemed to be more popular than fiction and, in my mind, I figured that this had to have something to do with Hollywood movies and the popularity of happy endings. Back then I conjectured that when one reads a memoir one immediately knows that the author of the memoir has made it through whatever their life had thrown at them by that point, and that there’s less chance one would be bummed out at the end of the book. In Shards, I named my protagonist after myself just to thwart the idea that one should feel safe inside a narrative, ever.

�����ٳܰ���:��After moving to the U.S, part of Ismet still tried to live in Bosnia. With your recognition in literature and your success with being published here, do you still feel that some part of you is still left in Bosnia?

�ʰ�������:��Shards was my attempt to capture in a reading experience at least somewhat viscerally what being a refugee of a particular age and from a particular kind of conflict feels like on the inside. Life of an immigrant, especially a refugee, is lunar as hell; most of the time one is in both places at the same time. In a way it’s like being in a strange dream where one keeps “waking up” from one culture into another, from one language into another at rather random intervals. Sometimes the effects are thrilling and illuminating and serendipitous. Other times they’re confusing and disassociating and horrific. Sometimes you see your Bosnian father standing in the middle of the ice cream aisle in a supermarket in Portland and you have to take some time and conscious effort to figure out what part of you is where, is the brain or is the eye in Bosnia? But that’s just the feeling on the inside. If other people are involved (Bosnians and Americans alike) things can get even trickier. A lot of immigrants are told to Go back! I’ve heard different incarnations of that sentiment a few times in the US. I really didn’t expect to hear it uttered to me by a Sarajevan cab driver the last time I visited Bosnia in 2019. He was giving me a ride from the airport and the moment he realized I was visiting my family from America he warned me not to stay in Bosnia no matter what my family told me. He changed lanes without signaling, found my eyes in the review mirror and—like some Russian mafioso from a B Hollywood movie—said: “Go back to your country, son!” hammering down on every consonant.

Erturk: You have a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of California. When did you decide to become a writer? Did you ever dream about being a writer before leaving Bosnia?

�ʰ�������:��I became a writer by chance. Though I wrote in my original Bosnian, (terrible) poetry and silly sketches and one-act plays, I didn’t think of it as my primary art. I was always partial to acting and that was what I was passionate about. Theatre saved my life. I was conscripted into the military and it was with a theatre troupe that I escaped the war in Bosnia to go and perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. So naturally, when I found myself in the United States, I continued to pursue this dream. What I didn’t count on was that to Americans I would always have an accent. I started realized that I never got cast in any major theatre department shows, which made have to take things into my own hands. I started writing plays in English in which Bosnian immigrants spoke English. Then I directed the said plays and cast myself in them so I can have my time on the boards as well. After years of this I ended up getting better at writing. The moment I graduated with a Theatre Arts degree I had a crisis and I took a train to visit Malik in Los Angeles. I told him that I was freaking out about my choice to do my studies in something that is so famously looked down upon in the United States, in terms of career choice. He suggested I should stay in school another year and get a minor. I decided to do my minor studies in creative writing. It was then that I wrote the first portions of the manuscript that would later become Shards.

Erturk: You wrote the screenplay of the 2014 movie “Imperial Dreams.” How does it feel seeing your work on the silver screen?

�ʰ�������:��I’m only a co-writer on that film; I wrote Imperial Dreams with Malik Vitthal, a friend I met in junior college in California. For sure, it’s a bit surreal to see famous people say your words on the big screen but that’s the extent of my exhilaration on that front. Screenwriting is an entirely different animal from writing fiction. I love it because it’s disciplined (which I’m not) it’s collaborative (and I’ve been known to avoid people) and because it is humbling like theatre is; it forces one to see oneself as a small part of a much larger agenda. This is challenging for a personality like mine but I have learned that one can’t always seek comfort. I spent a lot of my life running away from pain and discomfort, to the point of disassociation at times. It was always about escapism for me in the beginning. Malik and I wrote many scripts together—horror films, actions, thrillers—but none of them became films because we were journeymen who were always writing stories for other people’s tastes. The moment Malik decided to make a movie about someone close to his heart, a young ex-gangster from low-income projects in the infamous South-Central Los Angeles who wanted out of the life of crime, the stars realigned in our favor and Malik and I got into the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. At first, I thought I might not be the right person to help write this film, being a white immigrant writing about Black experience. However, it turned out that the very experiences of spending my youth in soviet-style building blocks of Tuzla during the war, negotiating its streets filled with people with guns, and the constant fear of death or injury led directly to how I found my way into the essence of the man we were writing about. Because he, like me, like many Americans living in the projects, had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It so happened that trauma was what connected us, these two fellows from two ends of the globe (Tuzla and Los Angeles are nine time zones away). But it had to be trauma exposed, trauma talked about, trauma integrated. We had to be open about our inner wounds in order to transform something negative into something positive.

Erturk: What can you tell us about any new projects? For example, are you working on any novels or movie scripts? What would you like to do?

�ʰ�������:��Currently, I’m finishing a second book in a conceived trilogy about trauma, that started with Shards. The new novel, entitled Unspeakable Home deals in a way with the traumas I accrued while exorcising the traumas described in the first. Just like Shards the second book is dual in structure as well as nature, and is broken into two sides: Side A(merican) and Side B(osnian). Side A is the grouping of stories the protagonist’s American wife was willing to read and comment on throughout their marriage while Side B has all of his writing that she couldn’t take because it hit too close to home.

Malik and I still have a working friendship and are now also developing a couple of film projects as well. One film is about punk musicians who want to play for God and the other about a woman who can see inside of people.

In terms of what I would like to do in the future, I would love to write a more personal screenplay and have it see the light of day one day. My friend Dacho (Davor Marjanovic) helped me write a script based on one aspect of Shards but it’s hard to find a producer for a film like that. There are some plans to perhaps transform it into a limited series for TV. So much of screenwriting is working for free and waiting, waiting, waiting.

Erturk: Currently, you are a resident of the Carolyn Moore Writer House at PCC, which offers emerging writers a place and time to focus on writing. Would you tell us about your experience at it?

�ʰ�������:��I don’t know if it’s the immigrant thing or what, but I always lived with people, always folding my energies into already existing currents and learning to live alongside others—parents, relatives, pets, roommates, lovers—sharing space and dreams and air. This residence was supposed to be shared as well but COVID made it so that for the first time in my life, at forty-four years of age, I had an opportunity to live a month all by my lonesome. It took some time learning how to breathe without having to share the air, how to enjoy an otherwise unoccupied space. It was an experience that truly stretched the heart and humbled the soul. I received it as a blessing and a much-needed practice as, believe it or not, after thirteen years in Oregon, it’s today—the day I’m writing the very words you’re reading now—that I am moving to California to live on my own. I have two suitcases and a box of books, a dream and a prayer. And a life, of course. I’m alive.

�����ٳܰ���:��In “Shards,” we learned that Ismet loves to read from his mother’s library. Which writers have influenced you?

�ʰ�������:��It was my maternal grandfather’s library that started it all for me. He was an imam in the times of communism, which in his case meant he had to join the party, work as a school secretary and pretend he was not a God-fearing man. Sporadically, the agents of the state would check up on him and monitor the way he was running his household. For that reason, alongside his religious books and funny tales about Mullah Nas’rudin, his library contained volumes of popular western fiction, as well as every single, goddamned issue of the mandatory The Communist he was too traumatized to throw away his entire life. I believe that my mother’s urban library emerged in reaction to that one and hers included everything from the Vedas to Asimov. It was on its shelves that I encountered Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf at twelve. Its famous FOR MADMEN ONLY section was printed in incendiary red ink and I just had to see what all that was about. Being led into that mystical theatre of Hesse’s, I fell in love with the sheer madness of spending one’s life in arts, in search of answers we can only get closer to and never really attain. I felt guided into it, felt like it was a necessary and exciting sacrifice. Later on came Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, Rikki Doucornet, John Edgar Wideman, Sarah Kane…all my other guides.

Photo: Guzide Erturk�����Ի� Ismet Prcic in the Carolyn Moore House’s Great Room.

This interview is also excerpted in the 21st issue of Wellspring,

Humanities and Arts During Covid-19: Issue 13

“A people also perish when they fail to keep alive the values that make them human, the wellsprings of their sanity.” —Ben Okri

Dear Colleagues,

We hope that you and your loved ones are healthy and well, and that you have safely weathered the storms, ice, and power outages. Our latest issue of Wellspring features events and readings related to Black History Month, as well as general arts and humanities events and news from PCC and beyond. We hope this bring you warmth and renewal during these trying times.

PCC Arts and Humanities Highlights

Through March 10th, The 31st Annual shows us Africa through the eyes of Africans, rather than a vision of Africa packaged for Western viewers. The films celebrate Africa’s achievements, expose its challenges, and reveal possibilities for a hopeful future as they undertake universal explorations of human conflict and drama. Although the films cannot represent an entire continent, the organizers of the series hope to encourage American viewers to become interested in and study African cultures.

Cascade Campus Paragon Gallery is pleased to welcome artist Sabina Haque to the gallery in an alternative format on our website — a virtual exhibition of her multimedia installation presenting drawings, video, and performance exploring the cycle of welcoming and excluding, and what it means to belong to a community.

The Experience Music Series is pleased to  present an exciting virtual concert on March 2 at 5pm. Grupo Borikuas, is a Portland-based Latin band that performs dynamic ethnic music from Puerto Rico with Afro-Caribbean roots. The popular question and answer session with the artists will follow the performance. There is no charge to view the concerts, and donations to the series are gratefully accepted. You can read  more about these shows and the performers on the HARTS website.

PCC Theatre presents Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, March 4-7 on Zoom!  A bitter vendetta by two family factions divides the land. The conflict erupts into bloodshed in the streets. Sound familiar?  Written as if ripped from today’s headlines, Romeo and Juliet focuses on two young lovers from rival sides who cross the embattled lines dividing them  to become history’s iconic tragic lovers. Zoom in to experience Shakespeare’s relevant timeless tale, a Romeo and Juliet like you’ve never seen before. Tickets at Admission price is a suggested donation ($5 students, seniors, Veterans, $10 General) with proceeds going to the PCC Theatre scholarship fund through the PCC Foundation. More information about Romeo and Juliet.

Last fall, Cascade Campus literary journal Pointed Circle faculty advisor, Justin Rigamonti, submitted Issue 36 to plain china, a national anthology of the best undergraduate writing based out of Virginia Commonwealth University, and this past week he received word that NINE works by PCC students were selected for inclusion in the 2021 publications. The following works from Issue 36 were selected: “Corona and Therapy” by Jong Won, “Every Angry Black Man Could Give a Fuck About Post-Racial Politically Correct Rhetoric. That is the Same Lie that Willie Lynch Used to Chain the Minds of Slaves” and “Dispatched from the Land of Erasure” by henry 7 reneau jr., “Neon is Lighter than Air” by Meridith Adams, and “They Ask America” by Sherre Vernon, as well as three works by PCC students— “Billings, MT” by Tristan Gunvaldson, “Pantagruel and the One Eyed Goon” by Rebecca Petchinik, and “Tense” by Kira Smith. . Congratulations to the editors of the Pointed Circle for their keen editorial vision, and to all our student writers as well!

George Johanson, the featured artist at Rock Creek’s Helzer Gallery, is a Portland- based painter, printmaker, and ceramic tile muralist. As the featured artist, Johanson will be meeting with PCC Rock Creek’s Life Drawing and Life Painting classes to discuss a subject central to his work: the human figure and its environment. The featured video is an excerpt from a longer video, , produced at PCC Rock Creek in 2009. The Helzer Gallery Featured Artist Program is a series of virtual programming created to introduce our audience to the work and creative practice of various artists.

Finally, as preparations for opening The Carolyn Moore Writers House continue, Cascade English Faculty Justin Rigamonti took time to reflect on Moore’s life and legacy: “She lived a generous life, cluttered with joy, and from that largesse, she extracted a beautiful, refined legacy. Not only in the gift of nine gorgeous acres to ˿����Ƶ, the future home of the Carolyn Moore Writing Residency, but also in the wisdom she distilled for us in her poems.” You can read the full essay.

Arts and Humanities Events Near and Far

PDX Jazz has “crafted a festival that is as unique as Portland itself” for the 18th consecutive edition of the annual event, featuring ‘live’ performances and ‘live’ real-time web streams from Portland, Oregon each day, flanked by exclusive international engagements from around the globe. 17 Livestreams + 3 Jazz Films in 6 Cities in 10 Days. Visit the PDX Jazz website for more information.

A program of Northwest Film Center & Portland Art Museum, Portland International Film Festival (PIFF) centers on both artists and cinematic storytellers who are bold enough to interrupt the status quo, and focus on those changing for whom, by whom, and how cinematic stories are told. Featuring ten days of over 80+ films, programs, events, and drive-in experiences with work from over 34 countries, PIFF 44 is a fest that celebrates the ever-changing connection between cinematic creators and audiences.

In the , created by Oregon Jewish Museum’s Student Advisory Board, youth in grades 6 – 12 will explore how creative arts can be used as a means of resistance while hearing from artists who are a part of increasing representation, telling often unheard or suppressed stories, and challenging societal norms and taboos. The series consists of three different webinars, highlighting music, visual arts, and writing and is open to middle and high school students across Oregon. The next event is scheduled for March 3 at 5pm. 

It’s not too early to reserve your tickets to this year’s Everybody Reads author lecture by Ross Gay, whose collection of essays The Book of Delights, is the focus of the program run by Literary Arts. Gay will be speaking on April 8th at 6:30pm. Multnomah County Library has

Essential Arts and Humanities Readings

In Salamishah Tillet, a contributing critic at large for The New York Times and the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University, Newark, suggests ways to mark the month. As she writes, “Black History Month feels more urgent this year. Its roots go back to 1926, when the historian Carter G. Woodson developed Negro History Week, near the February birthdays of both President Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, in the belief that new stories of Black life could counter old racist stereotypes. Now in this age of racial reckoning and social distancing, our need to connect with each other has never been greater.”

“The Zanj rebellion of Black slaves, which took place in lower Iraq from 868 to 883 CE, is one of the remarkable episodes of Medieval Islamic history that often goes untold. Much of what we know about the rebellion comes from the historical works of Al-Tabari (Annals of Prophets and Kings) and Al Mas’udi Murudj al-Dahab,” writes Mohammed Elnaiem, a PhD student in sociology at the University of Cambridge. You can .

A fascinating recent tells the story of Molly Burhans, a cartographer, climate activist, and “deeply committed Catholic,” who has engaged the Vatican, right up to the Pope himself, around documenting the global landholdings of the Catholic Church in hopes of addressing climate change through better land management. The article discusses how Burhans’ work on the project saw several of “her interests come together, like layers in G.I.S.: computer science, conservation, art—even dance, since managing data sets in [in the mapping software) felt like choreography.”

In honor of Black History Month, Medical Humanities offered featuring Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space, on the 1992 Endeavor. Jemison, who later worked for the Center for Disease Control and also studied dance at the Alvin Ailey school, always saw a connection between the sciences and the humanities: “Many people do not see a connection between science and dance, but I consider them both to be expressions of the boundless creativity that people have to share with one another.”

We hope you enjoy our newsletter. If you have announcements, news, student or faculty work that you’d like considered for this newsletter or the HARTS website, please write directly to harts@pcc.edu.

The HARTS (Humanities and Arts) Council

Martha Bailey, Philosophy and Religious Studies/Cascade

Elizabeth Bilyeu, Art/Cascade
Andrew Cohen, English/Sylvania, Chair
John Farnum, Philosophy/Sylvania
Elizabeth Knight, English/Rock Creek
Andrea Lowgren, Women’s Studies/Cascade
Melissa Manolas, English/Rock Creek Billy Merck, English/Southeast
John Mery, Music/Sylvania
Porter Raper, English/Cascade
Justin Rigamonti, English/Cascade
Elissa Minor Rust, English/Rock Creek
Megan Savage, English/Sylvania
Kristine Shmakov, Russian/Sylvania
Patrick Walters, English/Sylvania
Christine Weber, Art/Sylvania
Van Wheeler, English/Sylvania
Stephanie Whitney, French/Sylvania

Copyright © Wellspring, All rights reserved. Wellspring is a publication of ˿����Ƶ’s Humanities and Arts (HARTS) Council. The Council oversees the HARTS Initiative, founded in 2016 on the premise that the humanities and arts should be an essential component of education in the 21st century. To read more about the Council or the Initiative, explore the HARTS website.

Our email address is:
HARTS@pcc.edu
We’d love to hear from you.

The editors of Alchemy are excited to share a poem from the upcoming edition of Alchemy. This issue of Alchemy will be released in June 2021 in both physical and digital formats. We are currently working hard to get Alchemy ready to publish and are looking forward to everyone seeing the creative and moving pieces that we will be publishing. For further information we’d love if you checked out @pdx.pcc.press on Instagram, where you can find updates on both Sylvania’s literary magazines Letter & Line and Alchemy!

The poem that we’re choosing to feature here was submitted by Hana Elogbi, a current editor of Alchemy and previous editor of Letter & Line magazine, Sylvania’s sister publication. Hana Elogbi is going to graduate from PCC at the end of this term and is planning on transferring to PSU in the fall. We found this poem to be a heartfelt reflection on identity, both the ones we are given and the ones we choose for ourselves. After a long year of quarantine, we have all had plenty of time for personal reflection. We hope this poem offers you a salve, and provides you with the comfort of knowing that we are all together in discovering the parts of us that fit and those that we need to nurture to grow.

— Alchemy 2021 Editorial Team

��ناء
I was born with two names.
The name my grandmother gave me
over a nokia brick,
6,000 miles away,
pre-paid,
and the name the nurse repeated.
I was born with no name at all.

The vowels and consonants,
peaks and valleys, rolling hills.
I hate the way I say my name,
my tongue fumbling,
snagging on my teeth,
crashing against the roof of my mouth,
assimilating.

I was an identity crisis,
while my heart was going
125 bpm.
No toes, no fingers,
not even a mouth.

Our winter issue of Wellspring highlights student and faculty creative works, free and accessible arts and humanities events, and humanities readings and news from around the country. Please enjoy!

PCC’s Humanities and Arts Highlights

• We are so pleased to share a short story by Sylvania Creative Writing Student, Alejandra Rivas. As her teacher, Matt Chelf notes, “Alejandra enrolled in her first college classes in the Fall of 2020. Still a junior in high school, I didn’t know at first how lucky I was to have Alejandra in my section of WR 241, Creative Writing: Fiction, where she would write her first short story, ‘Yanira y Lucio,’ which you can find on the HARTS website.
• We are also so grateful that the talented Gail Jeidy, Cascade and Rock Creek English Faculty, has once again shared her artwork with us for this issue �Ǵ����±������������Բ�.��You can read more about Gail and see more of her wonderful work Pandemic Pictorals�����Ի� . If that weren’t enough, Rock Creek English Faculty Elizabeth Knight recently finished a piece from her “Lockdown Collage Book,” which she has graciously shared in this newsletter. It is five collages meant to be the covers of murder mysteries Liz “wants to have written.” Thank you, Gail and Liz!

• The Experience Music Series is pleased to present three exciting virtual concerts in February and March. The popular question and answer session with the artists will follow the performance. There is no charge to view the concerts, and donations to the series are gratefully accepted.
  • February 2, 7:00 pm – The Northwest Piano Trio will perform a diverse program featuring works by Romantic composers Clara and Robert Schumann, Impressionist composer Maurice Ravel, Spanish composer Joquin Turina and more.
  • February 16, 5:00 pm – Christopher Woitach, called a “Jazz Guitarist Extraordinaire” by the Pacific Arts Association, performs with his quartet.
  • March 2, 5:00 pm – Grupo Borikuas, is a Portland-based Latin band that performs dynamic ethnic music from Puerto Rico with Afro-Caribbean roots.

You can read more about these shows and the performers on the HARTS website.

• PCC Theatre presents Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, March 4-7 on Zoom!  A bitter vendetta by two family factions divides the land. The conflict erupts into bloodshed in the streets. Sound familiar?  Written as if ripped from today’s headlines, Romeo and Juliet focuses on two young lovers from rival sides who cross the embattled lines dividing them  to become history’s iconic tragic lovers. Zoom in to experience Shakespeare’s relevant timeless tale, a Romeo and Juliet like you’ve never seen before. Tickets at Admission price is a suggested donation ($5 students, seniors, Veterans, $10 General) with proceeds going to the PCC Theatre scholarship fund through the PCC Foundation. More information about Romeo and Juliet.
• If you haven’t heard the news yet, the PCC Foundation received its largest gift ever in the form of the Carolyn Moore Writers House, a 2,500-square-foot log cabin on a nine-acre urban oasis off of Walnut Avenue in Tigard, where writing residencies for new and emerging writers from across the nation will be hosted beginning in the fall of 2021. As far as we know, PCC is the only community college in the entire country to host a residency like this. You can read more about the gift or you can read a wonderful article written by PCC marketing writer, Celeste Hamilton Dennis, on page 12 of the Foundation’s annual report. Look for more details from the HARTS Council, which will be coordinating the programming, in the coming months.
• Speaking of Celeste: We are pleased to share news of her publication of a short story titled “Teeth” in the  �Ǵ����ұ����Գ�.��Congratulations, Celeste! And congratulations too, to Sylvania English Faculty Megan Savage, who recently published her short story, “The Ugly Sweatshirt,” in .

Humanities Events Near and Far

• On February 22nd, Poet Valzhyna Mort, author of “Music for the Dead and Resurrected”  with fellow poet Ilya Kaminsky. Published late in 2020 to universal high praise, Valzhyna Mort’s utterly powerful poetry collection, Music for the Dead and Resurrected (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), is steeped in a tradition of poetic witness for her native Belarus in this day and time.
• Portland Opera Resident Artist series begins this month! “We can’t wait to showcase, share, and celebrate the 20/21 Portland Opera Resident Artists with you. Join us for three performances, each featuring two or more singers sharing solo pieces, duets, and ensembles—along with Resident Artist Coach and collaborative pianist Joseph Williams.” Thursday, January 28 | 7 PM Soprano Lynnesha Crump, Tenor David Morgans Sanchez. Thursday, February 11 | 7 PM Mezzo-soprano Jasmine Johnson, Baritone Michael Parham. Thursday, February 25 | 7 PM Bass Edwin Jhamal Davis Ensemble including all Portland Opera Resident Artists. Traditionally held at Portland Art Museum, the series this year will be broadcast live from the Hampton Opera Center on Portland Opera’s YouTube�����Ի� Vimeo channels. Free. No registration or RSVP required. 

Humanities and Arts Essential Readings and Viewings

• If you want a literary treat, listen to this lively . Laymon is the author of the bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, which won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, among others. His novel Long Division�����Ի� essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America will soon be re-released from Scribner. Wilkinson is the author �Ǵ���The Birds of Opulence (winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence), Water Street, and Blackberries, Blackberries. Her first collection of poetry, Perfect Black, will be published by the University Press of Kentucky in August 2021.”
• And if you want to read a timely and moving article about resilience, empathy and face masks, read  by Dr. Eve Rittenberg, in the New England Journal of Medicine.
• about Dr. Brenda Moore McCann, a professor at Trinity College in Ireland, who uses art to help her medical students develop their perceptual abilities. As she notes, “Modern medical training is based on the scientific method . . . the humanities provide a broader, less rigid model that allows for ambiguity, uncertainty and lack of resolution . . . qualities suited to the practice of medicine which is an art that uses scientific methods.”
• Finally, if you’d like to glimpse the circuitous and successful path of an art history major who is now the CEO of a billion dollar business, read with Andi Owen.

If you have announcements, news, student or faculty work that you’d like considered for this newsletter or the HARTS website, please write directly to harts@pcc.edu.