Lycoming College’s 2008 Spring Symposium, titled “Beyond Borders: Navigating Immigration Within the U.S.,” will be held March 2-30.

To begin the symposium, a film screening and panel discussion on “Farmingville” will take place Thursday, March 6, at 7 p.m. in the Barclay Lecture Hall, Heim Bldg. The film is the story of a small town on Long Island, N.Y., that gains national attention after the hate-driven attempted murders of two Mexican immigrants working as day laborers. The town struggles to bounce back and deal with the realization that immigration issues are not occurring just at the border but also in small town communities and suburbia.

A multimedia presentation titled “To: The Secret Island, a.k.a. Haiti. From: U.S. Return to Sender Program,” will take place Monday, March 10, at 7 p.m. in Barclay Lecture Hall, Heim Bldg. The presentation, given by Zeinabu Irene Davis, an independent filmmaker and professor of communication at the University of California, San Diego, will focus on the research behind the short film titled “The Secret Island.” Davis based the film on a short story by the same name by Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat. In the film, a young girl worries that her reading of an essay in school about her immigrant parents resulted in the deportation of her father.

On Monday, March 17, a screening and discussion of two films based on fear and discrimination will take place at 7 p.m. in Barclay Lecture Hall, Heim Bldg. “Family Gathering,” directed by Lise Yasui, looks at the myths and realities of living as Japanese-Americans during World War II, based on her family’s history. The second film, “Yasin,” is directed by Betty Kim and looks at the life of a 10-year-old boy living with his Jordanian-born parents in Southern California, post 9/11. After his father is arrested by the FBI, Yasin must decide whether or not to believe him as he deals with life as a Muslim child in America.

The gallery talk and artist reception featuring Dulce Pinzón’s “The Real Story of the Superheroes” will take place in the Lycoming College Art Gallery, Thursday, March 27, from 4-5:30 p.m. The collection, which is on display in the gallery through March 30, looks at the Mexican immigrant in New York in a satirical fashion. Pinzón features commonplace men and women in their normal work environment wearing superhero attire. As a young Mexican artist residing in the United States, the artist drew inspiration from her own life experiences, of questioning her identity and struggling with cultural and political differences.

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