Profs Blaesers Lecture

11/13/2007 00:00:00

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Lecture on Celebrating Cultural Diversity through Writing The English Department of Atma Jaya Catholic University hosted a lecture program on Celebrating Cultural Diversity through Writing by Dr. Kimberley Blaeser, Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA, on August 23, 2007 at Atma Jaya Catholic University. An enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Dr. Blaeser earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame and teaches courses in Native American Literature, Creative Writing, and American Nature Writing. She has published three books and over 60 appearances in anthologies and journals, lectured or read from her work in over 100 locations in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and been the recipient of awards for both writing and speaking. She is a past vice president of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and currently serves on two American Indian Literature series boards for University presses. At UW-Milwaukee, Blaeser is the faculty advisor for Word Warriors, a multicultural writers’ organization she helped found in 1991. Dr. Blaeser recently received an Artists Fellowship in Poetry from the Wisconsin Arts Board and is at work on a creative collage, Family Tree. She was been named 2002 Wordcrafter of the Year by the Word Craft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, as well as 2002 Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year in Creative Prose: Personal Essay for her contribution to The Voices We Carry in After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography, edited by Kate Sontag and David Graham. In 2001, Blaeser received a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship in poetry. In 1999, she was named Storyteller of the Year for her lectures and public speaking by Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. She was the recipient of the Diane Decorah First Book Award in Poetry from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas for Trailing You and in 1998 one of Blaeser‘s poems was selected for permanent installation as a sculptured doorway in the Midwest Express Building in Milwaukee. Dr. Blaeser had one of her talks chosen by Writers’ Conferences and Festivals for inclusion in the organization‘s anthology of the best lectures given in 1992 and was chosen to inaugurate the Western Canada Lecture Series in 1995. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Center for Twentieth Century Studies, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, University of Wisconsin Institute on Race and Ethnicity, and the Newberry Library D‘Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian. According to Dr. Blaeser, in studying literature we should make connection with our community, our country, and the global world. We live in the shadow of language and therefore we cannot study literature in isolation. In her poetry, she advertises the unspoken and brings the very details or specific issues which allow us to bring our connection. The job of a writer is to make those details transform themselves by writing across boundaries. There must be a sense of intuition, a quality evoked from language but not at literature itself. Native literature is performed in songs, dances, and rituals. A poet attempts to make literature come off page, hence “supra-literature”. Poetry has two elements: beauty (sound, rhythm) and the humanity of something written about. Blaeser’s poetry is not “just her experience”; it comes from her family and ethnic backgrounds. She holds the idea of seven generations, meaning what we decide now must look at seven generations in the past and for seven generations in the future, as she believes that everything in the universe is interconnected. The three-hour event held at the Yustinus Building saw the participation of around 70 students and lecturers from the English Department. Present at the lecture were Ms. Anne E. Grimes (Cultural Attaché), Ms. Robyn Remeika, and Ms. Toto from the U.S. Embassy as well as M. Marcellino, Ph.D. (Vice Rector for Collaboration and Development) and Yassir Nasanius, Ph.D. (Chairperson of the Center for Language and Cultural Studies). The moderator at the program was Yohanes Hartadi, M.A.