Twenty-five years ago, the playwright and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman accepted an offer to teach at Duke University.
It is a decision he has never come to regret.
This academic year, the Duke University Center for International Studies celebrates “Ariel Dorfman: 25 Years at Duke University,” with a series of events highlighting his playwriting, film and academic career.
Dorfman, who holds the Walter Hines Page Professor of Literature and Latin American Studies, first came to Duke in 1985 as a visiting professor, at the invitation of historian Chuck Bergquist, the first director of International Studies, and Arturo Valenzuela, now nominated to serve as the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs in the Obama Administration.
At the time, he hoped to teach one semester at Duke and live the rest of the year in his adopted homeland, Chile. But in 1987, when he was arrested and deported by a government still under the control of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, he decided to accept a more permanent position at Duke University.
In 1989, he was made a full professor of literature and Latin American studies and from his Durham home has gone on to write numerous plays, novels, films, essays and poems as well as articles for some of the world’s most important newspapers and magazines. It was at Duke that he penned the acclaimed and prize-winning play Death and the Maiden (1992), later made into a feature film by Roman Polanski.
“Duke has been the bulwark of my career,” Dorfman said. “For someone who needed a refuge and a welcoming intellectual atmosphere, I can think of no other place in the world that would have encouraged my work with such care. It has been so stimulating to have those wonderful students and extraordinary colleagues and an administration that was always ready to support my work.”
“Ariel has been a wonderful part of the University over these last twenty-five years,” said Provost Peter Lange. “His brilliance and versatility as an author provide inspiration for his students and colleagues. His energy suffuses into all he does and all those with whom he works, his wit and garrulousness enliven his encounters with others, both academic and social.
“Perhaps above all, his ethical stance in the world, expressed both through his personal history and his contemporary writing, represent a model of citizenship and engagement. He is an invaluable member of our community,” Lange said.
Rob Sikorski, executive director of DUCIS, first met Dorfman back in 1990 and said it was no surprise that the writer and professor became associated with the Center for International Studies.
“It is a very reciprocal relationship,” Sikorski said. “Ariel is someone who can speak and have that speech be global. The University gives him a place where that speech is protected.
“How often does a University have a chance to claim a novelist, playwright, poet, screenwriter and a thinker, all in one faculty member, and have that relationship last a quarter of a century?” Sikorski added.
Deborah Jakubs, Vice Provost for Library Affairs, is a long-time friend of Dorfman’s.
“Ariel has played many roles at Duke, as teacher, public intellectual, writer, mentor, friend, champion, and inspiration,” Jakubs said. “Over all the years I have known him I have been struck by his kindness and his generosity, as well as his affection and enthusiasm for Duke. He has been a tremendous ‘citizen of the university,’ contributing in countless ways to our academic community.”
The Duke University Center for International Studies’ recognition of Dorfman begins in October with a staged reading of Dorfman’s play Picasso’s Closet at the Nasher Museum of Art as part of its ongoing exhibit “Picasso and the Allure of Language.” The reading will be directed by Jay O’Berski, artistic director of Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern, Oct. 29-31. There will be a Q&A session with Ariel Dorfman following the Thurs., Oct. 29th performance.
Tickets go on sale on October 1: http://www.tickets.duke.edu
On November 15, also at the Nasher Museum, there will be a special benefit performance of the play and a dinner with proceeds going to the Durham Literacy Center, the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC), and the PEN American Freedom to Write Program.
In the spring, Dorfman will teach his survey course, open to all undergraduates, “Latin American Literature in Translation.” His classes are consistently popular among students, and he has become a mentor to many, including Dr. Sophia A. McClennen.
“From the first moment I met Ariel, he inspired me to be a better teacher, more passionate about my scholarship, and more dedicated to combining political engagement with a love for literature. Twenty years since we first met, he still is my most important mentor,” McClennen said.
Now an associate professor of Comparative Literature, Spanish, and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University, she has written a book on Dorfman’s work, Ariel Dorfman: An Aesthetics of Hope, which is due out from Duke University Press this spring.
McClennen will convene an academic conference at Duke on the many aspects of Dorfman’s work on January 29, 2010, in conjunction with the reprinting of Dorfman’s groundbreaking and influential work of cultural criticism, The Empire’s Old Clothes, also by Duke University Press.
The Screen/Society will also be showing a series of Dorfman’s films in the spring, including Death and the Maiden, and two films written with Rodrigo Dorfman, Prisoners in Time (1995 Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award for Best Feature Television Film), and Deadline (with the voices of Bono, Emma Thompson, and Harold Pinter, among others), as well as My House is on Fire (directed by both Dorfmans), which The Globe and Mail in Toronto called “poetic, political and mythic” when it opened at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Dorfman has just finished writing the second volume of his memoirs, Death and the Exile, which deals with his exile from Chile and includes the time he came to Duke. He hopes to have it published next fall. It is the follow-up to his award-winning memoir, Heading South, Looking North, which was the inspiration for the documentary film A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman, directed by Peter Raymont in 2007, and shortlisted for an Oscar last year. It will also be shown during the series.
Ever looking toward the future, Dorfman is working on many new projects: writing several new films based on his novels; a play, Purgatorio, to be staged with Viggo Mortensen in Madrid in 2010, and a new novel, Murieta’s Footsteps, already published to critical success this year in Spanish as Americanos: Los Pasos de Murieta.
His latest work in human rights has been a letter to President Barack Obama regarding the need to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in torture and a short story for the Amnesty International Anthology, Freedom.
“Ariel Dorfman: 25 Years at Duke University” is sponsored by the Duke University Center for International Studies, the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs, the Center for Latin America and Caribbean Studies, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and the Screen/Society.
Ariel Dorfman’s website is www.arieldorfman.com
For more information, contact:
Jennifer Prather
Assistant to Ariel Dorfman
919-684-6054
jprather [Email: jprather #AT# duke.edu ]
