International Week to kick off: Jamestown College to host activities that showcase other cultures

Next week at Jamestown College the public is invited to partake in a number of activities celebrating the school’s International Week.

International Week starts at 7 p.m. Monday in L2 with a screening of “Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World.” There is no admission charge.

The documentary by Unity Productions Foundation takes a look the architecture of nine Muslim countries and its significance in the rest of the world.

“A lot of people don’t understand the finer points of Islamic art,” said Kate Stevenson, department chair of French and German at JC and member of the college’s Look Beyond Committee. “It’s generally a non-representational form of art so the aesthetics are strongly based on geometry and natural images, and it’s a form of art and architecture that has been a leading world aesthetic for a couple thousand years.”

Phyllis Bratton, director of Raugust Library at JC, wrote the grant that brought the movie and other resource materials to JC.

Bratton said the college will later partner with the Arts Center to host an event tied to CaravanSerai in the near future.

CaravanSerai is a program in Jamestown that will bring different Muslim artists here to partake in events in schools and for the community. Jamestown is one of four cities in the nation to have this program.

“The Arts Center is our outside partner in writing the grant and we’re going to have a later program with them as well,” she said.

For students and the rest of the community, “Islamic Art,” is a good selection to kicking off International Week, Bratton said.

“The thing about Muslim culture is they are very seriously about not making an engraven images so they don’t have figures of people — and I think in some of the cultures not even animals in their art,” Bratton said. “So they’ve become very adept in beautiful interwoven and interlaced art as their form.”

The film will be screened again at 9 p.m. Monday. A question-and-answer session follows both screenings.

International Week events continue at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Lyngstad 107 with a question-and-answer session with two French students studying here and one JC student who studied in France. There is no admission charge.

“Studying Abroad: a French Perspective” will feature exchange students Romain Brassart, from Amiens, in the Picardy region and Somme department of France, and Lou LeGuelvouit, St. Malo, in the Brittany region and Ille-et-Vilaine department of France.

The discussion will also feature JC French major Luke Caldwell and Stevenson.

“It’s nice because we have people who have experience in both countries, so were going to talk a little bit about cross-cultural issues, being in another country, what it’s like to study abroad — as a person from the U.S. studying abroad and a person Europe studying in Jamestown,” Stevenson said.

Participants will likely discuss what they miss from home and some of their favorite cultural traditions.

“Whenever you work with people from a different culture it’s like holding a mirror up to yourself because you see things in that other culture that remind you about your own culture,” Stevenson said.

Other events during International Week include: a multi-lingual chapel service at 11:05 a.m. Thursday in Voorhees Chapel, international dance lessons from 8 to 10 p.m. Thursday in room 123 at the Reiland Fine Arts Center and an international activity fair at 7 p.m. Saturday in L2. There is no admission for the events.

“I think human beings are the same everywhere, but our culture differences are what makes us really interesting when we’re working with other people,” Stevenson said.

Sun reporter Ben Rodgers can be reached at 701-952-8455 or by email at brodgers@jamestownsun.com

Tags: diversions, events