Meet the Speakers

Edouard Duval Carrié

Artists' Statement ::

I personally believe that most artists are in one way or another reflections of their immediate surroundings. What they are confronted with on a daily routine is bound to affect and influence their personal visions of the world. This general tendency would simplify my answers to inquiries on the relative importance of popular culture in the context of the contemporary art world. But with the advent of a rapid globalization and the proliferation of information at all levels, this permits everyone, and particularly artists, to take their ideas from a global well.

Short Biography ::

Haitian artist Edouard Duval Carrié was born in 1954 in Port-au-Prince. At an early age Carrié moved to Puerto Rico due to the political changes in Haiti. He obtained his Bachelor in Arts from the University of Loyola Montreal in Quebec, Canada. Duval Carrié was invited to do an installation in Paris. He then spent a year in the prestigious Ecole National Superiore de Beaux Arts. After eight years in France, he settled in Miami, Florida. This innovative artist and citizen of the world, has found an eclectic home that embraces the diversity of his experience and his bold exploration of forms.

Dr. Claudia Schippert

Assistant Professor of Humanities
Director, Religious Studies Program
Department of Philosophy
University of Central Florida

Dr. Claudia Schippert’s research interests are in the areas of American cultural studies, religions in America, feminist and queer theories, feminist ethics, and comparative approaches to bodies and sexualities. Her research focuses on theoretical approaches to American religion and culture as explored through the lens of gender and sexuality. The central focus of all of her research is the body: how bodies are discursively constructed in religious traditions as well as in American culture; how popular culture and various media affect representations and practices of bodies; and how these questions can be pursued in ways that call attention to the role of gender, race, and sexuality in contemporary society.

Publications include “Turning On/To Ethics,” in Bodily Citations: Religion and Judith Butler, Armour/St.Ville, eds., Columbia UP (2006); “Containing Uncertainty: Sexual Values and Citizenship,” Journal of Homosexuality 52, 1/2; “Critical Projection and Queer Performativity: Self-Revelation and Teaching/Learning Otherness” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 28, 3/4; “Can Muscles Be Queer?  Reconsidering the Transgressive Hyper-Built Body” Journal of Gender Studies, “Sporting Heroic Bodies in a Christian Nation-at-War” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 5, and “Queer Theory” in The Encyclopedia of Women and World Religions (1998).  Among her international publications are “Spielerisch Queer” (Playfully Queer) FAMA: Feministisch-theologische Zeitschrift (Journal for Feminist Theology) 22.2, and “Queer Theory and the Study of Religion.” Rever [Revista de Estudos da Religião] 5.4.

Dr. Kristin Congdon

Professor of Film and Humanities
Director, Cultural Heritage Alliance
School of Film and Digital Media
University of Central Florida

Kristin G. Congdon has taught art in a variety of settings, including public schools, correctional settings, treatment facilities, museums, and universities.  She has a Ph.D. in art education from the University of Oregon and has published extensively on the study of folk arts, visual cultural, feminist criticism, and community arts. 

Co-editor, with Doug Blandy, of Art in a Democracy (Teachers College Press, 1987), and Pluralistic Approaches to Art Criticism (Popular Press, 1991), she has also co-edited the anthology Evaluating Art Education Programs in Community Centers: International Perspectives on Problems of Conception and Practice (JAI, 1998) with Doug Boughton.  Other co-edited anthologies include Histories of Community-Based Art Education (2001) and Remembering Others: Making Invisible Histories of Art Education Visible (2000), both co-edited with Doug Blandy and Paul Bolin (National Art Education Association). She recently published Uncle Monday and Other Florida Tales (University Press of Mississippi, 2001), illustrated by Kitty Petterson. This book won the Carolyn Washbon Award for best popular book in Florida history and the Dorothy Howard Prize from the Folklore and Education Section of the American Folklore Society. In 2002 she published Artists from Latin American Cultures (co-authored with Kara Hallmark (from Greenwood) and last year her book Community and Art in Action (Davis) was published.   Her most recent book, Just Above the Water: Florida Folk Art, co-authored with Tina Bucuvalas, will be published in a few months. Kristin Congdon is the 1988 and 1999 recipient of the Manual Barkan Memorial Award for scholarship from the National Art Education Association and the 1998 Ziegfeld Award from the United States Society for Education Through Art for international work in the arts.  Most recently she has been working on a Florida Humanities Council project that places artists and their work on the web (www.folkvine.org).

Dr. Congdon is a recent President of the Florida Folklore Society and former member of the Florida Folklife Council.   She has also been a World Congress Member for the International Society for Education Through Art, and the President of the National Art Education Association’s Women’s Caucus.