The second film of the 2023-24 KIPCOR Film Series, originally scheduled for last November and postponed due to technical problems, will screen Feb. 11 on campus.
Eroding History, a film by Andre Chung, is a story of climate disaster, climate justice, longstanding systemic racism, and people’s struggle to hold onto their culture and community.
The screening is at 2 p.m. in Krehbiel Auditorium in Luyken Fine Arts Center, with a talkback led by Dr. Jonathan Frye from McPherson College.
Eroding History centers on two Black communities on Deal Island, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that are finding themselves at the intersection of sea level rise, historic racism and the disappearance of Black communities.
The film is a climate justice story made by two Black filmmakers and a Jewish grandchild of refugees, resulting in a deeply personal story.
The Environmental Justice Journalism Initiative produced the film. EJJI is a Baltimore-based nonprofit committed to helping young people tell their own stories about environmental inequities in their communities and neighborhoods.
Dr. Frye is a professor of natural science at McPherson College, where he has taught since 1993.
He is a native of central Pennsylvania and has a master’s degree and Ph.D. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia, where his research focused on the Chesapeake Bay.
During a year-long fellowship at the University of Cologne, Germany, Frye studied flood tolerance in plants, and the role wetland plants play in the transport of methane, a greenhouse gas, from the soil to the atmosphere.
KIPCOR, the Kansas Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Bethel College, sponsors the film series each school year. It is free and open to the public, with a freewill offering taken to support KIPCOR and the series.
Bethel is a four-year liberal arts college founded in 1887 and is the oldest Mennonite college in North America. Bethel ranks at #23 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of “Best Regional Colleges Midwest” for 2023-24. Bethel was the first Kansas college or university to be named a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Center, in 2021. For more information, see http://www.bethelks.edu
