April 9 & 10 Culture Beyond Borders: The Roma Contribution

The FXB Center for Health and Human Rights will host the Fifth Annual Roma Conference, Culture Beyond Borders: The Roma Contribution, at Harvard University to mark International Roma Day. The event will bring together academic, literary, artistic, and student communities to explore the contributions of the Roma community to global culture, arts, and material production.

The Harvard FXB Center has organized an event on International Roma Day for the past four years. Previous events have centered on social science, political and legal issues, with particular focus on questions of discrimination, disproportionate exposure to violence, stigma, and marginalization. This year, we intend to add a new emphasis to the discussion by documenting and contextualizing Roma creative and artistic achievement across a range of domains.

On April 9, Culture Beyond Borders debuts with “I Declare at My Own Risk,” Alina Șerban’s illuminating and highly acclaimed examination of conflicting identities, social discrimination, and the redemptive force of self-expression. The performance, inspired by the autobiographical story of the actress, a Romanian from the Roma minority, follows the dilemmas, challenges and revelations that accompany a girl from a poverty-stricken Roma community in Bucharest on her sinuous way to social emancipation as a performer trained in some of the best artistic schools in the world.

At the conference, please also join us for a conversation and celebration of the new volume, Realizing Roma Rights. The launch will take place between the morning and afternoon conference sessions in the same location. Copies of the book will be available for purchase (and author signature).

Additional information, including the speaker bios, will follow soon. For inquires, contact Margareta Matache, instructor, Harvard FXB Center, and director of the Roma Program at Harvard. Email: mmatache@hsph.harvard.edu. Informal registration is via Facebook, and the event page can be found here.

View the conference agenda here.

We will be livestreaming the conference on our Facebook page, so check in there if you cannot attend.

The conference is co-sponsored by the Berklee College of Music and the following departments and centers at Harvard University: The Center for European Studies, The Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, The Mahindra Humanities Center, The Department of Music, The Provost’s Fund for Interfaculty Collaboration, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.