Free and open to the public lecture explores Cold War narratives in closing event for Nuclear Fallout on December 7.

Yellow Springs, OH (November 28, 2018) – On Friday, December 7, from 7:00-8:30 PM, the current exhibition at Antioch College’s Herndon Gallery, Nuclear Fallout: The Bomb in Three Archives, will close with a lecture from Dr. Tanya Maus, director of the Wilmington College Peace Resource Center/Quaker Heritage Center. “When We Say Pearl Harbor: A Response to the Poetry of Sadako Kurihara” will reflect on the meaning of Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor in Kurihara’s poetry as well as the dominant culture of the U.S. Cold War and narratives suppressed by it. This event is free and open to the public. The Herndon Gallery at Antioch College is located on the first floor of South Hall, One Morgan Place, Yellow Springs, OH.

In 1976, poet and Hiroshima atomic-bombing survivor Kurihara Sadako (1913-2005) courageously confronted a one-dimensional narrative of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan through a small volume of poetry, When We Say Hiroshima, its title drawn from the poem “When We Say Hiroshima” within. In her lecture, Maus will reflect upon the meaning of Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor by examining Kurihara’s critique of the literary and political cultures of post-war Hiroshima, Japan. Through Kurihara, Maus will highlight the powerful narratives of dissent found in Japanese nuclear activism, and ask audience members to consider how the dominant culture of the U.S. Cold War suppressed and erased attempts by scholars, poets, and activists to complicate the larger U.S. national narrative of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In this divided era, where world powers openly threaten to unleash their nuclear arsenals, Nuclear Fallout: The Bomb in Three Archives, excavates the collective memory of the effects and aftermath of nuclear war with contributions from artists Migiwa Orimo and Kei Ito, as well as a critical collaborative archival research project by six Antioch College students and their professor, Charles Fairbanks. “Through this collaboration, Nuclear Fallout asks its audiences to critically consider the way war is curated in our cultural telling, asking who creates the narrative, whose stories are missing, and who is no longer alive to tell it,” explains Jennifer Wenker, curator and creative director of the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College. Nuclear Fallout will be on display at The Herndon Gallery at Antioch College, One Morgan Place, Yellow Springs, OH, until December 7, 2018. The FotoFocus Biennial 2018 also included Nuclear Fallout in its bus tour of participating Dayton venues. 

Nuclear Fallout is organized by Jennifer Wenker, curator and creative director of the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College; Tanya Maus (Ph.D., Japanese History), director of the Peace Resource Center; Migiwa Orimo, four-time recipient of the OAC Individual Excellence Award; and Charles Fairbanks, Guggenheim fellow, award-winning filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Media Art at Antioch College; and the students critically-engaged in collaboration with the named academic mentors.

# # #

About The Herndon Gallery at Antioch College

The Herndon Gallery at Antioch College is the epicenter of contemporary visual arts programing. By creating and hosting dynamic exhibitions that awaken curiosity and visual engagement with our world, The Herndon Gallery is a both a regional arts destination and an integral curricular asset at Antioch College, with exhibitions and arts programming that are highly-collaborative, interdisciplinary, and fully engaged with important contemporary global issues and ideas. Visit the gallery online at antiochcollege.edu/herndon and follow “Herndon Gallery at Antioch College” on Facebook.

About Antioch College

Antioch College is a groundbreaking and progressive institution and community, dedicated to winning victories for humanity. Antioch students apply their classroom learning in the world at-large, through extended Co-op work placements with national and international organizations. Antioch teaches and lives its commitments to educational innovation, an engaged campus community, and the pursuit of social justice in all its forms. Antioch College is located in Yellow Springs, OH, in the heart of the Miami Valley. Learn more at antiochcollege.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

About The peace Resource Center of Wilmington College

The Peace Resource Center of Wilmington College is the only archives outside of Japan fully devoted to the Japanese experience of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It has one of the largest academic collections of Japanese-language scholarly monographs on the atomic bombings in the United States as well as an extensive historical archives of declassified materials, survivor testimonials of the atomic bombings, audio and film, as well as materials related to the early nuclear disarmament movement in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s within Japan and the United States.