YELLOW SPRINGS — The current exhibition at Antioch College’s Herndon Gallery, Nuclear Fallout: The Bomb in Three Archives, will close with a lecture from Dr. Tanya Maus, director of the Wilmington College Peace Resource Center/Quaker Heritage Center.

“When We Say Pearl Harbor: A Response to the Poetry of Sadako Kurihara” will reflect on the meaning of Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor in Kurihara’s poetry as well as the dominant culture of the U.S. Cold War and narratives suppressed by it. This event, slated for 7-8:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7, is free and open to the public. The Herndon Gallery at Antioch College is located on the first floor of South Hall, 1 Morgan Place.

In 1976, poet and Hiroshima atomic-bombing survivor Kurihara Sadako (1913-2005) courageously confronted a one-dimensional narrative of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan through a small volume of poetry, “When We Say Hiroshima,” its title drawn from the poem “When We Say Hiroshima.” In her lecture, Maus will reflect upon the meaning of Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor by examining Kurihara’s critique of the literary and political cultures of post-war Hiroshima, Japan. Through Kurihara, Maus will highlight the powerful narratives of dissent found in Japanese nuclear activism, and ask audience members to consider how the dominant culture of the United States Cold War suppressed and erased attempts by scholars, poets and activists to complicate the larger U.S. national narrative of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In this divided era, where world powers openly threaten to unleash their nuclear arsenals, “Nuclear Fallout: The Bomb in Three Archives,” excavates the collective memory of the effects and aftermath of nuclear war with contributions from artists Migiwa Orimo and Kei Ito, as well as a critical collaborative archival research project by six Antioch College students and their professor Charles Fairbanks.

“Through this collaboration, Nuclear Fallout asks its audiences to critically consider the way war is curated in our cultural telling, asking who creates the narrative, whose stories are missing, and who is no longer alive to tell it,” said Jennifer Wenker, curator and creative director of the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College.

Nuclear Fallout will be on display at The Herndon Gallery at Antioch College until Friday, Dec. 7. The FotoFocus Biennial 2018 also included Nuclear Fallout in its bus tour of participating Dayton venues.

Nuclear Fallout is organized by Jennifer Wenker, curator and creative director of the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College; Tanya Maus (Ph.D., Japanese History), director of the Peace Resource Center; Migiwa Orimo, four-time recipient of the OAC Individual Excellence Award; and Charles Fairbanks, Guggenheim fellow, award-winning filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Media Art at Antioch College; and the students critically-engaged in collaboration with the named academic mentors.