Part of a two-day engagement with Jack Ferver co-presented by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the Office for the Arts at Harvard Dance Program, in partnership with Theater, Dance & Media. For information and to register for the movement workshop on February 16 visit: ofa.fas.harvard.edu/dance

Event Description: Join us for a film screening of Jack Ferver’s film, Nowhere Apparent, followed by a panel discussion.

Film Description: Nowhere Apparent is a dance film by Jeremy Jacob starring Jack Ferver that creates a world of queer isolation, theatricality, and abandonment in response to disappeared parental figures and the failed response to the AIDS crisis.

Preregistration for this event is required. Register for this event here!

Speakers:

Jack Ferver is a New York–based writer, choreographer, and director. Ferver’s “darkly humorous” (New York Times) works interrogate and indict an array of psychological and sociopolitical issues, particularly in the realms of gender, sexual orientation, and power struggles. Domestically and internationally, Ferver has been presented by the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College; American Dance Institute (Maryland); Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (Illinois); Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (Oregon); Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA (Maine); Institute of Contemporary Art (Massachusetts); Diverse Works in collaboration with the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston; and Théâtre de Vanves (France). Their work has been critically acclaimed in the New York Times, La Monde, Village Voice, and ArtsJournal among others. Ferver has received residencies and fellowships from the Maggie Allesee National Center of Choreography at Florida State (2012); Baryshnikov Arts Center (2013); Watermill Center (2014); Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art (2014); and Live Arts Bard, the commissioning and residency program of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College (2014); and Abrons Art Center (2014-2015). They are a 2016 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant. Ferver teaches at Bard College in the Theater and Performance Program and for the graduate Vocal Arts Program. They have also taught at NYU Tisch, SUNY Purchase, and have set choreography at The Juilliard School. As an actor they have appeared in numerous films and television series and plays.

Stephen Vider (moderator) is Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut and was the founding director of the Public History Initiative at Cornell University. His research examines the social practices and politics of everyday life in the 20th century United States, with a focus on intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. His new book, The Queerness of Home: Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of Domesticity After World War II (University of Chicago Press, 2021), traces how American conceptions of the home have shaped LGBTQ relationships and politics from 1945 to the present. Vider has also contributed to a range of public history projects. At the Museum of the City of New York, he curated the exhibition AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism (May to October 2017), exploring how activists and artists have mobilized domestic space and redefined family in response to HIV/AIDS, from the 1980s to the present. A Place in the City, a short film he co-directed with Nate Lavey for the exhibition, has since been featured in film festivals and programs in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Istanbul. Vider was also co-curator of the exhibition Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York (October 2016 to February 2017) and co-author of an accompanying book, a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He has also published essays in the New York Times, Avidly, Time, and Slate, among other places. Priot to teaching at Cornell, Vider was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr College and a postdoctoral fellow in the history of sexuality at Yale University.