Research in Community Arts Course with Temple University
This spring the Middle East Center partnered with Dr. Billy Yalowitz, co-director of the cross-disciplinary Arts in Community Program at Temple University, to sponsor an innovative new course, "Research in Community Arts." In this community-based arts course, students will work in partnership with two community organizations, the Jewish Dialogue Group and Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, to help create Un/Settled, two separate but linked community-based art works that examine conflicts within the Arab American and American Jewish and communities in Philadelphia. Students will conduct community-based research, gathering stories on each community’s history of immigration, and their development in the contemporary U.S context. The history of Arab and Jewish of co-existence in medieval Spain will serve as another point of reference in the creation of the project. This course will serve as a common forum between the two communities, engaging artists and community leaders through field trips, guest speakers, and community cultural events.