Ray Warren Symposium on Race and Ethnic Studies Schedule

Illustration by JoJo Baccam Illustration by JoJo Baccam


Links to available event recordings can be found as part of the schedule below. Only some events were approved for recording and public posting.

 

Virtual Exhibit: Movement and Resistance in Albina
Watzek Library, Special Collections (click here to view exhibit)
Curated by Aidan Bennett ’21 and Ben Warner ’22.

Albina was the center of Black life in Portland through much of the twentieth century. City-led urban renewal efforts and systematic disinvestment by financial institutions led to the displacement of the neighborhood’s Black residents. Yet through all this runs a thread of resistance by Albina’s Black community. Local Black newspapers were founded by community members, and national civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the Urban League built a strong presence in Albina during the early twentieth century. Later, Albina was home to the Portland chapter of the Black Panther Party.

This exhibit seeks to depict ninety years of Albina’s history with a special focus on acts of resistance by Albina’s Black residents. The artifacts presented in this exhibit illustrate the early growth of Albina, major urban renewal projects, evidence of systematic disinvestment, and the activities of both national civil rights organizations and local activists to resist these efforts by the City of Portland, demonstrating the city’s long-running effort to erase its Black community and the fight against that erasure.

 

Wednesday, November 11

7 p.m.

Keynote Event

The stutter has run away from any government —                    

JJJJJerome Ellis, Afro-Caribbean composer, performer, and writer (speaker bio)

Presentation description: In these times of political, environmental, and public health uncertainty, can stuttering, blackness, and music offer us new ways of moving through time? What practices of resistance and invention can we find at the intersections of disability, race, and art? Using music, poetry, and prose, poet and composer JJJJJerome Ellis invites us to consider stuttering, blackness, and music as forces in constant movement, escaping norms and governance and opening avenues to healing.

Welcoming remarks and introductions by RWS co-chairs Eduardo Beltran ’22 and Shalini Hanstad ’22. 

Thursday, November 12

8:30–9:30 a.m.
Conversation with keynote speaker Jerome Ellis
Welcoming remarks and introduction by RWS co-chair Samantha Hernandez ’21.
This event is limited to L&C students, faculty, and staff who register in advance.

10–11:30 a.m.
Workshop:
 Caring for Ourselves in Times of Change 
In these unprecedented times of transformation and upheaval, how do we develop and strengthen the skills to ground and center ourselves in our authentic power as everything around us changes? With a decolonizing lens and holistic framework, we’ll learn about the physiological impacts of stress on our bodies and our work, and together explore simple but powerful techniques to care for ourselves so that we can fully care for our communities, and foster more joy and authentic connection in our lives. In a nonjudgmental and intentional space of community building, you will come out of this session with a simple wellness plan and hopefully new friends!
* Facilitated by
 Amadeo Cruz Guiao [bio]
*
Welcoming remarks and introduction by RWS co-chair Samantha Hernandez ’21
* Participation in this workshop is limited to L&C students, faculty, and staff who register in advance.

12–1:30 p.m.
Roundtable discussion: The Flows Between Education and Incarceration
The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the pattern of pushing students out of educational institutions (largely through zero tolerance policies) into the juvenile and adult criminal legal systems. This panel will examine the school-to-prison pipeline’s disproportionate effect on BIPOC students, exposing how public education policies bolster carceral systems as well as exploring efforts to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. In addition, this panel considers the pipelines that lead from prison to school, addressing how BIPOC (and people of other marginalized identities) turn to education to generate movement inside carceral systems and also for redirection, post-release.

Moderator: Reiko Hillyer, L&C associate professor of history
Ben Hall, prison abolitionist and activist recently released from prison after 22 years
Queaz Otti, recently incarcerated member of Liberation Literacy and host of “Tin Can Phone” podcast
Keri Hughes, Roosevelt High School teacher
Emijah Smith, racial justice advocate in Seattle Public Schools
Tyee Griffith, manager for Justice Education at The Claremont Colleges, career counselor with the Prison Education Project, and program coordinator of the Reintegration Academy

 

2–3:30 p.m.
Gaze and Response: State Surveillance and Policing of BIPOC Protesters
This panel has been canceled.

 

2–3:30 p.m.
Mapping Your Journey: An Art Therapy Workshop
Reflecting on the symposium themes of migration and displacement, tourism and travel, dance, and protest, participants will reflect on and express their lived journeys of movement using art and creative interventions with the support from two art therapists. Participants will be invited to create visual maps of their journeys, write reflections on their experiences, engage in image processing, and participate in supportive dialogue. No previous art-making experience is necessary to participate; all skills and comfort levels are welcomed!
* Facilitated by Angela Quintero, MS art therapy, and Mary Andrus, director of L&C art therapy graduate program and co-chair of L&C Art for Social Change
* Participation in this workshop is limited to L&C students, faculty, and staff who register in advance.

 

4–5:30 p.m.
Black Diasporic Motherhood                                                    
This panel centers the daily lived experiences of Afro-descendent mothers and explores their methods of resistance and ways of forming while mothering in an anti-Black society. The discussion will examine how Black mothers prepare their children to live in a racialized state, how Black mothers of different ethnicities socialize their children, and how transnational kinship is formed between Black mothers of varied cultural backgrounds.  

Moderator: Valerie White, L&C ombuds
Channon Miller, assistant professor of history, University of San Diego (bio)
Alaí Reyes-Santos, associate professor of Indigenous, race, and ethnic studies, University of Oregon (bio)


7 p.m.

Keynote Event

Understanding the Politics of Migrant Life and Death along the US/Mexico Border                 

Jason De León , professor of anthropology and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project (speaker bio)

Presentation description: Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. federal government has relied on a border enforcement strategy known as “Prevention Through Deterrence.” Using various security infrastructure and techniques of surveillance, this strategy funnels undocumented migrants towards remote and rugged terrain such as the Sonoran Desert of Arizona with the hope that mountains ranges, extreme temperatures, and other “natural” obstacles will deter people from unauthorized entry. Hundreds of people perish annually while undertaking this dangerous activity. In this presentation I focus on what happens to the bodies of migrants who die in the desert and argue that the way they decompose in this environment is a form of hidden political violence that has deep ideological roots.

Welcoming remarks and introductions by RWS co-chairs Katarzyna Enriquez ’21 and Immanuel Harice ’22.

 

Friday, November 13

9:15–10:15 a.m.
Conversation with keynote speaker Jason De León
Welcoming remarks and introduction by RWS co-chair Samantha Hernandez ’21.
This event is limited to L&C students, faculty, and staff who register in advance.

10:30–11:45 a.m.
Race Across Disciplinary Boundaries: Student Research Presentations
Join us for an interdisciplinary discussion with L&C students who will share original research projects addressing issues of race and ethnicity.

Moderator: Pamela Nassar Altabcharani ’21
Meg Houlihan ’21, SOAN major, “Connections in Crisis: Medicalization and Medical Racism in Maternal Health Care
Arunima Singh Jamwal ’21, SOAN major and former RWS co-chair, “From Exile to Home: A Queer Ethics of Belonging”
Margarete Maneker ’21, History major, “Ku’e: Struggles for Sovereignty in Pacific Indigenous Communities”
Sabrina Murray ’21, SOAN major, “In Between Two Worlds: Triple Consciousness Among Transracial Adoptees”
Maya Winshell, ’21, History major, “‘Authentic’ City: Tourism and Cultural Commodification in San Francisco’s Ethnic Neighborhoods”

 

12:15–1:30 p.m.
Navigating the World: Heritage Travel and Tourism
Traveling to a significant place filled with histories of ancestral heritage is a journey that many of us make — as tourists, leisure travelers, students, and scholars. How does this type of travel influence our national, ethnic, and racial identities? How do these physical and bodily movements of exploring our roots affectively and emotionally shape our sense of ourselves?
 This discussion will examine transnational identities, diasporic stories, and global perspectives about contemporary modes of heritage tourism.

Moderator: Kabir Mansingh Heimsath, L&C assistant professor with term of anthropology and Asian studies
Bayo Holsey, associate professor of anthropology at Emory University and director of Emory Institute of African Studies, author of Routes of Remembrance: Refashioning the Slave Trade in Ghana (bio)
Emily Schneider, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice, Northern Arizona University, scholar of Jewish tourism to Israel/Palestine
Grace Newton, writes about transnational and transracial adoption at Red Thread Broken

 

2–3:30 p.m.
Roundtable discussion: Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid in the Covid-19 Crisis
In early April 2020 a group of activists, writers, and scholars convened to conduct interviews about the unprecedented mutual aid efforts emerging simultaneously around the world as communities of all kinds were forced to rapidly confront the challenges posed by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. This transnational collaboration resulted in the formation of Colectiva Sembrar and the publication of a book in late June, Pandemic Solidarity, that includes over 100 interviews with individuals and collectives in over 17 countries and one autonomous territory, Rojava. This panel will bring together members of Colectiva Sembrar as well as some of the people interviewed in the book for a roundtable about solidarity, mutual aid, and social justice in the age of Covid-19.         

Moderator: Magalí Rabasa, L&C assistant professor of Hispanic studies
Marina Sitrin, Colectiva Sembrar, SUNY Binghamton
Lais Gomes Duarte
, Colectiva Sembrar, The City University of New York
Hari Alluri
, Locked Horn Press / Vancouver, Coast Salish territories
Timo Bartholl
, Roça Collective / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Cemre Can Aslamaci, Kadıkoy Solidarity Network / Istanbul, Turkey
Göksel Kılınç
, Şişli Solidarity Network / Istanbul, Turkey

 

4–5:30 p.m.
Performance: The People vs. _____
Conceived and written by Josie Seid
Featuring L&C students Negasi Brown ’22, Madisyn Taylor ’21, and McKenzie Wingard ’21.

“First rule of change is controversy. You can’t get away from it for the simple reason all issues are controversial. Change means movement, and movement means friction, and friction means heat, and heat means controversy.” — Saul Alinsky

We have returned to the place in our world where the people are pushing for change. A movement has reawakened and chosen its form as movements tend to do. Are these movements— in the forms they take—creating the change we seek? If movements are so effective, why do we seem to always find ourselves back at this place? We invite viewers to act as the jury as we take a closer look at the evolution of the movement and hear arguments for and against, in this case of: The People vs. _____.

Co-sponsored by Students for Cultural Inclusion in the Theater (SCIT)

7 p.m.
Race Monologues     

Each year a different group of L&C students writes an original series of personal narratives to share their feelings, experiences, and understandings of race, ethnicity, and identity.

Featuring L&C students Pamela Nassar Altabcharani ’21, Sheyla Dorantes ’22, Katarzyna Enriquez ’21, Shalini Hanstad ’22, Lili Kunimoto ’22, and Annabelle Rousseau ’23.

Coordinated by L&C students Yashshree Raj Bisht ’21, Liza Clairagneau ’21, and Sheyla Dorantes ’22.