Join us at the Emily Dickinson Museum during Amherst Arts Night Plus for our monthly Open Mic. Poets, writers, and performers of any kind are welcome! Come early to view the pop-up, contemporary art exhibition in the Homestead by our featured artist. The open mic begins at 6:00 p.m. and will be followed by this month’s featured readers. Those who would like to share their work should arrive between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. to sign up. 

Featured Artist: Paintings and film are on display from 5-8PM 

Barbara Zecchi, Professor and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is a film scholar, film critic, and video-essayist. Born in London, and raised and educated in Italy, she grew intellectually in Spain and in the United States. She received a PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, and joined the Program of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at UMass after teaching at different universities in Europe and in the U.S. (such as Carlos III University of Madrid, California State University, and the Johns Hopkins). Her research and teaching interests include Spanish, Catalan and Latin American cinemas, feminist film theory, film adaptation theory, gender studies and aging studies, and the use of technology in the humanities. Both in her scholarly publications and in her creative work (video-graphic essays, paintings, collages and photographs) she explores and deconstructs gender-based stereotypes and discrimination. She is the author of the books La pantalla sexuada (“The Gendered Screen,” Cátedra 2015), and Desenfocadas (“Women Out of Focus,” Icaria 2014); and editor or co-editor of volumes such Tras las lentes de Isabel Coixet (2017), Gynocine: Teoría de género, filmología y práxis cinematográfica (2013), Teoría y práctica de la adaptación fílmica (2011),  among others. She has lectured and presented her digital work extensively in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Latin America. Her fascination with Italian futurist art and Venetian glassblowing (rulli) is evoked and persistent in her creative work. She inherited this fascination from her grandfathers. Antonio specialized in the legendary tradition of Venetian glassblowing. Many of his filigree stained glass windows can be still admired in several villas in Veneto countryside. Umberto was a renowned shoe designer who created futurist shoe models currently shown at the D’Annunzio Museo in Arezzo, The Vittoriale degli italiani of Gardone Riviera, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 

Barbara Zecchi is the co-founder and vice-president of the international research network CinemAGEnder and the founder and director of the Digital Humanities Project “Gynocine: Feminisms, Genders and Cinemas.” She is the founder and co-curator of the UMass Catalan Film Festival, and collaborates in the organization of the UMass Latin American Film Festival. She is Associate Member of the Film Academy of Spain (Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España).

Featured Readers: Featured readers follow the open mic

“Emily Dickinson In Translation”: During November’s Arts Night, enjoy a presentation of multi-lingual readings and short discussions on the practice of translating the poet’s words, presented by the Translation Center of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The Center is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. A unique enterprise that combines business services with academics, the Center offers translation, interpreting, workshops, language consulting, and much more to a variety of clients including small businesses, multinational corporations, museums, law firms, hospitals, NGOs, filmmakers, advertising firms, educational institutions, and individuals. 

Join us at the Emily Dickinson Museum during Amherst Arts Night Plus on October 3, 2019 for our monthly open mic and pop-up contemporary art exhibit! Poets, writers, performers, and art appreciators of all kinds are welcome! Come early to view the art exhibition in the Homestead by our featured artist. The open mic begins at 6:00 p.m. and will be followed by this month’s featured reader. Those who would like to share their work during the open mic should arrive between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. to sign up.

Views expressed by poets, artists and open mic participants are their own and not the Emily Dickinson Museum’s. Arts Night programming may contain sensitive material.

FEATURED READER

Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019). A black/trans poet and critic, his work can be found in American Poetry Review, The Baffler, Narrative, Signs, American Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Cameron is a Cave Canem fellow, a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine, and an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

FEATURED ARTIST

Chrissy Howland was born in Baltimore, Maryland and received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012.  She has held solo and group exhibitions in Paris, Italy, and Maryland.  Howland seeks to recreate the archetype of the female artist/academic/intellectual as a positive icon without a major association to neurosis, mental illness, and romantic love. She seeks to reinterpret the autobiographical narrative and present a new position for these women within the pop culture canon. Her work aims to dismantle the notion of romanticized pain and female hysteria while creating and maintaining an elevated position and renewed reputation for female artists as women who are powerful, creative, and influential.

FEATURED MUSICIANS

The Jazz Mesmerizers will perform at 5:30 p.m.

Join us during Amherst Arts Night Plus on September 5, 2019 for our monthly celebration of local art! At our open mic, poets, writers, and performers of any kind are welcome! Come early to view the pop-up, contemporary art exhibition in the Homestead by our featured artist. The open mic begins at 6:00 p.m. and will be followed by this month’s featured readers. Those who would like to share their work should arrive between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. to sign up.

“Mt. Norwottuck and Apple Trees” 15 X 22″ oil crayon 2018

Featured artist: Lorna Ritz, pop-up exhibition on view 5-8PM

September’s pop-up exhibition will feature a series of drawings of the Holyoke Range by Lorna Ritz. Taking the the range Emily Dickinson could see from her windows as inspiration, Ritz’s drawings focus on Mt. Norwottuck. The range, which was glacially formed, is one of the only east-west axis range mountains in the country. In her process, the mountains feel so close you could almost touch them. Ritz works many hours at a time, several days in a row to complete her drawings. Each piece has an immediacy to it, but the time it takes to complete means the light is ever-changing; it’s her own personal artistic paradox. The drawings are the consequence of technique, skill, and concept. 

Featured reader: Libby Maxey

Libby Maxey’s new book of poems, ‘Kairos’, was released in summer 2019. She has a BA in English from Whitman College and an MA in medieval studies from Cornell University. She is a senior editor at the online journal Literary Mama, where she has been a part of the Literary Reflections department since 2012, and she reviews poetry for The Mom Egg Reviewand Solstice. Her own poems have appeared in Kestrel, Pinyon, Emrys, Crannóg Magazine, and elsewhere. Her nonliterary activities include singing classical repertoire and mothering two sons. She lives with her family in Western Massachusetts.