View Schedule of Events (PDF)
Tuesday, February 27
Frederick Douglass: Using Theatre to Make Progress
Participants will read a passage from Douglass’s writing, then use it as the inspiration for creating a short theater piece in small groups.
This is a “first steps” presentation and workshop which could help prepare you for more challenging sessions such as “Education as a Form of Activism” and “Fighting for a Diverse Democracy.”
Wednesday, February 28
Creating and Engaging White Allies
How can white people join conversations about racism and be allies? This interactive session, convened by Dr. Libbie Freed and Dr. Sheryl Scales, will invite dialogue about race and racism. It is intended for those who seek ways to recognize and disrupt racially charged discourse and let go of their bystander status. We understand how vulnerable we all are when talking about race and racism. We will go over some basic concepts for understanding racism and microaggressions, then break into small critical-dialogue groups, and conclude with suggestions for action.
This is a “first steps” presentation and workshop which could help prepare you for more challenging sessions such as “Understanding OUR Struggle.”
Education as a Form of Activism
Implicit in the Days of Reflection has always been the idea that educating people about issues and problems related to race is a necessary step in improving our situation with respect to racism. This session is intended to be more explicit about some reasons why we might believe that. In particular, we will discuss both how education can, in and of itself, be a form of action against racist structures as well as how education can inspire further anti-racist action. Along these latter lines, we will end by discussing some specific opportunities around campus and the community which students can get involved in to promote racial justice.
This is a second step, “deepening our understanding” session which could help prepare you for sessions like “Fighting for a Diverse Democracy.”
Thursday, March 1
The Last Colony: A Close Look at Puerto Rico’s Unique Relationship with the U.S.
This Emmy-award winning documentary will be screened and discussed by a faculty panel, including Guest Scholar Stephanie Rivera Berruz of William Paterson University in New Jersey, currently a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.
This is a “first steps” presentation which could help prepare you for more challenging sessions such as “Assembling Belonging,” Dr. Rivera Berruz’s talk on Friday.
Understanding OUR Struggle: Identity and Intersectional Protest
This session will introduce the concept of intersectionality – the interconnected nature of social identities -- and provide examples of key figures in social protest movements who have practiced intersectionality with varying degrees of success. Participants will create their own “calls to change,” then consider how we might move beyond single-issue activism towards a more inclusive and intersectional approach to action.
This is an advanced session for “challenging ourselves further.” If you’ve been living and thinking about liberation, oppression, and protest around identity issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, and more, you might find this session extremely valuable and engaging. If you have not been thinking about those issues, please try out some “first steps” sessions first.
- I’ll Pass on “Unity” & the Women’s March from Feministing
- Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color by K. Crenshaw in Stanford Law Review
- The Combahee River Collective Statement on identity and Black feminism
Friday, March 2
Beheading General Lee: Confederate Flags and monuments
The Confederate Flag flew from State Capitol buildings, once adorned the hood of the "General Lee" car on a popular TV show, and was used by a shooter who killed nine Black people in a church. Statues of Confederate Generals sit on many public spaces throughout the Southern states. The Confederacy elicits pride and disgust in nearly equal measure depending on who you ask. But historical commemoration -- including flags and statues -- have their own histories. Those contexts complicate what we think we know about historical memory. Why are they put up and what happens when a new generation wants to take them down?
This is a “first steps” presentation and workshop which could help prepare you for more challenging sessions such as “Fighting for a Diverse Democracy.”
Assembling Belonging: Racialized Sexual Politics and Luisa Capetillo
With the aim of historiographically recovering the philosophy of Luisa Capetillo, a Puerto Rican anarcho-syndicalist feminist writer from the turn of the 19th century, this project advances the claim that Capetillo’s thought provides a complex account of the ways communities can be forged in absence of a sovereign nation. By critically intervening on the norms of marriage she radically renegotiates processes that anchor and reproduce race in national narratives. In doing so, she undermines the regulatory role of the nation in racialized gendered relations as well as in the possibilities of emancipation. Hence, I advocate we should read her thought as an entry point into a broader vision of the political philosophy of the Americas.
This is a second step, “deepening our understanding” session which could help prepare you for sessions like “Fighting for a Diverse Democracy.”
Fighting for a Diverse Democracy
Democracies do not maintain themselves and sometimes either collapse or slowly transition into dictatorships over time. Active involvement of the population via a vibrant civil society, strong democratic norms that guide behavior, and resilient democratic institutions are some of the crucial aspects that sustain a democracy in the long run. In recent months, more and more scholars have started to voice some concerns over the state of our democracy. We review some of these arguments and critically evaluate them with marginalized diverse populations in mind. With this foundation, we will devote time to considering what each of us can do to concretely help strengthen and improve the democracy we live in.
This is a second step, “deepening our understanding” session which explores how and why citizen action is important to defend our democratic institutions.