Screening & Panel Event

Following a screening of Spike Lee’s 2015 Film Chi-raq, Professors Sherri Lawson Clark, Ronald Neal, and T.H.M. Gellar-Goad offered their perspectives on the film’s intervention in questions of race, class, and non-violent protest. While acknowledging the film’s controversial approach, which applies bold satire to painful community trauma, the panelists found value in the film’s skillful adaptation of its Ancient Greek source material (Aristophanes’ 5th century BCE play titled Lysistrata), the urgency of its call to action, and its unapologetic engagement with modern social and political crises that have been neglected by those in power.