Lecture Program
2022 MARYSE AND RAMZY MIKHAIL MEMORIAL LECTURE
The Lebanese Diaspora, Loss and Recovery, a Personal Retrospective
SPEAKERS
Adele Ne Jame – Poet
- University-level poetry teacher
- Professor Emeritus at Hawai'i Pacific University
- Past Poet-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Melissa Chimera – Mixed Media Artist
Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022
McQuade Law Auditorium
Welcome
Melissa Gregory, Ph.D., Interim Dean, College of Arts and Letters
Introduction
Gaby Semaan, Ph.D., Director, Middle East Studies and Associate Professor
Presentation
“The Lebanese Diaspora, Loss and Recovery, a Personal Retrospective”
- Adele Ne Jame, Professor Emeritus and Poet, Hawai'i Pacific University
- Melissa Chimera, Visual Artist
Q&A to Follow
Support the Mikhail Lecture Series
About the Speakers
ADELE NE JAME
Award-Winning Poet, Author and Teacher
Adele Ne Jame is first generation Lebanese American. She has published several books of poems, including Field Work and The South Wind. Her honors include a National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, Eliot Cades Award for Literature, a Pablo Neruda poetry prize and a Robinson Jeffers Poetry Prize among many others. As broadsides, her poems were exhibited along with her daughter’s paintings in the Sharjah, United Arab Emirates International Biennial in 2009, and most recently her work, with her daughter’s, was displayed at the Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, Mich.
Of her poems, Naomi Shihab Nye has said, “From the jagged landscapes linking hearts and cultures, the rich mix of Middle East heritage transposed to Hawai’i, images flutter, shine and hold fast. There’s a solitude here. You have walked into a forest by yourself and come across the tangled histories of everything you loved.” And of "The South Wind," Thresa Scallon of Forward Reviews has said, “In this beautiful collection, Ne Jame moves among loved ones and landscapes as disparate as New Jersey, Hawai’i and Lebanon. Her continuous awareness of the overlapping realms of life and death are what give this book its emotional heft. . . Each [poem] is beautifully wrought, imagery is lush, her control spot on and her clear, reverent voice will leave the reader breathless.”
MELISSA CHIMERA
Mixed Media Artist
Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai'i, Melissa Chimera is a descendant of Filipino and Lebanese immigrants. She studied natural resources management at the University of Hawai'i and has worked since 1996 as a conservationist in a world epicenter for plant and animal extinction. Chimera’s work relies on research-based investigations into species extinction, human migration, and globalization. Her paintings and installations imply a nebulous sense of belonging—for both marginalized humans and species alike—akin to the absence of a permanent homeland and the impoverishment we face by their erasure.
Her work has been widely exhibited throughout the U.S., Asia and the Middle East, published in anthologies and reviewed by the Washington Post and Hyperallergic art review. Her solo and curatorial exhibitions include “Remittance” in 2022, “Migrant” at the Honolulu Museum of Art, “The Far Shore” at the Arab American National Museum, and “Inheritance: Land and Spirit” for the Sharjah Biennial. Chimera is this year’s artist in residence at Anchorage Museum for her work concerning immigrant narratives. She is the recipient of the Catherine E. B. Cox Award and finalist for the Duke University Lange-Taylor Prize in documentary studies. Her work resides in the collections of the Arab American National Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Hawai'i State Foundation of Culture and the Arts.