About This Event
Join Kulanu for a special conversation with University of Pennsylvania professors Peter Decherney and Sara Byala about their work taking Jewish and non-Jewish university undergraduates to document Jewish communities across Africa.
Through the Penn Global Documentary Institute, which runs summer research expeditions, as well as travel embedded in semester-long classes, Peter and Sara have taken more than forty students with them to film, photograph, and collect oral histories in Ethiopia, Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. In these immersive fieldwork projects, students serve as research assistants and film crew members. Through photographs, film clips, and firsthand accounts, Peter and Sara will discuss the histories of these communities as well as his methods for partnering with them to document and amplify their stories. They will address the challenges they face preparing students, as well as the remarkable outcomes both in terms of illuminating the evolving landscape of Jewish life across Africa and in students’ lives.
About the Speakers:
Peter Decherney is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, fine art photographer, and author. He holds the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Chair in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and Director of the Penn Global Documentary Institute.
Peter is the author or editor of seven books including Hollywood's Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet, Hollywood: A Very Short Introduction, and Endless Exodus: The Jewish Experience in Ethiopia, a book of photography. His many films include the award-winning Days Between Rest and The Cave Synagogue, chronicling pivotal moments in the history of Uganda's Abayudaya Jewish community; Dreaming of Jerusalem, a Discovery+ original about the Jewish community in Ethiopia, and Postigo Express, the story of Basque photojournalist Fernando Postigo. Forthcoming films include Lembaland, a documentary road movie about the Lemba Jewish community of southern Africa, and Stella, the epic story of Zimbabwean Sephardic cookbook author Stella Hanan Cohen.
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Sara Byala is a Senior Lecturer in Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and the Associate Director of the Penn Global Documentary Institute. South African born, Byala holds a PhD in African History from Harvard University and a BA from Tufts University. Byala is currently working on a history of Jewish communities across Africa that includes writing and documentary films.
Byala is the author of Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African, a history of Coca-Cola’s footprint in Africa, as well as A Place that Matters Yet: John Gubbins’s MuseumAfrica in the Postcolonial World, a history of Johannesburg, South Africa’s cultural history museum. Byala teaches a wide range of courses about Africa, including global seminars, which include travel to countries in Africa. She has produced award-winning documentary films about Jewish communities in Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
About This Event
Join Kulanu for a special conversation with University of Pennsylvania professors Peter Decherney and Sara Byala about their work taking Jewish and non-Jewish university undergraduates to document Jewish communities across Africa.
Through the Penn Global Documentary Institute, which runs summer research expeditions, as well as travel embedded in semester-long classes, Peter and Sara have taken more than forty students with them to film, photograph, and collect oral histories in Ethiopia, Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. In these immersive fieldwork projects, students serve as research assistants and film crew members. Through photographs, film clips, and firsthand accounts, Peter and Sara will discuss the histories of these communities as well as his methods for partnering with them to document and amplify their stories. They will address the challenges they face preparing students, as well as the remarkable outcomes both in terms of illuminating the evolving landscape of Jewish life across Africa and in students’ lives.
About the Speakers:
Peter Decherney is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, fine art photographer, and author. He holds the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Chair in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and Director of the Penn Global Documentary Institute.
Peter is the author or editor of seven books including Hollywood's Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet, Hollywood: A Very Short Introduction, and Endless Exodus: The Jewish Experience in Ethiopia, a book of photography. His many films include the award-winning Days Between Rest and The Cave Synagogue, chronicling pivotal moments in the history of Uganda's Abayudaya Jewish community; Dreaming of Jerusalem, a Discovery+ original about the Jewish community in Ethiopia, and Postigo Express, the story of Basque photojournalist Fernando Postigo. Forthcoming films include Lembaland, a documentary road movie about the Lemba Jewish community of southern Africa, and Stella, the epic story of Zimbabwean Sephardic cookbook author Stella Hanan Cohen.
~~
Sara Byala is a Senior Lecturer in Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and the Associate Director of the Penn Global Documentary Institute. South African born, Byala holds a PhD in African History from Harvard University and a BA from Tufts University. Byala is currently working on a history of Jewish communities across Africa that includes writing and documentary films.
Byala is the author of Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African, a history of Coca-Cola’s footprint in Africa, as well as A Place that Matters Yet: John Gubbins’s MuseumAfrica in the Postcolonial World, a history of Johannesburg, South Africa’s cultural history museum. Byala teaches a wide range of courses about Africa, including global seminars, which include travel to countries in Africa. She has produced award-winning documentary films about Jewish communities in Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.