This workshop focuses on integrating fine arts events on the SUNY Oswego campus in the curriculum in departments outside of the arts. Adding an arts event to your course design can provide students with an understanding of course material in a non-traditional format, encouraging them to enhance their classroom experience with multi-layered engagement. On November 1, we will use two case studies from the upcoming Spring semester: the Tyler Art Gallery exhibit, Sara Rahbar: Images of Iran; and the Theatre Department production of Pera Palas, by Sinan Unel.

Sara Rahbar's bio states that she "was born in Tehran, Iran in 1976. But both the revolution in Iran and the start of the Iran Iraq war forced her to escape her birthplace. She had no choice but to leave family behind and abandon her home." Rahbar's work frequently addresses the frictions moving through location, history, and memory.

Centered in the Turkish city of Istanbul, Pera Palas stages tensions and misunderstandings between the West and Middle East. Moving fluidly through critical time periods, this play connects the end of the Ottoman Empire with Turkey's joining with NATO in the 1950s, and contemporary Turkish culture, all reflected through the eyes of the harem, a culturally mixed marriage, and conflicts between a father and son.