April 7-8: Race and ethnicity
Workshop and symposium on the Americas to foster open discussion
2:01 p.m., April 1, 2016--A daylong symposium on Friday, April 8, at the University of Delaware will focus on race and ethnicity in the Americas and will be preceded by a workshop —designed especially for students — on Thursday, April 7, led by the participatory group Theater of the Oppressed.
The symposium, “Where You Were Never Meant to Be?” is presented by UD’s Latin American and Iberian Studies Program (LAIS) as part of its yearlong film and speaker series, “Engaging Race and Ethnicity in the Americas.”
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All events, including the workshop, are open to the public without advance registration and will be held in Perkins Student Center. Receptions will follow the workshop and the symposium and are also free and open to the public.
The two-hour workshop will begin at 5 p.m. on April 7 in the Perkins Gallery. It will be led by the Theater of the Oppressed, a group that was founded in Brazil in the early 1970s to foster democratic and cooperative forms of interaction among participants.
Those attending the workshop will engage in theatrical debate, games and scenes as they uncover the many possible alternatives to real-life challenges and personal and collective human rights infringements.
Carla Guerrón Montero, LAIS director and associate professor of anthropology, encouraged students “to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity” to take part in a Theater of the Oppressed event. The group normally charges admission to its programs, but LAIS is offering the session at no charge. Attendance will be on a first-come, first-served basis, with participation limited to 40 students.
The next day’s symposium will be held in the Ewing Room from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., followed by a reception, and will focus on the role of race and ethnicity in academia. Faculty members from UD and institutions across the United States will participate in panel discussions, facilitated by leaders of the Race in the Americas (RITA) group.
Keynote speakers and panel moderators will be Adunni Adams and James Owen Heath, both from RITA. That group was formed in the United Kingdom to encourage interdisciplinary research and interaction among those in academia, politics and the media. It aims to embrace anyone with an interest in race who feels excluded by traditional academic discussion.
The keynote speech, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., will explore RITA’s networks, research and future projects.
The morning panel discussion, from 9:15-11:15 a.m., will focus on the ways in which race is discussed by academics. Moderated by Heath, the panelists will debate if and how the academic study of race keeps pace with the ever-evolving realities of race relations and constructions.
Participants will be UD faculty members Pascha Bueno-Hansen, assistant professor of women and gender studies; Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, professor of sociology and criminal justice; Tiffany Gill, associate professor of black American studies and history; and Karen Rosenberg, professor of anthropology; and Selwyn Cudjoe, professor of Africana studies at Wellesley College, and Adrienne Dixson, associate professor of education policy, organization and leadership at the University of Illinois.
The second panel discussion, from 2-4 p.m., moderated by Adams, will examine the problems in discussing race in the Americas. The aim is to bring about an open debate on why such conversations are frustrated, encouraged or suppressed and to share strategies that can be used to promote discussion.
Panelists will be Yasser Payne, associate professor of black American studies at UD; Kevin D. Brown, the Richard S. Melvin Professor of Law at the University of Indiana; Kim Chanbonpin, associate professor at John Marshall Law School; Cláudia Corrêa, adjunct professor at Universidade Federal de Rondônia; and Torie Weiston-Serdan, founder and executive director of the Youth Mentoring Action Network.
UD sponsors of the events include the College of Arts and Sciences; the centers for Black Culture, the Study of Diversity, and Global and Area Studies; the departments of Anthropology, Black American Studies, History, Theatre/REP, Women and Gender Studies, and Languages, Literatures and Cultures; and the schools of Education and of Public Policy and Administration.
Article by Ann Manser