Campus Currents

Fall FSU Cooks Events!

FSU Cooks is back in the kitchen this week…in-person to Mix and Bake some fun with the entire FSU Community!! Join us for any and all of the following events. All events are free to the FSU community and are sponsored by the Nutrition and Health Studies Department.

Quick Pumpkin Snack Cake – October 25th 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Come scare up some fun as we bake a simple pumpkin chocolate chip snack cake. This Mix and Bake takes place during lunch break, so bring your lunch and leave with a snack cake! #snackcake #1hourbake

Registration Link

A Twist on Pie Crust – December 6th between 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Looking to perfect your pie crust?…then join us to learn some new techniques. This Mix and Bake takes place mid-day, so bring your lunch and leave with some pie crust twists! #pietwists #1hourbake

Registration Link

By Sophia Harris, Publications Intern

Framingham State President Nancy Niemi said she was amazed by the honesty and vulnerability showcased at the Danforth Art Museum this past Saturday.

“I can’t help but think about how women make themselves vulnerable and admit to their vulnerability in their art,” Niemi said while admiring the work of three New England artists whose work focuses on themes of perseverance, resilience, and acceptance.

The exhibition, which opened with a special artist event on Saturday, Oct. 14, featured artwork created in all different media such as painting, photography, and ceramics.

Kate Holcomb Hale's exhibition, ‘lean, Stand, collapse,’ included paintings, various installations, and a video demonstrating her artwork through movement.

“The work is all about the invisible labor of families. I made a lot of it after an intense period during the pandemic,” Hale said.

The art showcased at the Fall exhibition all had the commonality of exploring how people have shown courage and resilience through the COVID-19 pandemic, in a “very bright, uplifting and almost calming manner,” said Jessica Roscio, director and curator of the Danforth Art Museum.

Marisa Companion’s exhibition, ‘Performative Realities’ illustrated radical vulnerability through paintings of ‘selfies’ that scattered the walls of the Museum's Litowitz Gallery. Each represented the subjects' control over taking a photograph of themselves and posting it on the internet, where Companion encounters the photos and decides to paint the selfies.

Performative Realities “Is all these different ways we like to perform in front of a camera, and how it translated into an image and then into a painting,” she said.

Companion said she hopes people will “feel a sense of humanity” while experiencing her art, adding this is “especially important in the times we live in.”

Torrance York showcased selections from her photography series ‘Semaphore,’ which explored how she found beauty and resilience since being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

York said through this series she is “trying to picture, metaphorically, some of the challenges as well as the things that inspire me.”

She said her art speaks to “Anyone who is facing a challenge that requires perseverance and patience.”

Ronnie Sidman who was in attendance for the Fall Exhibition said the art was “exciting, fresh innovative, and stimulating. It was a thrill.”

Jennifer Kendall came up for the opening and marveled at the talent on display in the museum.

“It was really eye-opening,” she said. “It really gives you a different perspective on everybody’s point of view on life. This was just amazing to see, everything was just so beautiful.”

The Fall exhibition will be on display through January 28, 2024.

2023 Swiacki Children's Literature Festival

Thursday, November 2, 2023

The Swiacki Children’s Literature Festival at Framingham State University is an annual celebration of children’s books featuring renowned authors and illustrators in the field. 

We are honored this year to host featured speakers Ekua Holmes and Dashka Slater. There will also be a special presentation from FSU alumna Nora Chan '16, an editor at Curriculum Associates, who will discuss the impact of book bans on children's literature.

For more details and to register, visit: https://www.alumni.framingham.edu/s/1929/bp20/interior.aspx?sid=1929&gid=2&pgid=623

About the featured speakers:

Ekua Holmes’ work is collage-based and her subjects, made from cut and torn papers, investigate family histories, relationship dynamics, childhood impressions, and the power of hope, faith and self-determination. Remembering a Roxbury childhood of wonder and delight, she considers herself a part of a long line of Roxbury imagemakers. In this spirit, she supports those who have a calling in the arts as well as keeping her own studio practice ignited. Well known for her work in illustrating children’s literature, Holmes is the recipient of a Caldecott Honor, the Coretta Scott King’s John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator award, and a Horn Book award for her illustrations in Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, written by Carole Boston Weatherford. She also twice won the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration for Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets and for The Stuff of Stars, written by Marion Dane Bauer. Ms. Holmes currently serves as Commissioner and Vice Chair of the Boston Art Commission and as the Associate Director at the Center for Art and Community Partnerships at MassArt, where she manages and coordinates sparc! the ArtMobile, an art-inspiring, art-transforming vehicle retrofitted to contribute to community-based, multidisciplinary arts programming currently focused in Mission
Hill, Roxbury and Dorchester, MA. She received her BFA in Photography from MassArt.

Best-selling author Dashka Slater has been telling stories since she could talk. An award-winning journalist who writes for such publications as The New York Times Magazine and Mother Jones, she is also the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. Her children’s picture books include Escargot, Dangerously Ever After, and The Antlered Ship, a Junior Library Guild selection and a Parents' Choice Recommended book that received four starred reviews and was named Best Picture Book of the Year by both Amazon and the Northern California Independent Bookseller’s Association. Her New York Times bestselling true-crime narrative, The 57 Bus, has received numerous accolades, including the 2018 Stonewall Book Award from the American
Library Association and the 2018 Beatty Award from the California Library Association. It was a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist, an LA Times Book Award Finalist, and the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Young Adult Book of the Year.

Join us for the 18th Annual Major/Minor Fair this week

Tuesday, Oct. 24, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
McCarthy Center Forum

• Speak with faculty about major and minor options
• Explore Study Abroad opportunities
• Learn about career opportunities
• Talk with financial aid representatives
• Ready to declare a minor? Stop by the Advising Table 

Sponsored by the Advising Center, Career Development and International Programs

Ekua Holmes, featured speaker for the Children's Literature Festival, will have an exhibition on display in the Mazmanian Gallery starting on October 30th:

Ekua Holmes: Black is a Rainbow Color
Oct 30 - Dec 12, 2023
Swiacki Children’s Literature Festival
Book Signing: Thursday, November 2, 2023

https://www.ekuaholmes.com

Monday, November 6, 2023, at 7 PM in DPAC

Maria Schrader here adapts the 2019 memoir by New York Times’ journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor. Together, they launched a groundbreaking investigation into the sexual wrongdoings of Harvey Weinstein, a kingpin in the American film industry. They interviewed numerous victims, but couldn’t publish until one went public. Actor Ashley Judd courageously led the way, allowing the reporters to publish and garner other names. Weinstein is currently serving a three-decade sentence for his crimes. Twohey and Kantor’s courageous reporting helped ignite the #MeToo movement.

This event, being held in partnership with Framingham Public Library, features special Guest Megan Twohey via Zoom in a post-screening Q&A led by Liz Banks.

Sponsors: Arts & Ideas and the Division of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement

Join FSU Sustainability for a Neighborhood Cleanup on Friday, October 27!

All students, faculty, and staff are welcome. Teams will leave from the McCarthy Center at 12:30pm and 1:30pm to pick up litter on streets bordering campus. Gloves, bags, and grabbers will be provided.

Sign up here for either or both time slots: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0C4BA5AA2CA4FB6-45181075-fsuneighborhood

If you cannot make it for the full hour, that’s okay! Any time you can contribute is appreciated.
Let’s help prevent plastic and other waste from entering the environment!

The Hispanic Honor Society, Sigma Delta Pi is holding a bake sale to raise money for the club on Thursday, October 26th from 11-1 in the McCarthy center lobby. There will be various Hispanic desserts and they would love as many students and faculty as possible to attend.

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join the Department of World Languages at the initiation ceremony of the Nu Theta Chapter of Sigma Delta Pi, the National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society.

Thursday, Nov. 2, 5 p.m.
Center for Inclusive Excellence 

Sigma Delta Pi is the only honor society devoted exclusively to students of Spanish in four-year colleges and universities and is the largest foreign-language honor society in existence. FSU's chapter was nationally recognized as one of the top ten chapters in the nation out of 645 chapters.

This semester, three students from the Spanish program will be initiated into Sigma Delta Pi. The students involved in the organization have not only achieved academic success but are also committed to learning about and sharing Hispanic languages, literatures, and cultures. In addition to being honored for their scholarly achievements, the students will utilize their Spanish-language skills to plan cultural events on campus and serve the local community through volunteer work.