Can I get you anything?
The FIIG Film Festival ends tomorrow May 2, 2025. Register here to view any or all of these 9 fantastic films for FREE.
Then join us this Saturday 3rd May for any or all of the three panel discussions with the filmmakers happening throughout the day. I’ll be moderating one of them (Resistance) along with my colleagues Dr. Harjant Gill (Community) and Dr. Abhijeet Paul (Self-Discovery). Register here for the panels.
Attention, people of Earth: the FIIG Film Festival launched yesterday. The nine outstanding films by award-winning Fulbright alums will be available for viewing online through May 2, 2025.
Access to view them is FREE but you must register to get the password at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18NbITo8lL3h6S4uuN_86IY8shWjvT7UNUKkKom2LK30/viewform?edit_requested=true .
To join us on May 3 for panel discussions with the filmmakers, register at https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/eN6KgrhDSpCH0j6vdaV3lg#/registration . I was one of the curators of the nine films and will be hosting one of the panel discussions along with my esteemed colleagues.
Hope to see you there!
Attention current or former Fulbrighters who have made a film about South Asia: we’ve launched a film festival just for you. Your Fulbright research/teaching award doesn’t have to have been in South Asia for you to submit your film. See full details on the FIIG Film Festival below. Deadline 1/15/25!
Wow. Thank you so much NYU Tisch School of the Arts Open Arts Program for sharing the doubly good news in their article about The Jeff & Shuvam Show, which I’m happy to say seems to be really taking off, and separately celebrating my article in UK peer-reviewed journal Race & Class. I’m grateful that they mentioned my youtube channel (not really a podcast) collaborators Shuvam Dasgupta and my fellow Fulbright alum, film director Abhijit Chowdhury, whose idea this was, and his India-based media production company Concept Cube which launched the podcast, not me solely.
My grant to attend the Fulbright Association conference last October, as mentioned in the article, was provided by our terrific adjunct faculty union ACT-UAW Local 7902.
I wasn’t surprised, and was very happy that the Fulbright Association asked all of the speakers at the annual conference in Denver, Colorado to open their talks with a land acknowledgement. There’s my first slide and here are my opening remarks:
When I was 21, I learned that my great-grandmother on my biological father’s side was a full-blooded Cherokee [which I first discussed publicly and proudly in my autobiographical theatrical performance The Golden Horseshoe: A Lecture on Tragedy in 2004]. I was always interested in history, so I knew something about the Cherokee but my learning of this hidden part of my heritage made me more passionate to learn as much as I could about my newly found ancestry. I was born and raised in southwestern Virginia but I was living in New York City at the time. When I would go up to friends and say, “I just found out I’m part Cherokee,” they would vaguely say, “Oh, so like, are you from Oklahoma? Are you an Okie?”
I’d say, “No, genius. The Cherokee out west were marched there at gunpoint from the East Coast. It was called the Trail of Tears. Thousands died on the march. A small group managed to stay behind by rapidly assimilating in order to keep their homes. That meant adopting Christianity and dressing like white people. They’re called the Eastern Band of Cherokee and their descendants, my ancestors, are still there today.”
So I feel the need, the joy, the honor, of saying, as clumsy it as it might come out, that this land we’re on today in Denver used to belong to the Arapaho people and Cheyenne people, and it had been theirs for a very long time. The trouble started when the European side of my ancestry showed up looking for gold in the 1850s and everything quickly went to hell for these nations.
You’ll never guess what ultimately happened: they were forcibly relocated out of Colorado. Another Trail of Tears.
I ask that you ponder that and take a little time sometime to learn, as I’m always learning, more of that history, and maybe even more of the First Nations history of wherever in the US you call home.