UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, November 15, 1995
9A
'Sistahs' dramatize history
Black women use narratives to educate
By Hannah Naughton Kansan staff writer
They were friends and women interested in similar issues. So they decided to form a group called Sistah Speak.
Their primary focus is education through performance and narrative linked to African and African-American history. Their first performance is at 7 tonight in the Multicultural Resource Center. The event is free.
"We all sat down because we're all friends," said Amber Reagan-Kendrick, Lawrence graduate student and program coordinator for Health Care Pathways, a program in the Office of Minority Affairs. "We decided to take all of our expertise and do something with it."
author, Black historian and editor of "Sistahs," a magazine for Christian Black women. Omofolabo Ajaiyi-Soyinka is an associate professor in Theater and Film and an assistant professor in women's studies. She was raised and educated in Nigeria and is a playwright and director. Reagan-Kendrick earned her master's degree in English literature and is pursuing her doctorate in American studies. Marlene Elmore is working on a contemporary Black novel. Joan Spann leads diversity seminars for businesses. They are all African Americans.
The group has a pool of talents.
Janice Swinton is a playwright.
"It's really by accident that we're all women," Reagan-Kendrick said. "We're not trying to be exclusive. We do focus on the strength of women. I don't want to say we better or different from African-American men. We are not feminists."
Reagan-Kendrick said that the group would perform dramatic narratives based on the history of African-American people. It will focus on issues such as conflicts
between Africans and African Americans and the issues of skin color among African Americans.
Their group is not limited to performances, but rather uses all of its talents to motivate the Black community and the community at large.
"We use performance as one of the techniques to achieve our aim, but that is not just what we are," Ajayi-Soylnka said.
Reagan-Kendrick will speak as a mulato slave who is the product of her mother's rape by her master. Ajaiy-Soyinka will speak from the perspective of an African who had a member of her family stolen by slave traders. Janice Swinton plays the mother of Reagan-Kendrick's character, who is the descendent of the stolen family member.
Tonight, the women will draw on their experience in studying slave narratives, African-American literature, communication and theater in their performances.
"We hope to sensitize people to diversity and to history," Reagan-Kendrick said. "We feel if you teach history by acting it out, it will sink in easier than if you just read it."
Professor gets buggy about beetles
By Brenden Sager
Kansan staff writer
Beetlemania has struck a University of Kansas professor who is working on an international project to study Costa Rican beetles.
James Ashe, professor of entomology and director of KU's entomology museum, is preparing to begin work this summer on the All Taxa Biotic Survey in the coastal mountains of Costa Rica.
Potential patrons for the survey include the World Bank, a United Nations bank created to assist developing nations economically and international governments such as the Netherlands and Sweden. The survey's purpose is to map out a single area and to find out everything possible about the area's biology.
Mapping this area would boost Costa Rica's tourism trade and provide biological knowledge to the organizations that funded the program. One product could be the discovery of previously
unknown medical treatments,
Ashe said.
KU students could have the opportunity to participate in a beetle research excursion if Ashe secures grants.
Ashe said he did not know how much the excursion would cost until final plans were made, but he estimated the entire survey to be in the millions of dollars.
He said there would be a need to identify and classify different species in Costa Rica and at KU's entomology museum.
The survey will include as many as 40 scientists in different fields and numerous support personnel from Costa Rica, Ashe said.
"The ultimate goal is simply to have an understanding of a single area of biodiversity," he said.
The team of scientists and financial supporters has not been selected yet. He said that he had been chosen because of his extensive work with beetles in Central America.
Ashe said he had been working
with different beetle species from Costa Rica for the past 10 years. He has made several trips funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society.
In turn, Ashe has provided KU's entomology museum with plenty of beetles.
Robert Brooks, collection manager at the museum, said that before Ashe had come in the mid-1980s, there had been about three drawers of beetle specimens in the museum.
Now the University has nearly 300. Brooks said.
These specimens are accessed for research by other research institutions around the world, Brooks said. About 15,000 beetles leave the University every year, Ashe said.
Brooks said that beetle research was important because the insects made up about half of all animals on the planet.
"There's more beetles than anything else," Brooks said.
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PUBLIC LECTURE
"WHAT PRICE TRUTH? The Politicization of Higher Education" Lecture in the Kansas Room in the Kansas Union 7:00 P.M. Friday, November 17, 1995
Professor Robert K. Carlson recent author of Truth on Trial: Liberal Education be Hanged, will lecture on the state of higher education today. He will offer a challenge to professors and students to strive for truth and not mere information.
Hear Professsor Robert K. Carlson talk about the story of the University of Kansas Classics program, the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program, and how K.U. suppressed this nationally renowned program. "I saw the administration of K.U. snuff out a highly acclaimed program run by award winning professors. It was a grave injustice. It is time the truth is told."
AUTHOR WILL SIGN BOOKS 11:30 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. at the K.U. Bookstore, Kansas Union Friday, November 17.
Sponsored by Students for the Integration of the Humanities
Not blowing smoke...
...for 24 hours. The Great American Smokeout November 16
Tomorrow millions of smokers across the coun will take a break and not smoke for 24 hours. If you don't smoke—adopt a smoker. Look for displays in the Kansas Union and at Watkins Health Center. For more information stop by Health Promotion and Education or call 864-9570. Caring For KU