The Building Publics Graduate Series showcases how our Public Humanities Graduate Fellows bridge humanistic thinking with civic engagement; social justice with scholarly research; and public building with communication, in order to unleash new, more critical modes of scholarly imagination. Each year highlights a new, pressing theme. Last year's theme, Humanities Combating Isolation, tackled the challenges posed by the sudden closure of public spheres. This year, under the heading Humanities Speak of Race, we look at the complex dynamics of race and privilege.

While it was particularly challenging to develop academic work through public ties in the context of lockdown, our fellows actively engaged in debates about privilege and race that are animating academia generally and the public humanities in particular. Over the weeks of the Building Publics series, we will learn about the different ways in which our fellows are working with organizations to address and better understand these relations. Each workshop is curated by a graduate fellow or graduate collective, and will feature conversations with some of the community members and civic partners with whom they have worked in conceiving and implementing their projects.

This series is co-funded through the Addressing Racism: A Call to Action for Higher Education initiative of the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Click here to register for the series.

Schedule

Wednesday, May 5th 2021 Zoom | 4:30 pm EDT
Unbecoming Me: Models of Transgressive Black Girlhood
Margaret Banks (English and Comparative Literature) with guest Jydin Harwell (Frederick Douglass Academy and Double Discovery Center) and a response by Ruth Nicole Brown (Michigan State University)

Wednesday, May 12th 2021 Zoom | 4:30 pm EDT
Spirit Sharing: An Interspiritual Conversation on Non-Hegemonic Beliefs and Community Building
Julián Sánchez González (Art History and Archaeology) with Karen Rose (Sacred Vibes Apothecary) and Delphinios (Minoan Brotherhood)

Wednesday, May 19th 2021 Zoom | 4:30 pm EDT [POSTPONED UNTIL FALL 2021]
Reimagining the Humanities from Within
Round table discussion with members of the Academic Diversity and Inclusion Research Collective at Columbia University

Wednesday, May 26th 2021 Zoom | 4:30 pm EDT
Storytelling, Medical Inequities, and Intergenerational Knowledge: Diaspora Named and Archived
Tehya Boswell (Public Health), Kyle Norville, and others

Wednesday, June 2nd 2021 Zoom | 4:30 pm EDT
Making a Place for Writing
Therese Cox (Columbia English and Comparative Literature) with Leslie Davol (Street Lab) and K. A. Jagai (Girls Write Now)

Wednesday, June 9th 2021 Zoom | 4:30 pm EDT
Pedagogy in the Carceral State
Nick Croggon (Arts X Social Justice at Columbia University, Art History and Archaeology), Laura Betanncourt (Studio Museum in Harlem), Rebecca Ginsburg (Education Justice Project, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Ivan Calaff (Center for Justice, Columbia University), Lisette Oblitas (SOF/Heyman Center, Columbia University), and Mia Ruyter (SOF/Heyman Center, Columbia University)

This series will continue in the fall with a roundtable on pedagogy in the public humanities and a screening and discussion on the carceral system in Brazil. Please join us in the fall for these two events!