Allbritton Center’s Election Series: Beyond the Curtain: Campaign Financing, Gerrymandering, and Barriers to Voting 11/3, 7 p.m.

Election_Behind the CurtainThe Allbritton Center presents the second of our panels on the 2016 Election 

Beyond the Curtain: Campaign Financing, Gerrymandering, and Barriers to Voting

We have three wonderful panelists: 

                Dave Daley, author of Ratfucked, an incredibly important recent book, reviewed in the NY Times and elsewhere, that explains gridlock in Congress as largely due to the gerrymandering of Congressional districts carried out over the past decades or so.

                Sheila Krumholz from the Center for Responsive Politics, speaking about spending on the presidential race, outside spending – including super PACs and dark money groups and the implications thereof.

                Nick Nyhart, President of Every Voice Center, long-time activist on these issues, talking about possible solutions to money in politics.

Read more

Reading by Patrick Phillips of his book, Blood at the Root — 11/2

The writer and translator Patrick Phillips will read this Wednesday, November 2, 2016, at 8pm at Russell House.

Phillips’ most recent book, Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in Americais an urgent and meticulously researched text about racist violence in early twentieth century Georgia. It has been named a Best Book of 2016 by Publisher’s Weekly and an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review. It is a finalist for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal. 

Phillips is the recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships. He is the author of several books of poetry, and his most recent collection of poems, Elegy for a Broken Machine, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

A reception and book signing will follow the reading.

“Continuing Conversations:” Talk and Dinner with Prof. Tony Hatch on “Carceral Technologies of Jim Crow” — Nov. 1

Professor Tony Hatch will facilitate a dinner workshop next Tuesday as part of our “Continuing Conversations” series.  This series follows the Class of 2020 Common Reading of The New Jim Crow, and is open to ALL STUDENTS.  Details below.  Please RSVP (link below) so that we can plan an appropriate amount of food.

Continuing Conversations

To sign up for this workshop, click here.

10/27 Note from Dean Brown

Hey 2017’ers,

Hope you all had a good fall break, getting caught up on work & sleep and enjoying some down time. 

Having just passed the mid-point of the semester, we will be moving into pre-registration for the spring semester, beginning next week with Planning from Nov. 1-14, Scheduling on Nov. 15, and Adjustment from Nov. 16-22.   

As you choose your courses, make sure to check your credit analysis for oversubscription in a subject or category so that you can be sure to meet the graduation requirements of 32.00 useable credits with no oversubscription, a minimum of 16.00 Wes credits, and completion of one major (track with your major certification form).  You also need to meet the minimum GPA of 74.00 and the residency requirement appropriate to your entry (first-years=6 semesters, first-semester soph transfers=5, and second-semester soph & junior transfers=4).  You may have gotten a letter from me if you are already oversubscribed, at the limit or near the limit for oversubscription, so be sure to check your email and see me with any questions. 

Also check the Senior Packet on the sidebar of this blog for  more info and FAQs about graduation requirements and oversubscription, etc. 

December Completions:  Make sure that your Major Certification form is completed and approved by your faculty advisor as it must be certified by your department and submitted to the Registrar’s Office by November 18. 

Need to add or drop a second-quarter course?  You have five days from the first class to do so. 

 As you think ahead, the full-semester course withdrawal deadline is Dec. 2.  If you are considering that route, make sure to first go to the instructor’s office hours, use the TA sessions, and the math or writing workshops.  Talk with your faculty advisor or me about strategies for success.  If you could use some additional help deciphering course material, get a peer tutor by requesting one through the class blog, right side bar.  If you could use some help with organization, time management, note-taking, study strategies, or test-taking tips, check out the peer advisor website, where you can also request a peer advisor or a peer tutor. 

 Family Weekend begins tomorrow, Fri., Oct. 28 through 30.  There are a lot of great events, including two panels of 2017’ers talking about their research on Friday at 3:30 p.m. and Saturday at 9 a.m. in Judd Hall 116.  Check out all the events!

 As always, if you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.  Send an email, come to drop-in hours (below), or give my office a call at x2758 to schedule a convenient time to meet.   Please note that this Friday’s drop-in hours are only from 2-3 p.m.

 Best, Dean Brown

 

ANTH & #BlackLivesMatter — Nov. 1, 4:30 p.m.

Anthropology & #BlackLivesMatter

A Discussion of research, activism in relation to the Decolonizing Anthropology Project

Panel featuring:  Dawn Elissa Fischer (SFSU), Bianca Williams (UofC-Boulder) and Gina Athena Ulysse (Wes U)

Tuesday, November 1st, 4:30-6:00pm, Beckham Hall

About the speakers:

Dawn-Elissa Fischer (Africana Studies, San Francisco State University) is completing two manuscripts entitled Blackness, Race and Gender Politics in Japanese Hiphop and Methods to Floss, Theories to Flow: Hiphop Research, Aesthetics and Activism (an introductory textbook).  Her work has been published in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Centurythe Journal of Popular Music Studies, Transforming Anthropology, FIRE!!! The Multimedia Journal of Black Studies and The Western Journal of Black Studies. Dr. Fischer has co-produced a short film, Nihon Style, with Bianca White, which documents an annual Hiphop festival and its related organizations in Japan. She co-directs the BAHHRS (the Bay Area Hip Hop Research and Scholarship) project with Dave “Davey D” Cook, which was awarded the Cesar Chavez Institute’s Community-University Empowerment Grant.  Dr. Fischer is a founding staff member of Dr. Marcyliena Morgan’s Hiphop Archive as well as a co-founder of the National Hip Hop Political Convention.

Bianca C. Williams’s (Ethnic Studies and Anthropology, University of Colorado at Boulder) research centers on theories of race and gender within African diasporic communities, particularly the emotional aspects of being “Black” and a “woman” in the U.S. and Jamaica. She is at work finishing an ethnography, The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism (under contract with Duke University Press) and an edited volume titled, “’Do You Feel Me?’: Exploring Black American Gender and Sexuality through Feeling and Emotion,” co-authored with Jennifer A. Woodruff. Essays in Transforming Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology explore questions of race and gender in ethnographic research and pedagogical practices. She has also edited two collections of essays on #BlackLivesMatter, one for Cultural Anthropology and one for Savage Minds. She is a member of Black Lives Matter 5280 and the AAA Working Group on Racialized Police Brutality and Extrajudicial Violence.

Gina Athena Ulysse is Professor of Anthropology at Wesleyan University.  A feminist artist-academic-activist and self-described Post-Zora Interventionist, she is the author of Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, A Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica (UChicago Press, 2008), Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle (WesPress, 2015) and Because When God is too Busy: Haiti, me & THE WORLD, a collection of poetry, performance texts and photographs (WesPress, 2017). She is Guest Editor of Caribbean Rasanblaj (2015), a double issue of e-misférica— NYU’s Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics journal. Her performance works include: I Am Storm: Songs & Poems for Haiti,  VooDooDoll What if Haiti Were A Woman: On Ti Travay Sou 21 Pwen Or An Alter(ed)native in Something Other Than Fiction and Contemplating Absences & Distances.  A committed public intellectual, when the mood strikes, she blogs for AfricaIsaCountry, Huffington Post, MsBlog and Tikkun Daily.

Long Lane Farm Pumpkin Fest! Oct. 8 — Noon-4 p.m.

The College of the Environment in partnership with Long Lane Farms,

hosts the annual Pumpkin Festival on the farm

(located at Wadsworth St and Long Lane Farm) 

Saturday, October 8, 2016 from NOON to 4pm

(raindate will be on Sunday; same time)

 The event is free for all to attend.

There will be tours of the farm, live music, activities and crafts

(ie: face painting, tie dying, letterboxing, paper making, creating fringy scarves from upcycled t-shirts) and much more. 

Local vendors like The Board Room, Cinder + Salt and The Yarn Store will be there.

Pumpkins, apples and bake goods will be for sale.

Free veggie burgers and hot apple cider will be provided.

Grab a friend or two and join us!

The annual event is hosted by the College of the Environment, Long Lane Farms, and Bon Appetit

Hope to see you there!