[URBANTH-L]ANN: Katrina: After the Storm Summit

[Angela Jancius]

From: Mark Olson <mark.olson at duke.edu>

Katrina: After the Storm Summit, Sept. 27-30 at 
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
http://www.katrinasummit.uiuc.edu/ -- available 
via webcast, http://www.hastac.org/live/ --

A year after hurricane Katrina's devastation of 
the Louisiana and Mississippi gulf coasts, 
rebuilding efforts are finally moving forward. 
But it's the remaining, deeper tears in the 
region's social fabric that will be the main 
focus of a unique series of dialogues and events 
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 
(and webcast online at www.hastac.org) designed 
to build community, connect diverse local and 
national audiences and ignite real and long-lasting 
positive change.

The four-day summit "Katrina: After the Storm - 
Civic Engagement Through Arts, Humanities and 
Technology" will take place Sept. 27-30. The free 
summit is being organized to engage the public in 
critical conversations about issues that arose in 
Katrina's wake, including social justice and 
equity, broken connections and the need for 
community healing.  The summit is also part of 
the HASTAC ("haystack": the Humanities, Arts, 
Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) 
InFormation Year 2006-07, a yearlong program that 
promotes the human and humane dimensions of 
technology. HASTAC is an international consortium 
of humanists, artists, scientists, social 
scientists, and engineers, with over 80 participating 
institutions.

Using advanced multicast audio and video 
technology, the summit also will connect members 
of the U. of I. and local communities with virtual 
communities at many venues.

Lectures, panel discussions and other activities 
will focus on topics ranging from understanding 
and predicting dangerous weather, disaster 
preparedness and deployment of mobile hospitals 
to re-imagining public schools and the role of 
social entrepreneurship in rebuilding 
communities.  Also, ongoing throughout the summit 
will be "MiX TAPEStry: A Hip Hop VR Experience," 
a collaboration between the U. of I. Krannert Art 
Museum's Collaborative Advanced Navigation Visual 
Arts Studio (CANVAS) and Duke University that 
will give middle school students hands-on 
experience with virtual-reality technology while 
learning history.

The summit opens with "A Cajun Fais Do-Do C-U 
Style" beginning at 6 p.m. Wednesday, September 
27. The event will feature a screening of 
excerpts from "Perseverance: Putting It Back 
Together One Day at a Time," a documentary 
ethnography project about one man's determination 
to rebuild his home in New Orleans' Lower Ninth 
Ward, produced by U. of I. graduate student Maria 
Lovett; a panel discussion, musical and 
spoken-word performances, and an opportunity for 
the public to record personal stories.

Following two days of presentations and 
performances, the summit culminates with "New 
Orleans Rising: A Town Hall Meeting," from 2 to 
3:30 p.m. Saturday, September 30. The meeting was 
engineered with the vision of bringing together 
participants from Champaign-Urbana and sites 
across the country to share ideas for creating 
strong communities that can effectively manage 
future disasters.

More information about the summit, including 
registration instructions, event times and 
locations, sponsors and partners, is available on 
the Web at www.katrinasummit.uiuc.edu. For those 
unable to attend the "Katrina: After the Storm" 
events in person, a live webcast feed will be 
available on the HASTAC website.  Please register 
at https://www.hastac.org/user/register/ and then 
visit http://www.hastac.org/live/ for more 
information.  [Quicktime, VLC or other 
MPEG-4-compatible media player 
required.]  Podcast and vodcast versions of the 
webcasts will also be made available after the 
event.   Everyone is invited to contribute to 
discussion about the events and related issues on 
the online forum (http://www.hastac.org/forum/29).