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10 Questions: What is Knowledge?

A detail of Roberto Chavez's "The Path to Knowledge and the False University," 1974. This features a figure Chavez called "Our Mother."| UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Murales Rebeldes
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"10 Questions" is a collaboration with UCLA and is an interdisciplinary course/public event series featuring conversations with leading scholars that provides both students and the public a special opportunity to experience the conversations that drive innovation at the university.

Every Tuesday for ten weeks UCLA faculty members from disciplines as diverse as dance, medicine, photography, astrophysics, athletics, Chicana and Chicano studies, law, philosophy and religious studies will join UCLA Arts Dean Brett Steele to explore a fundamental question such as: What is space? What is failure? and What is freedom? The goal is to stimulate dialogue and exchange, and to seed a greater understanding of the profoundly interdisciplinary nature of knowledge production in the 21st century. We present a discussion primer for each week's session to get the conversation started.

Art&Arc100: 10 Questions sessions will be held on Tuesdays through December 4 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. in the Glorya Kaufman Hall theater (room 200). Free and open to the public (RSVP required). Pay by space parking available on campus adjacent to Kaufman Hall (Structure 4).

This week, Kristy Edmunds, Victoria Marks, Todd Presner and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco will join Brett Steele, dean of the UCLA School of the Arts & Architecture to explore the question, "What is Knowledge?"

Courtesy of DanceMapLA

Kristy Edmunds, artist, curator, and executive and artistic director of CAP UCLA

Executive and Artistic Director of the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA

Kristy Edmunds is regarded internationally for her innovation and depth in the presentation of contemporary performing arts. She has also served as the Founding Executive and Artistic Director of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon (1995–2005); Artistic Director for the Melbourne International Arts Festival (2005–2008); Deputy Dean for the College the School of Performing Arts at the University of Melbourne; and Consulting Artistic Director for the Park Avenue Armory in New York (2009–2012).

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Victoria Marks, choreographer

Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor in the Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance

Victoria Marks, an Alpert Award winner, Guggenheim and Rauschenberg Fellow, and Fulbright Distinguished Scholar, has been practicing knowing and unknowing, making dances for stage and film, for the past 37 years. Her work continues to consider citizenship, as well as the representation of disability. Marks’ creative work migrates between choreo-portraits and action conversations for individuals who don’t identify as dancers, and dances for dancers that fuel her inquiries into movement. Upcoming, Marks and Dan Hurlin re-envision Appalachian Spring.  A recipient of numerous grants, fellowships and awards for her work, Marks has also received the Grand Prix in the Video Danse Festival, the Golden Antenae Award from Bulgaria, the IMZ Award for best screen choreography and the Best of Show in the Dance Film Association’s Dance and the Camera Festival along with director Margaret Williams. In addition to teaching in WACD, Victoria serves as Associate Dean in UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture, and as the Chair of UCLA’s Disability Studies minor.

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Todd Presner, digital humanist and cultural critic

Associate Dean of Digital Innovation; Adviser to the Vice Chancellor of Research for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; Chair of the UCLA Digital Humanities Program; Ross Professor in the Department of Germanic Languages; and Professor of Comparative Literature

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Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, psychological anthropologist

Dean and Professor of Education at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco previously taught globalization and Education at New York University and human development and psychology at Harvard University. As a fellow at Princeton University, Suárez-Orozco worked on issues of education, globalization, and immigration. He is currently co-director of the Harvard Immigration Projects and Immigration Studies at NYU. He blogs for The Huffington Post and has written several books, including Transformations: Immigration, Family Life, and Achievement Motivation Among Latino Adolescents and Writing Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue. Arts at the University of Melbourne;and Consulting Artistic Director for the Park Avenue Armory in New York (2009–2012). His areas of expertise include immigration, immigration reform, education, culture, psychology, anthropology, migration, globalization and Latinos in the United States.

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Top Image: A detail of "The Path to Knowledge and the False University" by Roberto Chavez, 1974 | UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Murales Rebeldes

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