CUNYcast

The turmoil of 2020 was a canvas for Derek Fordjour’s provocative multidisciplinary art. An alumnus of Hunter College’s MFA program, Fordjour had a breakthrough year with two critically acclaimed exhibitions. The first, aptly titled “Shelter,” was shown at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, his first solo museum exhibition. It featured a corrugated tin shack that viewers walked through to view his work. The other was a triptych of Black mourning titled “Self Must Die” at the Petzel Gallery in Manhattan.

On Fordjour’s canvases, jubilant public spectacles like marching bands and athletic contests are transformed from mere physical performances into surveys of emotional complexity. A first-generation Ghanaian-American from Memphis, Fordjour explores the violence perpetuated on Black bodies and the all-too familiar public scenes of Black death and suffering. His work is multi-layered — each canvas is built with successive layers of cardboard, newspaper, charcoal and paint — and captures the eye in a dazzling spectrum of color and emotion. As The New York Times noted in a recent profile, Fordjour’s work is a careful balancing act “between anguish and transcendence.” On this episode of the CUNYcast, Fordjour talks with Joe Tirella about his work, his life and his breakout year.

A transcript of this podcast is below.

 

Episode Transcript

Joe Tirella:  Derek Fordjour, thank you for joining me on the CUNYcast. And I want to begin by talking about the breakthrough year you’re coming off. You had two major shows in 2020, including your first solo museum exhibition in St. Louis, and your first show at the Petzel Gallery here in New York, and it all happened against the backdrop of the extraordinary year we all went through. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that confluence was like for you?

Derek Fordjour:  Well, number one, thank you for acknowledging that. It has been an exceptional year for all of us. And I think, you know, it’s always a great day to wake up as an artist, but I think in a year like this, it’s almost an honor to be tasked with amplifying my own reaction and my own expression in this time, you know, for for the rest of us, for humanity. And that’s probably a lofty ambition, but that’s kind of how I see it. So I think when I look to art of the past, I’m so excited to see artists that worked around World War II, or during Vietnam, or during the Spanish influenza and the paintings that were made and the literature. So hopefully, along with the voices of many other artists, the work I’ve made this year, at some point can inform, you know, future civilizations.

JT: And there are many layers to your paintings, layers of material and textures, as well as layers of meaning. I was wondering if you could describe your process a bit and why you choose to use materials like cardboard and charcoal and newspaper and the rest? 

DF: Yeah, that’s a great question, Joe, and I think we’re getting a chance to talk about layering. I think it’s a big part of my work. I think, you know, for me, I kind of knew when I arrived at something I was comfortable with when form and content converged. And I think my layering process is a very good example of that. I was first attracted to the idea of a kind of weathered surface when I traveled to Ghana, where my parents were from, and I saw these homes that had been painted so many times over, you can sometimes see evidence of the layers underneath, or there were near matches that created these very interesting juxtapositions. When I also thought about that experience,

A new year conversation with Dr. Bruce Y. Lee of the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy on the state of vaccines, the threat of the mutated virus and what the Biden administration needs to do to turn the tide of the pandemic.

Dr. Lee is an MD, public health researcher and writer who has been widely quoted and written incisively on COVID for Forbes.com since the pandemic began nearly a year ago. He is also the founder and executive director of the Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research group (PHICOR), a national research collaboration that has been helping guide the science of infectiousness and vaccination.

Stan Wolfson looks back on his 60-year career as a New York newspaper photographer and photo editor--from covering the biggest news events to his 16 years as the photo editor for CUNY's digital and print publications.

 

Walter Mosley was a 35-year-old computer programmer when he enrolled in the graduate writing program at City College in 1987. Just three years later–while still a student–he  published “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the debut novel that established him as a new force in American fiction.

Three decades and 60 books later, Mosley has received the National Book Foundation’s 2020 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The lifetime achievement award—whose previous recipients include Toni Morrison, Edmund White, E.L. Doctorow and Norman Mailer—honors a literary career born and nurtured at CUNY. It’s a career that includes founding a program at CCNY to open doors for minorities in publishing, an industry long known for its lack of diversity. We talked with Mosley about his life, his work and his decades-long bond with CUNY. Watch his award acceptance below.

 

Related Links

CUNY Congratulates Walter Mosley on NBF Honor

About Mosley

His Latest: The Awkward Black Man

About the City College Publishing Certificate Program

 

Episode Transcript

Rick Firstman: Walter Mosley was in his mid 30s when he enrolled in the graduate writing program at The City College of New York in 1987. Just three years later, even before earning his degree, Mosley published his debut novel, “Devil in a Blue Dress,” the bestseller that would later be made into a movie starring Denzel Washington. More than 60 books later, Mosley is among the country’s literary masters. And this month, the National Book Foundation is awarding him its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Mosley is the first African American man to win the lifetime achievement honor from the organization that presents the National Book Awards. Mosley’s life as a writer was born at CUNY, nurtured by faculty mentors and led him to establish a publishing certificate program at CCNY to open doors for minorities in an industry long known for its lack of diversity. I talked with Mosley about his life, his work, race, politics, and City College. Here’s our conversation.

Walter Mosley, thank you so much for coming on the CUNYcast and congratulations on this great honor from the National Book Foundation.

Walter Mosley: Why, thank you very much. I’m really happy about it.

RF: You’re in LA now during the pandemic? You have a place in Brooklyn also but you’re out there for a while?

WM: Yeah, I live in New York, I actually own a piece of Brooklyn so that’s mine. But, you know, I come out to LA a lot, you know, I’m from here. And also, you know, we do work with television shows and stuff, it’s easier to be here than not to.

RF: Right. And LA is where you grew up, of course, and where most of your novels are set. So I must say, I was unaware of your CUNY connection until I saw a reference to the City College publishing program in the announcement of the award. But the connection is even more pivotal, going to the very inception of your career as a writer. But I’m going to leave that as a little foreshadow and start even earlier in your story.

Jessica Harris never set out to become the country’s foremost authority on African American cuisine. Her doctoral dissertation was about French Theatre in Senegal, and she went on to a 50-year career as an English professor at Queens College. But along the way, she wrote a dozen acclaimed books about the food of Africa and what happened to it when it got to this continent. She’s a beloved figure in the food world and earlier this year, Jessica Harris was honored with the James Beard Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She joins the CUNYcast to talk about her life, her career and why she says African American cooking is the backbone of American cuisine itself. (Note: This interview was recorded on May 21, 2020, prior to the racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd.)

> More about Jessica Harris

When the pandemic came in March, Harrison Sheckler, a pianist in the masters program at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, went home to Iowa to wait it out. And then he had this idea. He started asking his friends to sing the Broadway classic “You’ll Never Walk Alone” together remotely for a little video. By the time he was finished, there were 300 singers and musicians from 15 countries and a viral video that’s had 1.1 million views on YouTube. And then a follow-up this summer: Let’s just say Harrison’s a baseball fanatic and the new video features current and former major leaguers (and one umpire) singing their hearts out.

Watch the videos, then hear Harrison talk about how he pulled them off. 

You’ll Never Walk Alone     |     Take Me Out to the Ballgame

* Read more about Harrison Sheckler from Brooklyn College

 

CUNY TV’s third virtual town hall special on COVID-19 is a conversation on CUNY’s transition to distance learning–the challenges of he challenges of making it happen almost overnight midway through the spring semester and questions ahead amid the uncertainties of the continuing pandemic. Host Mike Gilliam talks with Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost José Luis Cruz (bottom row center); Lehman College Provost Peter Nwosu (top right); Cathy N. Davidson, director of the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center (bottom right); and students Sally Zieper of Brooklyn College (top center) and Kalli Siringas of Hunter College (bottom left).

To see the show on CUNY TV click here

CUNYcast Episode 15 

 

Transcript

Mike Gilliam  Welcome to CUNY TV presents “COVID-19: A Crisis in Motion,” a virtual town hall meeting. I’m Mike Gilliam. This is our third town hall and this time we’re tackling distance learning. The move to distance learning or online instruction began March 19, with no set end date. It’s been a massive undertaking for a system offering more than 36,000 courses with more than 15,000 instructors and more than 217,000 students. There have been challenges and successes. Here to delve into all of it we have the Executive Vice Chancellor and University Provost José Luis Cruz; the provost of Lehman College, Peter Nwosu; Cathy N. Davidson, the founding director of the Futures Initiative at the CUNY Graduate Center; and two students, Kalli Siringas, who attends Hunter College and writes for the student paper, and Sally Zieper, a student at Brooklyn College. She’s a student correspondent for the CUNY Office of Academic Affairs newsletter.

Welcome to all of you. I want to start right off with a message from the Chancellor to the CUNY community on distance learning.

Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodriguez (on videotape) I am so proud and thankful for all you have done in these challenging times, faculty, staff and students coming together. This is a learning experience for everyone involved, including me. Even though there might be bumps along the way, please keep in mind that we all share one common goal, to get to this semester together, to complete this semester and to protect your financial aid and your education.Mike Gilliam  Now, let’s start with EVC Cruz. There’s an important message there, right?

José Luis Cruz   There is. I think actually there are three different messages from the chancellor. I think the first one is an acknowledgement of our campus communities and how intentional and deliberate they were in seizing the moment and converting a massive number of in-person courses to online with the objective of ensuring that learning outcomes were met. It’s also an acknowledgement from the Chancellor that we will support the campus community to the best of our ability as we face these historical challenges. And then, of course, I think there’s also the underlying message that the recovery of the city of New York runs through CUNY. And so it’s not only about how we are able to maintain the continuity of our academic programming and the support services towards students that go with that, but also our involvement as thought partners to the city and the state as we move to get away from the current state of affairs into one where we are more prosperous, healthier and better positioned to serve the people of the city of New York.

Mike Gilliam  To our students, this is not the year that any of us expected going in. How is this transition to online education worked out for you guys? Kalli?

Kalli Siringas  I think it’s been a pretty smooth transition, at least for the media department at Hunter College. I think all my classes have been smaller and more focused.

In CUNY TV’s second virtual town hall special on COVID-19, host Mike Gilliam talks with Anthony Ciampa of the New York State Nurses Association; Angie Kamath, University Dean for Continuing Education and Workforce Development; Dr. Bruce Y. Lee of the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy; Micheal Lawrence of the Engineering Technology Department of Queensborough Community College; and students Sofia Fugon of Baruch College, Michael DeBartolo of the College of Staten Island and Emilia Nygren and Gabriella Vetrano of Hunter College. (Recorded April 17, 2020)

To see the show on CUNY TV click here

We’re all in this together. So how are we dealing with it?  Since mid-March, researchers at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy have been conducting a weekly tracking survey that’s revealing a lot about the impact of the pandemic on New Yorkers–and a few things about their impact on the pandemic. How do they view their own risk? How are they responding to the extreme measures of social distancing? (A term no one had heard of six weeks ago.) What’s been the effect on their jobs, their housing, their daily lives–to say nothing of their psyches? The tracking survey, a collaboration between CUNY SPH, Emerson College Polling and the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives, released its fifth survey this week. The survey’s lead researcher, Dr. Scott Ratzan, joins the CUNYcast to talk about the most significant and surprising results–and how they might inform efforts to fight the spread of this pandemic and maybe help prevent future ones.

 

Related Links

About the CUNY SPH tracking survey

Full weekly survey results: Week 1  |  Week 2  |  Week 3  |  Week 4  |  Week 5

CUNY SUM Weekly Takeaways

Week 1: New Yorkers think they’re at very low risk

Week 2: Job loss hits the LatinX community hardest

Week 3: Panicked New Yorkers say government isn’t doing enough about COVID-19

Week 4: New Yorkers hopeless about future as food access wanes

Week 5: 1 in 3 New Yorkers are unable to pay their rent due to COVID-19 job loss

About Dr. Scott Ratzan

Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, CUNY’s leading expert on the spread of the coronavirus, talks about the latest: What the last two weeks tells us about the next two and beyond. Why social distancing is so critical right now, how some Asian countries have used it to stop the virus and what we can learn from them. (For one thing, New Yorkers need to stop doing this.) What to make of  stories about treatments and vaccines. And more.

Lee is an MD and professor in the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy,  specializing in infectious disease modeling. He’s a member of the CUNY coronavirus task force, which has been guiding the University’s response since early March. And he’s a writer who’s been covering the pandemic for Forbes.com. His latest column reports on two studies that show how China’s measures have worked against the coronavirus.

Related Links

CUNY Coronavirus Page: Complete up-to-date information for students, faculty and staff

More about Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, including his coronavirus columns on Forbes.com

Dr. Lee on Twitter