Scholars-At-Risk Panel Discussion Nov. 15 to Focus on Impact of War

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From left: Uchenna Awoke, Padma Viswanathan and Salman Abdo Al-Shami

A panel discussion featuring interdisciplinary perspectives on the human and environmental costs of war will take place at 4 p.m. Nov. 15 in the auditorium of the Poultry Science Building (room 211) as part of the Professor Bennett Scholars at Risk Endowed Lecture Series.

The event, which is part of the university's celebration of International Education Week, features Uchenna Awoke, a Nigerian writer who is an Artist Protection Fund Fellow and Arkansas International's first Writers at Risk Residential Fellow, and professor Salman Abdo Al-Shami, a Yemeni entomologist visiting the university through the Scholars at Risk Program. The panel will be moderated by Padma Viswanathan, professor of creative writing at the U of A. The event is free and open to the public.

Panelists will discuss the far-reaching impacts of war, from personal trauma to the destructive impacts on the environment, and how literature, arts and science provide valuable insights into these impacts.

"Given the armed conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and other parts of the world, we felt the impact of war was a timely topic of discussion as we seek to discuss and understand global experiences from a variety of perspectives," said Luis Fernando Restrepo, university professor in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures and co-chair of the Scholars at Risk committee. "We look forward to hosting this insightful discussion, which will bring together an interdisciplinary and international group of panelists, each with their own personal and professional perspectives."

Awoke has been awarded an IIE Artist Protection Fund Fellowship and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center, in addition to being a 2019 Graywolf Africa Prize finalist. His short stories have appeared in Transition, Elsewhere Lit, The Evergreen Review and other journals. His forthcoming first novel, The Liquid Eye of a Moon, has been described as a Nigerian Catcher in the Rye, narrated by a teenage boy whose desire to pull his family out of poverty takes him to Lagos, where he deepens his knowledge of social segregation, and reckons with his anger at the systems that have oppressed his family.

Al-Shami has authored and co-authored more than 55 peer-reviewed research papers and book chapters on ecology, biodiversity, environmental pollution and entomology. Additionally, he has supervised and examined undergraduate and graduate students in Yemen, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa and has received several research grants and served as reviewer for renowned international journals.

Viswanathan is a Canadian-American novelist, published in eight countries and shortlisted for the PEN USA Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her short fiction, essays and translations from Portuguese can be found in Granta, The Boston Review, BRICK and elsewhere. Recent publications include a translation of São Bernardo, by Brazilian novelist Graciliano Ramos (New York Review Books, 2020) and Like Every Form of Love: A Memoir of Friendship and True Crime (Random House Canada, 2023).

Scholars at Risk is an international network of higher education institutions and individuals working to protect scholars and promote academic freedom. The U of A is an institutional member of the Scholars at Risk network, and Restrepo and Adnan Alrubaye, assistant professor of poultry microbiology and associate director of the Cell and Molecular Biology program, co-chair the university's Scholars At Risk committee.

This event is hosted by the U of A Scholars at Risk committee and co-sponsored by the committee, the Graduate School and International Education, the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies, the Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Program and Professor Dick Bennett Scholars at Risk Endowment. In 2019, Dr. Bennett, an emeritus professor of English, established the SAR Lecture Series Endowment.