Previous Work

Fall 2022 

9/14/22, 9:00am: Elijah Anderson

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences invites you to attend the Kickoff event for a series of lectures about anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion on Wednesday, September 14th, at 9:00 AM in Humanities Quad, L02 Auditorium. Elijah Anderson is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University, and one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States. His most recent publication is Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life (2022). This in-person event focuses on informing and educating on the awareness of racial biases, exclusion, and collaboration on change.

Inclusive Teaching and Meaningful Writing Workshops
A Workshop Series for Faculty and Graduate Student Teachers of Writing, led by Felisa Baynes-Ross

This two-part workshop series brings current research in rhetoric and composition together with inclusive and culturally responsive pedagogies that make writing meaningful to all students. The goal is to promote new methods for inclusive teaching while reflecting on what we value as scholars, teachers, and members of a shared pedagogical enterprise. We welcome faculty and graduate student teachers of writing from all departments to join us for either or both sessions. Refreshments will be provided.
 
10/7/22, 10:00am-12:00pm: The first workshop focuses on multimodal composition as an adaptable framework for understanding how students’ diverse language habits, abilities, and experiences shape and inform the writing process. Multimodal approaches locate students as experts with knowledge and skills to contribute within scholarly and public conversations and can help them move beyond the familiar constraints of the five-paragraph essay. We will explore strategies for designing or adapting syllabuses and assignments to embrace the possibilities of multimodal composition.
 
11/4/22, 12:00pm-2:00pm: The second session turns from course and assignment design to writing evaluation, to consider how our modes of assessment and philosophies of grading can both support meaningful learning and encourage students to take intellectual risks. To what extent does our grading reflect what we value in student writing, and how well do our assessment strategies promote the development of all students in our classrooms? What role does evaluation play in a holistic writing pedagogy, and how might it play that role better?
 
 

Spring 2022

4/4/22, 5:00pm: Randall Horton

Randall Horton is the author of Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays (2022) and several books of poetry, including Pitch Dark Anarchy: Poems ( 2013) and The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street (2009). His most recent poetry collection, #289–128: Poems (2020) was awarded the American Book Award. In 2019 he served as poet-in-residence for the Civil Rights Corps in Washington, DC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the American legal system. His is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea González Poetry, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, the Great Lakes College Association Award for Creative Nonfiction, and a Right to Return Fellowship from the Soze Foundation. Most recently Horton received a Creative Capital award to place recording studios/ performance spaces in four correctional facilities. He currently sits on the Advisory Board of PEN America’s PEN Prison Writing Program and is Professor of English at the University of New Haven.

Fall 2021 

9/22/21: Franke Lecture: Khalil Muhammad, “The Origins and Durability of Anti-Black Criminalization in the United States

This lecture historicizes the use of racial crime statistics as a technology of social difference to justify new white supremacist ideas as well as innovative forms of state violence, segregation, and discrimination after the end of chattel slavery when African Americans gained their citizenship and civil rights. In the context of nineteenth-century eugenics, crime statistics in Europe and the US were not new in this way. And yet, the shifting economic and political priorities of US elites with respect to European and Asian immigrants as well as African Americans led to a more salient and durable form of anti-Black racial criminalization in the twentieth-century United States.

9/23/21: Finzi-Contini Lecture: Namwali Serpell, “Race Off: The Fantasy of Race Transformation”

“Race Off” tracks the persistent fantasy of race transformation—specifically, of “switching” from black to white or vice versa—in American fiction, journalism, and film from the nineteenth century to the present. Serpell will discuss the aesthetic, affective, and political implications of this fantasy; its resonance with and distinction from “passing” narratives; and how it tends toward different underlying ideas and tones depending on whether the author is black or white.

9/30/21: The Caribbean Studies Working at Yale & Race, Gender, And Sexuality Studies Colloquium in Yale English: Kaiama Glover, “A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being” 

Professor Kaiama Glover is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of French & Africana Studies and Faculty Director of the Barnard Digital Humanities Center. Her teaching and research interests include francophone literature, particularly that of Haiti and the French Antilles; colonialism and postcolonialism; and sub-Saharan francophone African cinema. She will be speaking to us about her incredible new book, A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being. 

6:00-8:00pm via Zoom

Spring 2021 

2/24/21: Engaging Racial Justice in Our Classrooms

Abolitionist Pedagogies: guest speakers Zelda Roland and James Jeter, Yale Prison Education Initiative; Daniel Karpowicz, College in Prison: Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration (selections)

3/17/21: Engaging Racial Justice in Our Classrooms

Disability, Race, and Pedagogy: Theri Alice Pickens, Blue Blackness, Black Blueness: Making Sense of Blackness and Disability; Jan Doolittle Wilson, Reimagining Disability and Inclusive Education through Universal Design for Learning; Mel Y. Chen, Brain Fog: The Race for Cripistemology

4/8/21: Engaging Racial Justice in Our Classrooms

Race, Pedagogy, and Disciplinarity: Crenshaw, Lipsitz, Hosang, Harris (eds.), Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness Across the Disciplines (selected essays); Blake, Ioanide, Reed (eds.), Anti-Racism, Inc.: Why the Way We Talk About Racial Justice Matters (selected essays)

4/29/21: Engaging Racial Justice in Our Classrooms

Conclusions, Provocations, Continuities: readings TBD

Fall 2020 

9/16/20: Engaging Racial Justice in Our Classrooms

Planning Meeting

10/1/20: Initiative on Literature and Racial Justice

Francis Conversations with Writers: A public conversation with Albert Woodfox, the author of Solitary

10/8/20: Engaging Racial Justice in Our Classrooms

Racial Justice in the Classroom: Harbin, Thurber, and Bandy, “Teaching Race, Racism, and Racial Justice”; Lauren Michele Jackson, “What is an Anti-racist Reading List For?”; Melissa Phruksachart, “The Literature of White Liberalism”; Responses to Albert Woodfox lecture

10/22/20: Engaging Racial Justice in Our Classrooms

Race, Inequality, and the University: Daniel HoSang and Joseph Lowndes, “Theorizing Race in the Age of Inequality”; Laura Smith and Susan Kashubeck-West, Gregory Payton, Eve Adams. 2017. “White Professors Teaching About Racism: Challenges and Rewards” The Counseling Psychologist 45(5): 651-668.; Sue, D. W., Lin, A. I., Torino, G. C., Capodilupo, C. M., & Rivera, D. P. (2009). Racial microaggressions and difficult dialogues on race in the classroom. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 15(2), 183–190.

11/19/20: Engaging Racial Justice in Our Classrooms

Black Feminist Pedagogies: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Nobody Mean More: Black Feminist Pedagogy and Solidarity”; Jacqui Alexander, Pedagogies of Crossing (selections); Leibowitz, B., Bozalek, V., Rohleder, P., Carolissen, R., & Swartz, L. (2010). ” ‘Ah, but the Whiteys Love to Talk about themselves’: Discomfort as a Pedagogy for Change.” Race Ethnicity and Education, 13(1), 83-100.

12/3/20: Engaging Racial Justice in Our Classrooms

Poetics, Pedagogy, and Race: Claudia Rankine, Just Us; other readings TBD