Sponsored by: The Betsy Hitchcock Fund
Doors: 5:30 PM
Show: 6:00 PM
Our third Difficult Dialogue Conversation takes up the topic of how to have difficult conversations with people you care about but may disagree with. Our facilitators, Jennifer Ho and Ami Dayan, believe it is possible to have productive conversations about controversial subjects, so long as all parties enter into the conversation with a sincere willingness to listen and learn rather than simply argue in order to persuade someone to their point of view. Join us on March 27 (Wed, 6-7pm) to practice having hard conversations, including on the topic of Gaza and Israel.
The Center for Humanities & the Arts (CHA) mission is to promote arts and humanities by being a dynamic hub on the CU Boulder campus and by creating connections within the Boulder community.
Our purpose is to hold dialogues on topics considered difficult, provocative, or controversial, among constituents that may have strong conflicting views.
Our objective is NOT to necessarily agree, fix anything, prove anyone right or wrong, or alter anyone’s position.
We are committed to fostering productive dialogues in the hopes that minds and hearts might expand. We ask that you
- Keep an open mind
- Be respectful of others
- Listen with the intent to understand
- Speak your own truth
We expect to experience discomfort when talking about hard things. Remain engaged and recognize that the discomfort can lead to problem-solving and authentic understanding.
Our co-facilitators for this evening will include:
Jennifer Ho, Professor, CU Boulder
The daughter of a refugee father from China and an immigrant mother from Jamaica, whose own parents were immigrants from Hong Kong, Jennifer Ho is the director of the Center for the Humanities & the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she also holds an appointment as Professor in the Ethnic Studies department. She is the past president of the Association for Asian American Studies (2020-2022) and sits on the board of directors for the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), the National Committee on US-China Relations, and Kundiman (an Asian American literature non-profit). Ho has co-edited two collection of essays, Narrative, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States (Ohio State University Press 2017) and Teaching Approaches to Asian North American Literature (Modern Language Association 2022), and she is the author of three scholarly monographs, Consumption and Identity in Asian American Coming-of-Age Novels (Routledge 2005), Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture (Rutgers University Press 2015), which won the South Atlantic Modern Language Association award for best monograph, and Understanding Gish Jen (University of South Carolina Press 2015). She has published in journals such as Modern Fiction Studies, Journal for Asian American Studies, Amerasia Journal, The Global South, Southern Cultures, Japan Forum, and Oxford American. Her next two academic projects are a breast cancer memoir and a monograph that will consider Asian Americans in the global south through the narrative of her maternal family’s immigration from Hong Kong to Jamaica to North America. In addition to her academic work, Ho is active in community engagement around issues of race and intersectionality, leading workshops on anti-racism and how to talk about race in our current political climate.
Ami Dayan
Ami Dayan is an award winning Israeli/American playwright, director, and performer. He studied and worked professionally in Europe, Israel and extensively in the United States. He serves on the board of the Jaipur Literature Festival in Boulder, and is founder of The Interview Game Inc., a Boulder based company with a mission of bridging the intergenerational gap, and bringing people closer with curated reciprocal interviews.
This is a free event. Click “Get Tickets” to RSVP.
Located in the Rocky Mountain Climbers Club, on the lower level of the Community House.
