Monumental Anti-Racism

A part of the MLA Lecture Series. “Unprecedented times” is a phrase of this moment, encompassing the pandemic, political division, the Black Lives Matter movement, and their reverberations. Research and art help us understand.

Geoff Ward’s work on anti-racism links us to the racial inequity spotlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as COVID-19’s disproportionate effect on people of color.

Please join us for this lecture to consider his work through the lens of these unprecedented times.

Note: All attendees will need to register to receive a Zoom link for the lecture. 

RSVP here or call (314) 935-6700 to get the link.

Pro-Trump Era: Resistance, Hope and Mobilizing among Black American Families

Historical vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow laws continue to have detrimental impact on Black American families in the U.S. Interdependent challenges with systemic and personal experiences of racism put Black American families at risk.

Under the former Trump administration, racial violence and hate crimes increased. How are Black American families resisting and mobilizing to ensure racial justice and equity in the Pro-Trump Era? Strategies for dismantling anti-blackness in research and practice will be discussed. 

The Brown School is pleased to co-sponsor this program with the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Equity.

Details & RSVP

https://happenings.wustl.edu/event/pro-trump_era_resistance_hope_and_mob...

“Misogynoir”: American Contempt Towards Black Women and How to Change It

In this discussion speakers will draw from their field specific insights to discuss Black women's experiences in the United States. Leveraging contemporary and historical examples, they will offer frameworks for understanding structural bias, harassment and violence against Black women and contemplate opportunities to disrupt it. The Brown School is pleased to co-sponsor this program with the Washington University Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Equity.

Speakers

Adrienne Davis
Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs & Diversity & William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law; Co-Director, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2)

Hedy Lee
Professor, Department of Sociology, Washington University in St. Louis; Co-Director, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2) 

Matifadza Hlatshwayo
Associate Program Director, Fellowship Program, Division of Infectious Diseases, Washington University School of Medicine; Faculty Leadership, Office of Inclusion and Diversity

Kenly Brown
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of African and African American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis; CRE2 Postdoctoral Affiliate

Details & RSVP

https://happenings.wustl.edu/event/misogynoir_american_contempt_towards_...

Human Centered Computing Approaches to Issues of Social Justice

Eric Corbett, PhD, CUSP Smart Cities / Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow, New York University

Eric Corbett is currently a postdoctoral researcher at New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress. His background is in computer science and human-computer interaction. He has worked on projects across various subjects including: resisting and countering gentrification; supporting trust in civic relationships between local government officials and marginalized communities; and most recently, creating new opportunities for democratic participation in public sector algorithm use. Throughout his research, the overarching thread has been exploring the intersections between design, social justice, democracy, and technology.

Register here: https://wustl.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3wqWK5Yvo2wlPM2

Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty

The idealized image of American society is one of abundant opportunities, with hard work being rewarded by economic prosperity. But what if this picture is wrong? What if poverty is an experience that touches the majority of Americans? Join Professor Mark Rank for a discussion regarding his latest book Poorly Understood, which systematically addresses and confronts many of the most widespread myths pertaining to poverty.

Register here: https://bit.ly/2yaXyBC 

Conversation: Environmental Racism and the Arts

This discussion will focus on environmental racism, social justice and the arts. It brings together artist-in-residence Jordan Weber, Des Moines-based multi-disciplinary artist; Michael Allen, senior lecturer in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis; Inez Bordeaux, organizer for Close the Workhouse and manager of community collaborations at ArchCity Defenders; and Geoff Ward, professor of African and African-American studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

Weber is currently an artist-in-residence in a collaborative project by the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity (CRE2) and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. This initiative is supported through the generosity of an endowment created by Emily Rauh Pulitzer to support collaboration between the Pulitzer and the Sam Fox School.

Weber’s St. Louis residency focuses on social and environmental justice, incarceration, and healing with a specific focus on the Close the Workhouse campaign.

This free program will be hosted on Zoom; registration is required: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xdWTEJjWRBWcTVx68EzDHA 

The Fruits of Empire: A Book Talk About Art, Food and Racism

Join the WashU Alumni Association for a virtual conversation featuring Shana Klein, AB ’05, author of The Fruits of Empire: Art, Food and the Politics of Race in the Age of American Expansion. Angela Miller, professor of Art History and Archaeology, will be moderating the event.

Still-life paintings of food look innocent at first sight. Pictures of bowls bulging with oranges and grapes were fashionable in American dining rooms, but were fruits merely delicious gems in pretty pictures to admire? The Fruits of Empire argues otherwise. This book talk will discuss Klein’s research on representations of food to understand how they reflected and shaped conversations about race and national expansion in the United States. In a moderated discussion, Klein will discuss the paintings, photographs and silverware objects in her book and ask: Who do images of food serve? And at whose expense? The results are not always delicious.

Shana Klein is a professor and historian of American art. She holds a doctorate in art history from the University of New Mexico, where she completed the dissertation — and now book — The Fruits of Empire: Art, Food, and the Politics of Race in the Age of American Expansion. This book investigates food in paintings, photographs, advertisements and cookbooks to understand how representations of fruit pressed upon the nation’s most heated debates over race and citizenship. Klein has been awarded several fellowships for this research at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, among others. Klein’s research interests include American visual culture, food studies, race and post-colonial studies, and art and social justice. 

Registration required: https://wustl.advancementform.com/event/fruits-of-empire-shana-klein/reg...

‘Guilty People’: A Conversation with Abbe Smith and Paul Butler

Abbe Smith and Paul Butler in conversation about Smith’s latest book, Guilty People, which challenges the dangerous assumption that the guilty are a separate species, unworthy of humane treatment.   

Criminal defense attorneys protect the innocent and guilty alike, but, the majority of criminal defendants are guilty. This is as it should be in a free society. Yet there are many different types of crime and degrees of guilt, and the defense must navigate through a complex criminal justice system that is not always equipped to recognize nuances.
 
In Guilty People, law professor and longtime criminal defense attorney Abbe Smith gives us a thoughtful and honest look at guilty individuals on trial. Each chapter tells compelling stories about real cases she handled; some of her clients were guilty of only petty crimes and misdemeanors, while others committed offenses as grave as rape and murder. In the process, she answers the question that every defense attorney is routinely asked: How can you represent these people?

Speakers

Abbe Smith is a criminal defense attorney, professor of law at Georgetown University, and director of Georgetown’s Criminal Defense & Prisoner Advocacy Clinic and the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship Program. 

Paul Butler, the Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown University, is a former federal prosecutor, legal analyst for CNN, MSNBC and NPR. He is one of the nation’s most frequently consulted scholars on issues of race and criminal justice. 

Presented by the Washington University School of Law Public Interest Law & Policy Speaker Series and the Washington University Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity. 

Click here to register.

30th Annual Washington University Pow Wow

The 30th Annual Washington University Pow Wow will be held virtually on March 27-March 28. This event is organized and hosted by the Katherine M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies in the Brown School. The Department of Art History and Archaeology is a co-sponsor for this event.

For event details, visit buder.wustl.edu or facebook.com/budercenter, or contact bcals@wustl.edu.

Public Tour: Women’s Work

Join the Kemper Art Museum for live, interactive tours on Zoom. Student educators design and lead virtual tours featuring several artworks in the Kemper collection, showing images of the artworks through screen sharing and answering participant questions.

Leslie Liu (Sam Fox School ’22) discusses a selection of works from the Teaching Gallery exhibition Women’s Work, curated by Lydia McKelvie (AB ’22), Alice Nguyen (AB ’22), and Hannah Ward (AB ’21), the recipients of the 2019 Arthur Greenberg Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship. The exhibition examines the depiction of feminized labor within sociopolitical contexts that have affected women’s economic agency and identity from the late 19th century to today.

Hostile Terrain 94 at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

See full event details

Virtual Open House (Bear Beginnings)

Join faculty, staff, and student representatives from WashU's Department of Sociology for an informal virtual informational event and meet-and-greet.

By holding this event virtually, you can join from practically anywhere - even the comfort of your own residence!
Learn more about the opportunities that coursework in Sociology can offer - and those that attend a major or minor in our field. 

An in-person student-led social event will be held in September (pandemic protocol-permitting). 

This event is being held as a part of the Bear Beginnings Program, in coordination with the First-Year Center and the College of Arts & Sciences.
Open to all, but incoming students (first-years, sophomores, and transfer students) are especially encouraged to participate. 
Advance registration is requested. Event registration is required for event participation. 

Registration Link: https://wustl.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAsduugqDIsGdMEQRZ_7GLVMW6RdBvhn...

Panel Discussion: Hostile Terrain 94 with the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

View Event Recording Here

Join Tabea Linhard, professor of Spanish and comparative literature and Global Studies affiliate; Mattie Gottbrath, coordinator for international programming in Global Studies; and Ila Sheren, associate professor of art history & archaeology, all in Arts & Sciences, as they discuss Hostile Terrain 94, a global pop-up exhibition that gives representation to the thousands of migrants who died crossing the US–Mexico border since the mid-1990s and raises awareness of this humanitarian crisis. They will discuss the impact of border policies and border crossing on local and global communities and will share their experiences organizing this participatory exhibition in St. Louis.

The program will begin with a performance of “MY BABY” by artist Mee Jey that honors the unidentified people who lost their life in the desert of Arizona. Visitors are invited to view the exhibition before and/or after the program.

About the speakers

Tabea Linhard is professor of Spanish, comparative literature, and Global Studies at Washington University. She is the author of Fearless Women in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War (2005), Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory (2014), and the co-author of Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space. She recently completed Unexpected Routes: Refuge in Mexico (1931–1945) and regularly teaches courses on global migration.

Mattie Gottbrath is the coordinator for International Programming for Washington University’s undergraduate Global Studies major, and one of the lead organizers for St. Louis’s Hostile Terrain 94 exhibit. In her current role she teaches first-year students in the workshop for the Global Citizenship Program, which includes an immersive border awareness program in Tucson. She enjoys connecting locally with individuals impacted by immigration by volunteering with Casa de Salud, the International Institute, IFCLA, and other organizations. Gottbrath graduated from Washington University in 2018 with degrees in international affairs and Spanish. After graduating, she volunteered for a year in Guayaquil, Ecuador, with Rostro de Cristo. While there, she developed youth outreach programs with a local community development nonprofit, Hogar de Cristo.

Ila N. Sheren is associate professor in the Department of Art History & Archaeology at Washington University in St Louis. She is the author of Portable Borders: Performance Art and Politics on the US Frontera since 1984 (University of Texas Press, 2015), as well as articles published in The Journal of Borderlands Studies, GeoHumanities, and the anthologies Border Spaces (University of Arizona, 2018) and Liquid Borders/Fronteras Liquidas (Routledge, 2021). As part of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity’s Innovation Space initiative, she is launching a collaborative map of community art on the US–Mexico Border in 2022. Click here for more information about the map.

Mee Jey is a multidisciplinary artist concerned with lived experiences. Mee focuses on the collective politico-cultural identity and experiences, communal creativity and connections through her immersive installations, performances, relational art projects, and time-based media. She is a recipient of McDonnell International Scholarship and Legislative Fellowship, USA. She works out of St. Louis and New Delhi.

You’re Paid What You’re Worth: Book Talk by Professor Jake Rosenfeld

Fear of the Muslim Planet: Global Islamophobia in the New World Order

Join us for a conversation with author and human rights lawyer Arsalan Iftikhar, who will discuss his book Fear of the Muslim Planet: Global Islamophobia in the New World Order.

This event is presented by the Washington University School of Law Public Interest Law & Policy Speaker Series; Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute; Weidenbaum Center for Economy, Government & Public Policy; and John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics.

Farming, Gardening and Food Sovereignty in Native American Communities

Devon Mihesuah, a member of the Choctaw Nation, is the Cora Lee Beers Price Professor in International Cultural Understanding at the University of Kansas. Elizabeth Hoover is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at the University of California Berkeley. This event is part of the Indigenous Knowledge & Sustainability | Food conference.

Hosted by Missouri Botanical Gardens, in partnership with Washington University Climate Change Program.

Sisters of Carceral Liberation: Building a Movement of Social Justice for Black Women in Higher Education in Prison

BREEA WILLINGHAM is an interdisciplinary scholar and criminal justice professor whose teaching and research examines the intersections of race, gender, higher education and the criminal injustice system. She is particularly interested in examining Black women’s experiences with higher education in prison and amplifying the voices of Black women impacted by the injustice system.

Restoration

Syrita Steib started Operation Restoration in 2016 to eradicate the roadblocks she faced when returning to society after incarceration. Syrita serves as the executive director and is responsible for overseeing the administration, programs and strategic plan of the organization. She created Operation Restoration because of her experience with the legal system. At the age of 19, Syrita was sentenced to 120 months in federal prison. After serving nearly 10 years in prison, she was released into a community vastly different than the one she left. Other formerly incarcerated women helped her to readjust to the world she had left behind.

Cutting through the stereotypes of incarcerated people: The benefits of student mentorship and support networks inside prison

Grant E. Tietjen is an associate professor in the St. Ambrose University–Davenport Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, and also has direct criminal justice system contact. Tietjen earned his doctorate from the Department of Sociology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He has written, researched and lectured on convict criminology, mass incarceration, class inequality, criminological theory and pathways to correctional/postcorrectional education. He has published in multiple peer reviewed journals, book chapters and academic encyclopedias; with multiple works in progress. Tietjen’s most recent peer reviewed research has been published in The Prison Journal and Critical Criminology. Additionally, he has given over 60 conference presentations, invited talks/public forums, and media interviews. Tietjen has been involved with the Convict Criminology (CC) group since 2005, mentoring new CC members, and serving as the group’s co-chair from 2017–19.  Further, in 2020, he was appointed the inaugural chair of the newly formed American Society of Criminology Division of Convict Criminology.

Prioritizing Higher Education and Career Goals in Prison & Reentry

Terrell A. Blount is a motivational speaker, mentor, and advocate for quality postsecondary education and career opportunities and policy change affecting justice-involved people. Approaching the completion of a six-year sentence, Terrell pursued his goal of graduating with a college degree, which he set for himself years before being released from prison.  “I just kept telling myself: ‘If I can do five years in prison, I can do five years in college.’” Soon, he found himself a BA graduate of the School of Communication & Information (SCI) and later, achieving his MPA in nonprofit management from the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA), both at Rutgers University.

Today, he serves as the director of the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network, a nonprofit organization supporting postsecondary education attainment among justice-involved individuals, while connecting formerly incarcerated students and professionals across the country. A leader in the higher education and justice space, Terrell participates on various steering committees and advisory boards and has experience in policy change and advocacy, program administration, philanthropy and college reentry programs. 

The Transformative and Rehabilitative Power of Higher Education in Prison

Bryan Jordan was born and raised in the city of New Haven, Conn. He is the oldest of five siblings: two brothers and two sisters. After dropping out of high school, he received his GED while incarcerated in 1994. However, in 2016, while serving a sentence that would later be overturned, he was accepted into Second Chance Educational Alliance to pursue higher education in prison. Subsequently, Jordan went on to be 1 of 600 inmates to apply and be accepted into Yale University. Since his release, he has begun the enrollment process into Yale in pursuit of a law degree.

Trauma, Incarceration and Ability to Learn

Em Daniels is a master educator and leading expert on the impacts of trauma on adult learning. They are a skilled facilitator and speaker, with an extensive background in adult education that includes alternative high schools, prisons, free college campuses, private and nonprofit organizations, government institutions and community agencies. Their expertise focuses on countering the impacts of trauma on learning by expanding beyond a mental health approach and defining multiple points of entry to the work. Daniels emphasizes the necessity of addressing individual and systemic trauma as crucial to create and sustain a just and compassionate world.

Faculty Book Talk: Jake Rosenfeld

Fear and Loathing in New Spain: Antiblackness in Colonial Mexico

Region and Enmity: A RaceB4Race Symposium, October 19–22, 2021

Download program

Enmity is a sustaining force for systemic racism, a fervent antipathy toward a category of people. Enmity exists at the nexus of individual and group identity and produces difference by desiring opposition and supremacy, imagining separation by force, and willing conflict. Enmity unfolds in different ways in different places, according to local logics of territory, population, language, or culture, even as these geographical divisions are subject to constant change.

This interdisciplinary symposium, hosted by Rutgers University, focuses on how premodern racial discourses are tied to cartographical markers and ambitions. The notions of enmity and region provide a dual dynamic lens for tracing the racial repertoires that developed in response to increasingly hostile contention between premodern cultural and political forces. The symposium will invite scholars to take up this intersection between region and enmity, and to examine how belief in difference, or the emergence of polarizing structures and violent practices, configured race thinking and racial practices in ways that are both unique to different territories and that transcend them.

Miguel A. Valerio is an assistant professor of Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis. His work has appeared in several journals, including Slavery and Abolition and Colonial Latin American Review. He is currently completing a book on Afro-Mexican festive practices, “Sovereign Joy: Afro-Mexican Festive Practices, 1539–1640,” under contract with Cambridge University Press. Besides exploring black joy and communal sovereignty, the book studies how Iberian racial ideology impacted Afro-Mexicans’ daily and festive lives. 

Co-sponsored by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University.

Tear Down the Walls: White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock

From the earliest days of rock and roll, white artists regularly achieved fame, wealth, and success that eluded the Black artists whose work had preceded and inspired them. This dynamic continued into the 1960s, even as the music and its fans grew to be more engaged with political issues regarding race. In Tear Down the Walls: White Radicalism and Black Power in 1960s Rock, Patrick Burke tells the story of white American and British rock musicians’ engagement with Black Power politics and African American music during the volatile years of 1968 and 1969. The book sheds new light on a significant but overlooked facet of 1960s rock — white musicians and audiences casting themselves as political revolutionaries by enacting a romanticized vision of African American identity. Patrick Burke is associate professor of music at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth

Moderated by Daniel Harawa, associate professor and director, Appellate Clinic, WashULaw. This event is presented by the Washington University School of Law Public Interest Law & Policy Speaker Series; the Department of African & African-American Studies; the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity; the Brown School; Clark-Fox Policy Institute; Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy; the Black Law Students Association; and the Women of Color Law Society. 

Advocacy & Allyship: Establishing a Racial Equity Framework that Goes Beyond HR

Everyone in an organization contributes to its culture, which makes equity and inclusion everyone’s responsibility. This conversation will focus on steps to establish a racial equity framework in your organization, how to identify inequities within your organization, and empowering colleagues to constructively advocate for people with marginalized identities. While we will center the experience of Black people in the workplace, the ideas shared will also apply to other groups and to an intersectional understanding of equity.

Josephine Baker: Artist and Activist

On November 30, 2021, the world-famous artist, activist, and humanist Josephine Baker (1906-1975), who was born in St. Louis, will receive one of France’s highest honors: re-burial at the Panthéon, the mausoleum for the country’s most distinguished citizens. In conjunction with this honor, “The Land on Which We Dance: Reclaiming the Spaces of Black Dance in St. Louis,” a Divided City Research Working Group, is co-sponsoring two events to honor Ms. Baker here in her hometown. Both are free and open to the public, but advanced registration requested.

Tuesday, November 30, 4-6pm 
Celebrating Josephine Baker
Graham Chapel, Washington University in St. Louis 
 

Friday, December 3, 7-8:30pm 
Josephine Baker: Artist and Activist
Emerson Performance Center, Harris-Stowe State University, 3031 Laclede Avenue