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News for February 2010
Educate Yourself on Genocide

ICC reopens possibility of Genocide charges against Bashir

The Convention on the Rights of the Child

Why can't every child go to school? Every girl and boy has the right to a good education, but today more than 115 million miss out. Find out more.

Captured
Joy Guarino, Carlos Jones, and Janet Reed
Dance 
Lisa K. Lock, Amy Taravella, Leanne Rinelli
Guest Choreographers

Joy Guarino started her career in Buffalo as a performer and choreographer of dance and musical theater.  She has performed and choreographed for dance and theater companies based in Philadelphia and in the Capital District while a member of the dance faculty at Russell Sage College.  Her passion for dance education guided her career path and she became actively involved in NYS Arts Education.  When she returned to Western NY in 1993, she continued to work not only as a dancer/choreographer but as a dance teaching artist with the Arts-In-Education Institute of WNY. 

Ms. Guarino teaches a variety of studio technique classes, dance history, dance education, and choreography.  She is actively involved in the arts education community and holds a NYS Teacher’s Certification in Dance.

Janet Reed's choreography has been performed in Amsterdam, Germany, and Scotland. Most recently, Janet Reed & Dancers premiered in the first International Dance Festival in New York City.

Reed was awarded a 2002-2003 choreography fellowship from New York Foundation for the Arts. She has been a teaching member of the Jazz World Dance Congress and taught master classes throughout the United States.

Reed teaches African American dance, ballet, modern, and jazz, as well as dance history. She has taught at numerous Western New York institutions and has received honors such as Teacher of the Year.

Carlos Jones has a body of work that extends from the concert stage to theater to television and film. His eclectic background has brought him recognition as an international artist. Concert apperances include work with such companies as: Loretta Livingston, Bethune Theatredance, Dance Kansas City Modern/Jazz CO., and his own Carlos Jones & Company. Among his theatrical credits are Some Like it Hot, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Man of La Mancha, It's a Pretty Good Life, and Sesame Street Live.

As a director/choreographer Jones is prolific and his concert works have been presented with San Jose Dance Company, Dance Spectrum Alaska, Adage Repertory Company, Bethune Theater/Dance, and Link Dane Theatre to name a few. Theatrical Directing/Choreography includes History of White Music, Saucy JAck and the Space Vixons,, Reefer Madness, Lost in Hollywoodland, She Hysteric, West Side Story, City of Angels, Beauty and the Beast, Babes in Arms, Black Nativity, Hair, Godspell, Dames at Sea, and Once Upon a Matress under the direction of Carol Burnett. In addition, he has created dance segments for a number of video and film productions including the award winning film short, Insurance Inc.

Mr.Jones has inspired youth in his community for a number of years. He was founder and director of the Los Angelas training facility Academy 331 Fine Arts Center, Founding Artistic Director of Teen Dance Company located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and continues to serve as artistic advisor to In-sync Dance Theater in Glendale California. His current research in arts integration keeps him active in K-12 residencies and on the boards of MUSE and CAPC, two Buffalo, NY based arts organizations.

A man of scholar, Jones holds an MFA from University of California. He has served on the faculties of UCLA, UC-Irvine, Chapman University, University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory, Loyola Marymount University, and St.Cloud State University. Carlos was among four recipients to be awarded the coveted SUNY Diversity Faculty Fellow Position- a prestigious award selected from candidates submitted by the 63 SUNY colleges and universities. Jones is currently Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance at Buffalo State College.

LISA K. LOCK holds a Ballet Diploma from the Grande Ecole de Danse in Bern, Switzerland and a BFA and MFA Degree from the California Institute of the Arts.In 2006, Lisa, relocated to Cleveland from Los Angeles, where she continues to choreograph and perform locally, nationally and internationally.She was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2009. Lisa also was voted best female dancer of the year 2004 by the Beverly Hills Outlook, and in 2002 she received a Lester Horton Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography in Los Angeles.Her solo work has been showcased in Cleveland, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Honolulu, and San Francisco, she performed in Switzerland and Lithuania, as well as in major European cities like Vienna, Paris, Madrid, and Edinburgh, Latin America showcases include Guatemala City and Antigua in Guatemala.Since her move to Cleveland, Lisa has presented two evening long works at the Cleveland Public Theater, and has been a featured artist in Cleveland’s Ingenuity Festival of Art and Technology. She also had a great opportunity to work with Opera Cleveland on several productions, both as a choreographer and performer.She created original works for Cleveland Contemporary Dance Theater, Dancing Wheels,and Verb Ballets.

Leanne Rinelli, an adjunct instructor at Buffalo State College, received her B.A. in dance from the State University of New York at Buffalo.  She has performed with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company II in Dayton, Ohio, and currently performs with Janet Reed and Dancers and the Bill Evans Dance Company.  Rinelli’s work has been seen at the International Choreographers’ Showcases in Guatemala City; Bari, Italy; and Biel, Switzerland, and at the 22nd World Congress on Dance Research in Athens, Greece.  In addition to teaching and choreographing, Rinelli has worked as a teaching artist for the Arts in Education Institute of Western New York and is a Polestar certified Pilates practitioner.  Currently, she is pursuing her M.F.A. in performance and choreography at SUNY College at Brockport.

Mind in a Bulletproof Cage: Hannah Arendt, Memoirist
Dr. Mark K.  Fulk
Literary Arts 

Mark Fulk is an associate professor of English at BSC, starting his ninth year at Buffalo State College.  He specializes in women's and queer studies of literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth century in Britain.  Mark published one book on contemporary author May Sarton, and a bevy of articles on various topics in the field of women's studies.  His presentation at The Anne Frank Project grows out of the serious and sustained study he has been doing of Hannah Arendt and her critique of Romanticism's construction of the modern subject.  It is Mark’s hope that this presentation will form part of the first chapter of my current book-length study of Romantic Education & Citizenship

Finding Anne Frank in Rwanda:  A Diary of Universal Genocide
Drew Kahn
Theater, Directing/Acting 

Drew Kahn Chair and Professor, Theater Department, Buffalo State College. Professor Kahn teaches acting (President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching/Buffalo State College-2006) and directs main stage productions (Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival Award). He is the founding Artistic Director of the Oasis Theatre Company where he directed Andre De Shields in Death of a Salesman in the debut season. Drew has extensive acting experience in regional theatre and off-Broadway (original cast, Saint Tous, LaMama, Etc.), feature film (Paramount Pictures’ Necessary Roughness) as well as several television and commercial credits. In Buffalo, New York, Drew was the host of WKBW-TV’s (ABC) AM Buffalo for six years, hosted the WNED (PBS) award-winning documentary Saving a Landmark: The Darwin Martin House and has numerous Buffalo stage credits including Lobby Hero (Kavinoky Theatre), A Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (BET), and Baltimore Waltz (BUA, ArtVoice Artie Award). He has an MFA in Acting from Southern Methodist University and a BA in Drama from San Diego State University.

Language is Violence
Joe Marren & Lou Rera
Communication, Film, Design

Joe Marren is an associate professor in the communication department, where he teaches courses on journalism ethics, history, editing, literary journalism and convergent media. He has also taught humanities and communication courses in the social justice learning community at Buffalo State for the past six years. Prior to his academic career, he worked as a newspaper journalist for 18 years at several Western New York community and niche newspapers, and as a sports stringer for the Associated Press in Buffalo. He also does occasional commentaries on WBFO, the National Public Radio affiliate in Buffalo.

Survival and the Power of Testimony: NEVER AGAIN
Carol Beckley
Theater, Set Design 

Ms. Beckley attended the Fashion Institute of Technology for Interior Design, received a BFA in Theater Design from Ithaca College and an MFA in Stage Design from Southern Methodist University.  Carol has over 15 years experience teaching design at Buffalo State College.   She has also taught graduate classes at Art Park and served as a visiting artist at the University of Buffalo.  She currently teaches Set Design, Scene Painting, Period Styles, Freshman Seminar and Senior Seminar.  Ms. Beckley has presented at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research, The New York State Art Teachers Association Conference, The Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival and the Great Lakes Independent Schools Arts Festival.  She served on the developmental committee for BSC 101, a critical thinking course for all Freshman at Buffalo State College.  Ms. Beckley has been designing scenery for theater, dance and television for the past 20 years.  She has designed scenery for over 100 theater and dance productions in venues from Toronto to Dallas and network television  programming on PBS, Showtime, and Fox.  National clients for trade shows and commercials include the Southwest Football Conference, AETNA, Toys R Us, Mattel, RadioShack, Fisher Price and Pepsico.

Sisters’  of Anne Frank: Three Women; One Legacy
Barbara D. Miller
Music 
Gunilla Theander Kester
Ph.D.

Barbara D. Miller is Associate Professor of Spanish at Buffalo State. It was her scholarly work in medieval literatures and cultures of England, France and Spain that led to her acquaintance with the two "spiritual sisters of Anne Frank"at the heart of her presentation. Arising from her publications and research on the figure of Merlin the enchanter, as depicted by Spanish authors, her participation in the International Arthurian Society Congresses in Wales and in Holland gave her the opportunity to meet distinguished scholar and Holocaust survivor Dr. Fanni Bogdanow. From Utrecht they visited Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, together with other Arthurian specialists. The seed of Dr. Miller's tribute to Temple Beth Am Cantor, Susan Wehle, was sown during a Buffalo area Network of Religious Communities- and University-sponsored conference on finding inspiration for peace in the model of medieval Spain's famous Moslem, Christian and Jewish "convivencia" or coexistence. Cantor Wehle was among those lost in Continental flight 3407, which went down over Clarence on February 12, 2009.

A native of Sweden, Gunilla Theander Kester, Ph.D., is the author of Time of Sand and Teeth, published by Finishing Line Press and nominated for the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award.  She was a Finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award 2009 and was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize from Not Just Air.  Her poetry appears in Poetic Voices Without Borderes I and III (ed. by Robert L. Giron) as well as in Nickel City Nights, an anthology edited by Gary Earl Ross.  An accomplished guitarist, Dr. Kester performs and teaches classical guitar, and is on the faculty of the Amherst School of Music.  Her CD, Songs of Healing and hope with Cantor Susan Wehle, was released in 2006.

Please visit her webpage: http://www.thekesters.net/Gunilla/Welcome.html

Be Here Now: Young Women’s War Diaries, and the Practice of Intentionality
Ralph L. Wahlstrom, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Chair of English

Ralph Wahlstrom is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Buffalo State College.  Wahlstrom earned a doctorate in Rhetoric and Technical Communication at Michigan Technological University and has continued a long interest in literacy, writing pedagogy, peace studies and culture.  He is the author of The Tao of Writing and has published numerous works of scholarship, fiction and nonfiction.  For the Anne Frank Conference, Wahlstrom will be discussing young women’s war diaries and offering a brief workshop on the power of intentionality in writing and the diary form.

Nodes of Illumination
Interior Design Department of BSC and
Assistant Professor of Lighting Design Shannon Schweitzer
Alissa de Wit-Paul, Amy Anderson, Julie Deuble, Amanda Hamlin, Ashley Kaminski, Sara Keeton, Sarah Knight, Lillian Knoerzer, Kile Krawczak, Michele Lange, Elizabeth Mosher, Amanda Nahumck, Rochelle Reese, Kelly Reumann, Colleen Robinson, and Brianna Toussaint Interior Design Department
Interior Design Department, Lighting Design Theater Department

Shannon T. Schweitzer has designed lights and sets from the East Coast to the Mid West. He has served as the Resident Lighting Designer for the Ohio Light Opera the past ten summers designing over thirty shows at OLO. Shannon has worked with Playwrights Horizons, The Public Theatre, Theatre Ten Ten, and The Zipper Theatre to name a few. In 2005 Shannon received two ACTF awards in Lighting Design for Tea and Sympathy and The Children's Hour. Schweitzer teaches lighting design and computer-aided-drafting. You can see more of Shannon’s work at www.shannonschweitzer.com. Shannon is also the web-master for The Anne Frank Project.

The Senior Interior Design studio, instructed by Assistant Professor Alissa de Wit-Paul and Assistant Professor Tom Breen focuses not only on office planning but on sustainable design.  The understanding and implementation of Green Design is pivotal to all of the building design professions today. We start the studio by discussing the issues surrounding ecological based construction. This leads to a project where the Leadership in  Energy and Environmental Design building rating system will be used to verify the level of sustainability of the students' designs.

 Assistant Professor Alissa de Wit-Paul RA NCIDQ LEED developed this project through her specialization and research in sustainable design practices.

The Memorial Series: How do we honor Individuals?
Alice C. Pennisi
Visual Arts, Painting 

Alice Pennisi, an assistant professor of art education at Buffalo State College, earned her doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she was a co-founder of Educators for Social Justice, which, in its present form is a list serve helping educators learn about and connect on social justice issues. She earned a BA in visual arts at Barnard College, furthering her studio training at The New York Studio School, focusing on painting. She has been a middle and high school art, language arts, and social studies teacher in New York City, and co-founded New Design High School, a small public design-based high school on New York City’s Lower East Side. Her pedagogical and research interests focus on decentralized teaching and working from a negotiating curricular model as a means to re/engage adolescents, including first-year college students, in societal issues, particularly through research and/or art making. Recently her paintings have focused on portraiture as a means to investigate and highlight human rights issues. She and her colleague Candace Keegan have started an after school art program for the young people at the Asarese Community Center on Buffalo’s West Side.

Design Students explore Concepts of Genocide
Carol Townsend & Students of the Design Department BSC
Design 

Comfort Corners
Dr. Cheryl M. Hamilton, Ph.D.
Visual Arts, Sculpture 

An Associate Professor of Art Education at Buffalo State; Cheryl teaches methods courses for undergraduate and graduate art education stsudents and works with student teachers. Throughout her career she has presented nationally and internationally at the National Art Education Association, International Visual Literacy Association, numerous state art education conferences and other venues. As an author of Creating Meaning Through Art: Teacher as Choice-Maker she is interested in promoting the use of visual representations of complex and meaningful concepts. This and her prior experience as Director of the Crayola Dream-Makers program for Binney & Smith, Inc. has led to this workshop about connecting choices, dreams and Anne Frank's optimism through artwork. Recent economic conditions require many of us to consider what the real necessities are in our lives and to remember the importance of them. For this Anne Frank Conference presentation we will emulate Anne Frank's ability to see the positive in negative situations.

Proposition 8, Mein Kampf, and the Diplomatic Strategies of Oppression
Anthony Chase, Ph.D.
Theater, Dramaturgy 

Anthony Chase earned the doctorate in English Literature from the University at Buffalo with a concentration in drama and his B.A. in Theater and English from Trinity College, Hartford.  He is founding theater editor for the weekly Artvoice publication, and for nearly 20 years has been featured on the “Theater Talk” segment of the Morning Edition program for WBFO, providing insight and analysis of local and national theater.  For Buffalo State he teaches dramaturgy and criticism, including script analysis.  In addition, Dr. Chase provided the leadership for Buffalo State’s acquisition of the historic Studio Arena Theatre archives and the Western New York Gay and Lesbian Archive. Dr. Chase was a feature writer for Theater Week magazine in New York for ten years, and has also been published in Stages, In Theatre, American Theater, and Hispanic magazines.  For several years, he served a the literary representative for Endesha Ida Mae Holland, negotiating contracts for productions of her play, From the Mississippi Delta at regional theaters across the United States (Arena Stage, Goodman, Mark Taper Forum, Hartford Stage, Old Globe), at London’s Young Vic, and off-Broadway. During his tenure, the play was recognized as one of Time magazine’s “Best Plays of 1991.”  He was co-author of the entry on Women of the Black Theater Arts Movement of the Civil Rights Era for Darlene Clark Hine’s Encyclopedia of African American Women.  A noted critic and cultural analyst, Dr. Chase often appears on local and Canadian television to discuss cultural issues.  His influential article on the murders at Columbine High School appeared on the cover of In These Times magazine and has often been sited in subsequent research on teen violence and gay teen suicide. In addition to serving on the theater faculty at Buffalo State, Dr. Chase is the assistant to the dean of the School of Arts and Humanities.

Jewish Reperotory Theater of Western New York: The Role of Jewish Theater
Saul Elkin
Artistic Director The Jewish Repertory Theater of Western New York

Dr. Saul Elkin is Distinguished Service Professor at University of Buffalo and for many years was Chair of the Theater Department.  He is Founder and Artistic Director of Shakespeare in Delaware Park, now in its 34^th season, and Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Jewish Repertory Theater of Western New York.   Saul’s numerous acting include the memorable portrayal of Otto Frank in THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK at Theatre of Youth, Willy Loman in DEATH OF A SALESMAN at the Kavinoky Theatre, George in WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF at Ujima Company, Juror #11 in TWELVE ANGRY MEN at Studio Arena Theatre and Max in the Irish Classical Theatre Company and JRT co-production.  In addition to being a well known actor, Saul is a respected director whose work has been enjoyed at many of the theaters in the region and beyond.

What You Do Matters: The Importance of Genocide Education in Repairing the World
Andrew Beiter

Graduating with a BA in Political Philosophy from Michigan State University and a Masters in Education from Fredonia State College, Mr. Beiter is a National Teacher Fellow for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and has been the recipient of several teaching awards, including the 2008 Irena Sendler Award for repairing the world, and the 2009 Toby Ticktin Back Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education.

In addition to running several workshops on the Holocaust and Genocide Prevention, Mr. Beiter co-directs the Summer Institute for Human Rights and Genocide Studies here in Buffalo.  He teaches 8th Grade Social Studies at Springville Middle School, and is a board member of the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo, as well as Buffalo for Africa.

He resides in Hamburg, has been married for 14 years to his wife Mary, and is the proud father of Mitchell and Margaret.

Rich Newberg
Senior Correspondent News 4 Buffalo, WIVB-TV

Rich Newberg is the Senior Correspondent for News 4 Buffalo, WIVB-TV. He has been with the CBS affiliate for thirty one years.

Rich considers his work on Holocaust survivors his most important contribution as a broadcast journalist. He is an honorary Board Member for Life of the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo. Rich and his wife Lori co-chaired two Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Day of Remembrance) observances in Buffalo. In 1983 Rich produced "Survivors of the Holocaust," one of the nation's first local television documentaries focusing on the lives of survivors. Days later he was reporting live from Washington D.C. on the First American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

In 1994 Rich and News 4 Chief Photographer Mike Mombrea, Jr. accompanied a group of courageous survivors back to Terezin and Aushwitz-Birkenau, where they had been interned as children. Most had lost their families to the ovens and crematoria of Birkenau. "Lost Childhood: The Story of the Birkenau Boys" was awarded two New York Emmys, for Best Historical Programming and Best Documentary Photography.

Rich has won a total of ten New York Emmy Awards for his television specials in Buffalo, which have included themes ranging from the fight against terrorism, to the challenges facing psychiatric outpatients. "Our documentaries generally deal with the human struggle for dignity," says Rich. "We focus on people who have overcome incredible odds by drawing on their own inner strenghth." The Buffalo Broadcasters Association inducted Rich Newberg into its Hall of Fame in 2006.

Throughout his forty years as a broadcast journalist, Rich has sought to bring the camera and microphone to people who generally don't have a voice in society. He started his career as a TV News Troubleshooter, helping viewers solve problems that seemed insurmountable to them. Rich worked at ABC affiliates in Syracus and Rochester, and the NBC owned and operated atation in Chicago.

Rich received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Communication Arts from Ithaca College, and a Master of Arts degree in News and Public Affairs from Michigan State University. M.S.U. honored Rich with its Distinguished Alumni Award.

Rich lives in Amherts with his wife Lori. They have two sons, David, and Michael.

Sylvia Schwartz
The Holocaust Resource Center

Sylvia Schwartz is a native of New York City. Her parents were Holocaust survivors. She received her BA in Communications/Broadcasting from Buffalo State College. She has worked as Executive Director of the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo since 1999.

Robert J. Heffern
The Holocaust Resource Center

Robert J. Heffern, Board Member of HRC, Vice President and Chair of the Education Committee. Retiree of Maryvale High School (Social Studies); formerly Adjunt at Daemen College teaching Methods of Secondary Social Studies.

Hilary Eddy Stipelman
Program Manager The Anne Frank Center, USA

Hilary Eddy Stipelman is responsible for traveling to AFC exhibition sites to provide docent training and workshops to local educatots. In addition she manages on-site school programs at the AFC and a recently awarded Teaching American History grant that provides omgoing professionsl development to teachers in Brooklyn. Previously she worked for six years at South Street Seaport Museum, as well as at the Brooklyn Historical Society, The Morgan Library, and the New Jersey Historical Society. Hilary serves as Treasurer on the Board of Trustees of New York City Museum Educator's Roundtable. She hold a B.A. in Arts History from Smith College and an M.S. Ed. in Museum Education from Bank Street College.

AFP 2009 Conference Schedule