Lectures in Public Humanities

Spring 2022 Lecture Series

• "Potshots at the Empire from the Tattered Hot Air Balloon of the Arts" | Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis and Kate Had | April 20, 2022 from 4:30-6:00 p.m. ET - In a discussion together, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, Curator of Asian Pacific American Studies at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and Kate Hao from the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University introduced the project-in-development, "foundings+findings.” This is an archival activation workshop series that uses found poetry as its guiding method in order to reflect on the complexities of navigating institutional spaces in pursuit of anti-institutional goals. At the center of this work is a commitment to play, relationship-building, and cultures of access when it comes to making and sharing in communities of art.

Spring 2021 Lecture Series

Originally scheduled as part of our annual lecture series for 2020,  our invited speakers presented their work virtually in spring 2021. 

• "Dislocation & Ambiguous Loss" | Daniela Rivera | February 23, 4:30-6:00 p.m. ET - A graduate of the SMFA and recent winner of the prestigious Rappaport Prize, Daniela Rivera is an Associate Professor of Art at Wellesley College and Director of its Studio Art Program. (Read more about her work.) Daniela discussed examples of her recent work and its attempts to represent her own dislocation (she came to the U.S. from Chile in 2002) recognizing it as “an iterative experience of loss that is unutterable, relentlessly experienced, hard to locate, practically invisible." 
• “Mapping Indigenous Long Island” | Jeremy Dennis | April 26, 4:30-6:00 p.m. ET - Jeremy Dennis presented his current work, which makes visible the land history of an area that has been long unacknowledged.  Mr. Dennis, a photographer and an enrolled member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, New York, has been working since 2016 to document and preserve sacred and cultural Indigenous sites throughout the Long Island area. His presentation discussed the process, progress, and future trajectory of this project. 

Spring 2020 Lecture Series

Last spring marked the fifth anniversary of this series at Tisch College, and we planned to celebrate with programs that introduce projects embodying the work of civic humanities in art, theater, and education. Due to cancellation of all in-person events in mid-March resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, only the first event took place:

• "Civil Rights Movement Initiative: Strengthening Students through History" - Monday, February 10 with Maiyah Gamble-Rivers from Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice, where she is a curator and educator. This presentation discussed how one of CSSJ's programs, the Civil Rights Movement Initiative (CRMI), has created space for local high school students in the city of Providence to learn about the movement, shift their perception of self, and provide an opportunity for them to wrestle with the feelings of inferiority that are often learned in schools. CSSJ is working to expand the program to serve more schools and their students.