Thursday, November 7, 2019 - 12:00 pm to 1:15 pm

"Southbound: War and the Recreation of Culture" is a panel discussion connected to the Southbound exhibit that will explore how we view displaced persons and the new communities that they create. Cultural anthropologist Nadia El-Shaarawi will discuss the everyday lives of refugees in the Middle East, Europe, and Durham. Duke Asian and Middle Eastern Studies professor Maha Houssami will share her work connecting Duke students with resettled Arabic-speaking refugees in Durham. Center for Documentary Studies undergraduate education director, documentary photographer, and Southbound artist Christopher Sims will discuss his “Theater of War” project, which looks at the simulated Iraqi and Afghan villages used by the U.S. military to prepare for deployment. The conversation will examine the different ways we understand “culture” and how we come to know the foundational beliefs and practices of people from different backgrounds.

Christopher Sims is the undergraduate educator director at the Center for Documentary Studies and a Lecturing Fellow in Documentary Arts. He has worked as a photo archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and, at CDS, has coordinated the exhibition, awards, and web programs. His most recent exhibitions include shows at SF Camerawork, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Houston Center for Photography, the Light Factory, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, and the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. He was selected as the recipient of the Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers in 2010, named one of the "New Superstars of Southern Art" by the Oxford American magazine in 2012, and was awarded the Arte Laguna Prize in Photographic Art in 2015.

Sponsor(s): American Tobacco Campus - Power Plant, Center for Documentary Studies (CDS), Forum for Scholars and Publics, and Master of Fine Arts in Experimental & Documentary Arts (MFAEDA)

Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South is on view at the Power Plant Gallery September 6–December 21, 2019. For more information on the exhibit visit: powerplantgallery.com.

Image: Jihad Lamp, Fort Polk, Louisiana. Photograph by Christopher Sims from “Theater of War: The Pretend Villages of Iraq and Afghanistan.”