BELOVED (Jonathan Demme, 1998)
Thursday, November 7, 2019 | 6PM

Screening + Discussion featuring:
Charlene Carruthers, Kaneesha Parsard and Quenna Lené Barrett

Majestic, confounding and rich with secrets, Beloved, based on Toni Morrison‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel, is the enduring story of Sethe, a mother determined to “never run from another thing on earth.” Screening will be followed by conversation with Charlene Carruthers, author of Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, and Kaneesha Parsard, UChicago English Language and Literature, moderated by Quenna Lené Barrett.

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Charlene Carruthers is a strategist, writer and leading community organizer in today’s movement for Black liberation. She is the founder of the Chicago Center for Leadership and Transformation and author of Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements.

Kaneesha Cherelle Parsard is a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago, where from 2020 she will be an assistant professor. She is a scholar of Caribbean literature and visual arts, particularly their representations of the aftermath of slavery and Asian indenture. For her, gender and sexuality are key to these formations. Her scholarship has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies and can be found inSmall Axe, American Quarterly, and Indo-Caribbean Feminist Thought.
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FALL 2019
Freedom, Autonomy, Access: 25 Years of Reproductive Justice

In 1994, twelve Black women gathered in Chicago and founded the reproductive justice movement. Naming themselves Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice, they organized around three fundamental principles: the right to have children, to not have children, and to create and care for families in safe and healthy environments. Now, 25 years later, Cinema 53 partners with the Chicago Abortion Fund to commemorate the creation of that powerful framework and consider the complex experiences that inform these basic rights today. This three-part series of films and conversation brings together organizers, scholars, artists, and health workers to view ground-breaking features and explore the critical inheritance and vital future of global “RJ.”
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Cinema 53 is a screening and discussion series presenting conversation-provoking films by and about women and people of color. A partnership between the historic Harper Theater in downtown Hyde Park and UChicago’s Arts and Public Life, Cinema 53 brings diverse audiences together to consider how visual cultures reflect, and reflect upon, enduring inequalities and revolutionary futures. Curated by Arts + Public Life director Jacqueline Stewart.

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Tags: Arts and Public Life, Beloved, Charlene Carruthers, Chicago, Cinema 53, Hyde Park, Jacqueline Stewart, Kaneesha Parsard, Quenna Lené Barrett, The Harper Theater