The arts – music, poetry, theatre, visual arts, and more – have been proclaimed as a way of achieving peace. “Music brings people together” we are told. These narratives that also assert that music is a universal language transcending borders neglect the reality that the arts have been used in structural and systemic violence and exclusion, to reinforce white supremacy, to establish colonial hegemony, and to silence marginalized people. This webinar will explore these issues drawing attention to the contested and complex relationship between the arts and peace and justice. The webinar will also present examples of arts activism from the Mexico-US border, Israel and the Arab world, and race and mass incarceration.

André de Quadros

A Latino Asian, Dr. André de Quadros is an activist, ethnomusicologist, and arts educator, whose professional work has taken him to the most diverse settings in more than 40 countries, spanning professional ensembles, projects with prisons, in war zones, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees, poverty locations, and victims of torture, sexual violence, and trauma. He is a professor of music at Boston University, where he holds affiliations in African, African American, Asian, Jewish, Latin American, Muslim studies, and prison education. He is affiliated with BU’s Center for Antiracist Research, the Initiative on Cities, the Pardee School Initiative on Forced Migration and Human Trafficking, and The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future In 2019, he was a Distinguished Academic Visitor at the University of Cambridge.

Professor de Quadros' will delve into the complex and contested relationships between the arts and social movements drawing from examples of arts activism from the Mexico-U.S. border; Israel, Palestine, and domestic struggles against structural racism and mass incarceration. In the second half of the webinar, he will lead interactive breakout sessions that will teach us how create poetry, art, song and/or other empowering artistic work of our own.