Theme: Lost and Found

“Lost and Found”, is about the perpetual discovery and rediscovery that is essential to our existence as human beings. It questions what it means to feel lost and find purpose once again, be it in the formation of ourselves or the creation of our communities. It calls us to remember people, places, words, and histories we have left behind or taken for granted, but simultaneously invites us to reclaim, reshape, and reconstruct what we know. It makes space for both grief and joy, fate and intention, exile and belonging, context and abstraction. Most of all, it asks that we rethink our narratives of time and progress as we navigate our individual and collective past, present, and future.

CFA Concert Hall
Middlebury College
Middlebury, Vermont, 05753
United States

Attica Scott

State Representative Attica Scott began serving Kentucky House District 41 in January 2017. She volunteered as an English immersion teacher in Taining County, Fujian Province, China in July 2015. Representative Scott was a featured "Daughter of Greatness" at the Muhammad Ali Center, graduated from the Bingham Fellows Class of Leadership Louisville, is a Courier-Journal Forum Fellow, and was featured in “People to Watch” in Louisville Magazine.” Representative Scott was honored with the Ms. Foundation for Women “Woman of Vision” Award, is on the Essence Magazine list of #Woke100 women in the United States, is a Rise to Run Trailblazer, and serves on the Emerge Kentucky Board of Advisors. Representative Scott is a certified anti-racism trainer through Crossroads Ministry and the Commission on Religion in Appalachia. Her proudest accomplishment is being a mom to Advocate and Ashanti. You can follow her on twitter at @atticascott.

Daniel Erker

Daniel Erker is an assistant professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Boston University. He teaches courses on language change, Spanish in the United States, the biological evolution of language, the linguistic structure of Spanish, and language and identity. Erker earned an M.A. in linguistics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a Ph.D. in linguistics at New York University. He is currently the director the Spanish in Boston Project, a federally-funded research initiative that investigates the sociolinguistic behavior of Spanish-speaking Bostonians. Erker has published research in several leading linguistic journals, and his work has been featured in the Boston Globe and on NPR. He has investigated a broad range of phenomena, ranging from microlinguistic variation in speech sounds to macrolinguistic trends such as the intergenerational maintenance of immigrant languages.

Lecia Brooks

Lecia Brooks leads the Southern Poverty Law Center’s outreach efforts on key initiatives and social justice issues. As outreach director, she frequently gives presentations around the country to promote tolerance and diversity. She also serves as director of the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Ala., an interpretive center designed to provide visitors to the Civil Rights Memorial with a deeper understanding of the civil rights movement. She joined the SPLC staff in 2004 as director of Mix It Up at Lunch Day, a Teaching Tolerance program designed to help break down racial, cultural and social barriers in schools. Previously, she worked for 12 years in a number of capacities for the National Conference for Community and Justice in its Los Angeles office. She is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University.

Michael Jager

Creative Design

For more than twenty-five years, Michael Jager has been creating and collaborating with brands, driven by the idea that design distinction matters most. His groundbreaking work with JDK Design continues with Solidarity of Unbridled Labour, a studio that conceptualizes and realizes ideas that help guide and create culture and positive change within it. The belief in a Living Brand® permeates all that Solidarity Design does, providing both creative freedom and discipline, allowing the studio to integrate design services around a clear, fundamental idea of what the brand means (rationally, emotionally, culturally) to its intended audiences. Working with internal and external partners, Michael has helped to create proprietary processes, experiences, and exploratory environments like the Collaboratory, Exquisite Corpse Artsite, and Iskra Print Collective. Guided by Ezra Pound’s simply but elegantly stated principle, “Make it new,” his collaborative output for a multitude of today’s most rec

Nia Robinson

Nia Robinson, originally hailing from Chicago, is a junior Sociology major at Middlebury College in Vermont. Over the past almost two and a half years, she has served as a student member of the Middlebury College Community Judicial Board, co-president of the Middlebury College Black Student Union, the Middlebury Campus newspaper opinions editorial board member, a Anderson Freeman Center student intern and fellow, and a member of Poor Form Poetry

Rana Abdelhamid

Rana Abdelhamid is an internationally acclaimed human rights organizer, 1st Degree Black Belt, public speaker and social entrepreneur focused on the empowerment of marginalized communities. She is the founder and CEO of (IM)WISE, a nonprofit organization and global grassroots movement supporting women’s empowerment through self-defense, entrepreneurship and organizing training. Rana established (IM)WISE at sixteen after being attacked by a stranger who tried to rip the hijab from her head. Over the past seven years, (IM)WISE has engaged thousands of participants through its programs across the US and internationally. She is highly committed to the global human rights movement and is currently the youngest serving Board Member of Amnesty International USA. Rana has a BA from Middlebury in International Politics and Economics and a Masters degree in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.