Exhibition: November 5 – December 15Lecture & Opening Reception: November 5, 5:00 PMSmith (visual art) and Katsumata (electric violin) present their collaborative practice weaving image, sound, history, and memory. Smith draws from comic books, manga, surrealism, Ukiyo-e, anime, and pop culture to examine cultural narratives, while Katsumata creates vivid soundscapes blending classical training with experimental composition. Together, their work explores ancestry, cultural identity, and the stories that connect us.

Gina Siepel: To Understand a Tree encapsulates 6 years in communion with a single tree. Bridging art, ecology, and queer experience, the project approaches wood as a living being and explores interconnection, habitat, and environmental responsibility. Organized by the Museum for Art in Wood and curated by Jennifer-Navva Milliken.

Artist Marie Cochran reimagines the novel "Those We Thought We Knew," by David Joy that explores themes of generational trauma, and betrayal through the story of a young Black artist who returns to her ancestral home. This exhibition is presented in collaboration with Bucknell's Critical Black Studies program.

Tree Time with Amy Levan4:30 p.m.Samek Art Museum, Bucknell University, Elaine Langone Center, top floor701 Moore Avenue, Lewisburg, PALocal Shade Tree Commission volunteer, Amy Levan, talks about the importance of urban trees.

Radical Memory, Strategic Forgetting: Race, Symbolic Power, and the Politics of Commemoration at Storer College in West Virginia Lecture by Professor Michael J. Drexler This talk intervenes in memory studies and African American intellectual history by analyzing how the memory of slavery and John Brown's legacy was contested within the symbolic and institutional space of Storer College, a historically Black school in Harpers Ferry. Drawing on A.J. Greimas's semiotic square, I develop a typology of commemorative strategies—radical remembrance, strategic forgetting, sanitized commemoration, and erasure—while Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the field reveals how actors like Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, and W.E.B. Du Bois negotiated unequal access to institutional legitimacy and symbolic capital. A case study of Du Bois's failed 1932 effort to install a John Brown plaque at Storer College illustrates the tension between radical memory and liberal respectability. The essay concludes by linking these historical contests to contemporary struggles over military base names, public monuments, and cultural institutions, showing how commemoration remains a site where racial politics and national narratives continue to be shaped, challenged, and constrained.

PJ Dempsey and Kristin Dempsey, will share about doing business together and how their faith and family guide them. Sponsored by Catholic Campus Ministry and Open Discourse Coalition

She is passionate about raising awareness around issues that plague underdeveloped and under-served communities. Since her teenaged years, Lowry has been a professional singer-songwriter with unique passion and voice. In addition to performing solo, for 10-plus years, she has been the front-woman for the multi-award–winning band, Dark Water Rising. Lowry and the members of her project, Charly & The Sunshine, were selected by the U.S. Department of State and American Music Abroad to participate in the 2021–22 American Music Abroad Virtual Season.

Faculty Recital