Humanities Center Spring 2020 Lecture Series on "Gender, Race and Class"

The University of Hartford Humanities Center Lecture Series for Spring 2020 focuses on the theme of “Transversing Gender, Race and Class,” developed and led by Kristin Comeforo, Associate Professor of Communication (A&S), in conjunction with Nicholas Ealy, Humanities Center Director. Four University of Hartford Humanities Center Faculty Fellows and six distinguished presenters will speak on selected Tuesdays from 5:00-6:30 p.m. between February 4 and April 21 in Auerbach Hall 426 (unless otherwise noted).

All lectures are free and open to the public.

The series explores how our gender can never be an isolated identity for us, but rather is something we experience through the related identities of race and class. Talks will be by experts in the fields of sociology, political theory, history, psychology, communication, literature and the performing arts.

February 4: T Stores, Professor of English and Assistant Provost at the University of Hartford, will give a talk entitled “Implicit Bias, Higher Ed and Intersectionality: Which of Me Makes You the Most Uncomfortable?” where she addresses how we can identify our unconscious biases and what we can do to offset or compensate for them. Discussing current trends in research on implicit bias, she will explore how it is manifested in higher ed as both an educational setting and a workplace. T Stores has her MFA from the University of Colorado and has published three novels as well as numerous writings in literary magazines and anthologies. Her most recent work, Frost Heaves (2018), is a collection of short fiction that won an Indie Reader Discovery Award.

February 11: Arien Wilkerson, a Hartford-based performance artist, will speak about their work with Billie Lee, Visiting Assistant Professor of Fine Arts, in a conversation “Looking within the Spaces In-between part 2: Queer Eroticism as Power” (location TBD). Here, they will discuss lovepiece and show video content and material from this installation, speak about their current ideas, have a conversation about a new work titled Anastrophe: A Retrospective of Works, and share insight into their personal connection with being openly HIV-positive, black, non-binary and openly queer. Arien Wilkerson was awarded the 2019 Connecticut Dance Alliance Jump Start Award, the Greater New Haven Arts Council & Connecticut Office of the Arts – Artist Workforce Initiative Sponsorship (2019), an Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Office of the Arts (2019), a Connecticut Office of the Arts project grant (2018), two New England Dance Fund Grants (2017, 2018), the Spirit of Juneteenth Award from the Amistad Center for Art and Culture (2017), a National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” Grant (2018), a Director’s Discretionary Fund Award from the William Casper Graunstein Memorial Fund (2018) and was selected as the NEFA’s 2018 Rebecca Blunk Fund Awardee. 

February 18: Cyril Ghosh, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at Wagner College, will give a lecture titled “To Ask or Not to Ask: The Dilemmas of the LGBT+ Asylum Interview” where he addresses the following questions: How does the state categorize LGBT asylum applications as authentic or as inauthentic? Should the state focus on homosexual and/or gender identity or on homosexual conduct? What lines of inquiry can it legitimately pursue during the LGBT+ asylum interview? In the recent past, some western countries have come under intense criticism for denying asylum to gay applicants on the grounds they were not either legibly or credibly “gay enough” in their self-presentation or testimony. While gender identity and sexual orientation are distinct and sometimes unrelated categories, the two are frequently confused. What then may the state ask of LGBT+ applicants during the asylum interview process? Cyril Ghosh received his PhD from Syracuse University and specializes in political theory and American politics. He has published three books, Key Concepts in Political Theory: Citizenship (2019, with Elizabeth Cohen), Moralizing Gay Rights (2018) and The Politics of the American Dream (2013).

February 25: Markeysha Davis, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Literature at the University of Hartford, will speak on “Unmaking Prescriptive Identities: The Blurred Lines of Race, Sex and Gender in Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer,” a lecture exploring how Monáe’s 2018 album works to unmask social injustices such as anti-black racism, misogynoir, homophobia and objectification. In her talk, she will examine how Monáe attempts to challenge “prescriptive identities” much like black and queer women theorists of the 1970s and 1980s who challenged the scope of what black empowerment and liberation could be. Markeysha Davis has her PhD in Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and specializes in African-American history, poetry and music, gender and sexuality studies and black feminist thought.

March 3: Rachel Walker, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Hartford, will speak on “Beauty, Intelligence and Intersectionality: A Historical Approach,” an investigation into physiognomy, a once-popular “science” predicated on the notion that people’s facial features disclose important clues about their inner nature. By exposing how early Americans used the power and prestige of science to enforce social hierarchies, she will examine how physical beauty was not perceived as a biological accident, but rather was used to enforce gender and racial hierarchies, thereby creating a legacy that remains with us today. Rachel Walker received her PhD in history from the University of Maryland (College Park) and specializes in the history of gender, race and science in early America. She is currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled Beauty and the Brain: The Science of the Human Mind in Early America, that demonstrates not only how society’s most privileged actors used science as a tool to enforce hierarchies of race, class and gender, but also how white women and people of color cooped popular sciences to advocate for racial justice and gender equality.

March 31: Jennifer McLeer, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Hartford, will present on “Maintaining and Legitimizing Status in Small Groups,” an examination of the legitimization and maintenance of status hierarchies in small groups as she seeks to identify how people with low status intersectional identities (i.e., poor, black, female) respond when their group sanctions them for violating the group’s status hierarchy. In her talk she will consider the following questions: What is the evidence that people with low status identities expect costs for high achievement that are above the costs that would be given to their high status counterparts? Who exactly is responsible for enacting and/or supporting these costs (i.e., those with high status identities, low status identities, or both)? And, in what form do people with low status face penalties (i.e., social and/or financial) and which are the biggest barriers to their success? Jennifer McLeer has her PhD from the University of South Carolina and specializes in social and organizational psychology. She is currently working on a number of projects regarding group dynamics and inequality, including (1) how status violations act as barriers to high achievement and (2) the role of followers and observers in maintaining status hierarchies.

April 7: Lori Bindig Yousman and Bill Yousman, Associate Professors of Communication at Sacred Heart University, will give the lecture “Grab Them by the What? Critical Media Literacy, Intersectional Gender Politics, and the 2016 and 2020 Presidential Campaigns.” Acknowledging that socially constructed notions of gender have always been a part of political discourse, they will explore how the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Presidential campaigns stand as particularly stark examples of the central role that hegemonic masculinity and femininity play in shaping world events. Drawing on critical media literacy, feminist theory, and critical race theory, this talk will analyze recent U.S. Presidential campaigns while highlighting implicit and explicit ideologies in mediated constructions of gender, race, and political power. Lori Bindig Yousman and Bill Yousman have their PhDs from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. Bindig Yousman’s research focuses on the intersection of media and youth culture, with an emphasis on femininity in consumer culture while Dr. Yousman works on media and the construction of ideology, perceptions of race and democracy, with an emphasis on media images of the prison industrial complex and the social impact of rap music and hip-hop culture. Together they co-edited Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader (2018).

April 14: KC Councilor, Assistant Professor of Communication, Southern Connecticut State University, will conduct the workshop “Drawing Yourself In: Comics, Embodiment and Storytelling” where he will teach participants his own methods for creating comics and telling stories. Those in attendance will write and draw stories from their past, listen and look carefully at each other’s work, and leave with a new ability to communicate through words and pictures. No drawing experience is necessary! Bring a notebook and a pen and a willingness to jump off the high dive (knowing the pool is deep enough to catch you). KC Councilor earned his PhD in Communication Arts (Rhetoric, Politics and Culture) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and researches LGBTQ+ identities, race and immigration, and trans* politics. He is also a comic artist and the author of Between You and Me: Transitional Comics (2019).

April 21: Karen Tejada-Peña, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Hartford, will speak on her project “Because I’m a Fighter: Examining Salvadoran Women’s Leadership Toolkit,” the result of interviews she conducted with Salvadoran women in the Washington DC metro area. Here, she will demonstrate that these women’s desire to be a “fighter” and “leave footprints” within the community underscores how their intersecting identities (as working-class immigrant women) matter to the extent that it propels their activism. In this talk, she will propose that immigrant identity complicates the race, class and gender matrix and that while it can be an empowering status for these women, it can also be used against them to question their legitimacy as leaders. Karen Tejada-Peña received her PhD from SUNY Albany and specializes in Central Americans in the United States, race and immigration, transnationalism and grassroots organizations. Currently she is working on a book project, tentatively titled Putting them on ICE: Policing Salvadoran Communities on Long Island, that explores how police on Long Island enforce immigration policies and how their actions affect community-policing relations with the local Salvadoran population.

The Humanities Center at the University of Hartford supports interdisciplinary scholarship focusing on the humanities through the arts, sciences, technology, media, psychology, history, film, philosophy, music and literature. For more information, contact Nicholas Ealy, director, at ealy@hartford.edu or visit us on Facebook at “University of Hartford Humanities Center.”