Catalog of Past Events

Held on 4/27/23 with the Center for the Humanities

The CUNY Graduate Center often proclaims its mission of “Graduate Education for the Public Good.” Many scholars come here to learn how to do public scholarship. Many more come here because they already practice public scholarship and want to continue doing so at an institution aimed at relevant research for the people of our university and city. But those of us who are doing and supporting public scholarship at the GC recognize that this work can be emotionally and intellectually fraught, and is not always rewarded by the institution.

CUNY students, faculty, staff, administrators, and others across CUNY and NYC have been theorizing and advancing university infrastructures that build capacity for public scholarship within and beyond the university for years. CUNY structures and cultures have been shaped in no small part by the daily pathways of CUNY and NYC publics between work, home, school, communities, and neighborhoods. What can we learn from each other about the conditions (social, institutional) that make public projects possible? And how can the GC better support and connect public scholars working across disciplines?

This event’s panel and working groups will help us think concretely about the democratic ethics and material resources necessary to create sustained avenues for public scholarship. Because our current moment is marked by funding instability at the city and state level and the contraction of resources for public scholarship from private foundations, this is a critical moment to think broadly, deeply, and collaboratively about the future of public scholarship at the GC and CUNY.

We invite participants to begin working toward concrete outcomes. For example, a Public Scholarship PhD Certificate is already under consideration. How might such a structure be used to build closer connections and stronger infrastructure to support public work? What other outcomes, such as an evolving toolkit for public scholarship at the GC, might we develop?

Held on 5/10/23 with Ariana González Stokas, Joshua Myers, Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed, and Bianca C. Williams

Join us on Wednesday, May 10th, 2023 at 6pm for “Study, Rebel, Repair, Liberate: Collective Book Launch” for a community dinner and generative discussion with four standout scholars about their recently-published work! This special event will celebrate four recent books that show how the university is not only a battleground of ideas, but a strategic hearth for people to construct a new liberatory world. The authors will bridge across the realms of Black, Puerto Rican, anticolonial, and feminist studies and movements to offer lessons for our struggles in CUNY and far beyond.

This collective book launch will host presentations by Ariana González Stokas, author of Reparative Universities: Why Diversity Alone Won’t Solve Racism in Higher Ed (Johns Hopkins University Press 2023), Joshua Myers, author of Of Black Study (Pluto Press 2023), Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed, author of New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University (Common Notions 2023), and Bianca C. Williams, co-editor of Plantation Politics and Campus Rebellions: Power, Diversity, and the Emancipatory Struggle in Higher Education (State University of New York Press 2021).

Held on 6/1/23 with AICH, BRESI, and IALSA

Hosted by the American Indian Community House (AICH), CUNY’s Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI), the Indigenous Americans and the Law Student Advocates (IALSA), and the Graduate Center’s PublicsLab.

This workshop is the result of many hours of strategizing dialogue and reflection between these three groups over the Spring semester about the possibilities for building Indigenous Studies across CUNY that is grounded in Indigenous sovereignty and accountable to Indigenous communities in NYC.

Our aim is to:

Share tangible visions for the future of Indigenous Studies across CUNY
Make connections between different CUNY spaces (folk from various CUNY colleges will be present)
Hear from BRESI, AICH, IALSA, and others about their work and visions for future collaboration
Discuss planning an event for the Fall semester to bring these conversations to broader collectivities

Our goal is to leave the space with solid commitments to the movement and visions/imaginings for where to go from here.

Held on 9/14/22 with Dr. Lorgia García Peña and Bianca C. Williams

Join the PublicsLab and Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) for a conversation with Professor Lorgia García Peña, Mellon Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University, on her groundbreaking new book, Community as Rebellion: A syllabus for surviving academia as a woman of color (2022, Haymarket Press). In conversation with PublicsLab Faculty Lead and Associate Professor of Anthropology Professor Bianca Williams, Professor García Peña will offer practices for creating liberatory spaces within institutions that are historically and perhaps inherently violent, colonialist, exclusionary, and inequitable. The conversation will consider how we –– as teachers, activists, and scholars –– can resist the academy’s extractive and exploitative practices, and how we might transform existing institutional spaces in ways that create more liberation and cultivate community for students and faculty of color.

Held on 9/16/22 with Dr. Lorgia García Peña

As a follow up to the event, “Community as Rebellion: A Conversation with Dr. Lorgia García Peña,” the PublicsLab and Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) invites currently-enrolled graduate students at the CUNY Graduate Center to join Dr. García Peña for an in-person workshop to discuss her book, Community as Rebellion: A syllabus for surviving academia as a woman of color (2022, Haymarket Press), in greater detail and be in community with one another.

Held on 9/30/22 with Sharika Thiranagama, Mahendran Thiruvarangan, Meenadchi, YaliniDream, Aanjali Allegakoen, and Kartik Amarnath

Join the PublicsLab and South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) as we celebrate the launch of the oral history collection “Tamil Feminist Liberation: An Archive of What Could Be.” This oral history collection is one of the first attempts to document the legacies of feminist dissent in the Sri Lankan Tamil community. Sri Lanka was home to one of the longest civil wars in modern history, reaching a bloody climax in May 2009, where tens of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians were massacred by government forces. Enforced disappearances, acts of genocide, torture, and internecine assassinations continue to reverberate in today’s ‘post-war’ era as Sri Lanka faces the worst economic crisis in its postcolonial history. The purpose of this oral history collection is to document the transformative and liberatory potential of a Tamil feminist politics when practiced across political and social difference while faced with the adversities of armed and structural violence.

Join us as we examine what a feminist politics, practiced in the context of Sri Lankan Tamil political struggle, can teach us about facilitating transformation in today’s global era of rising fascism and sea levels. This virtual launch will include a panel of project advisors and interviewees.

Held on 10/15/22 with Dána-Ain Davis, Njera Keith, Simin Farkhondeh, Natalie Gomez-Velez, Lauren H, Brenna McCaffrey, Zoey Thill, and others

The PublicsLab and CUNY for Abortion Rights welcome you to an in-person gathering to learn and strategize with the movement for safe, legal, and free abortion access. In an opening panel, breakout sessions, and a concluding assembly, we will exchange lessons between organizers, scholars, and frontline workers. All participants will emerge from this event with connections and tangible skills to contribute to the urgent struggle for reproductive justice in New York and beyond.

Intentions for the day include:

Hear firsthand accounts of recent abortion rights victories in Latin America and Ireland.
Gain insight from Black liberation analyses on bodily autonomy.
Build bridges between abortion care inside and clinic defense outside.
Activate media skills to document, educate, and disseminate information.
Strategize how to expand this struggle in our workplaces and universities.

Held on 10/20/22 with Erica Machulak

In the era of fake news, it is critical that research be translated and published as widely and accurately as possible. Among many journalists, however, academics are notorious for their caveats, sub-clauses, and unwillingness to tell a good story. Research experts often find it challenging to engage non-specialist audiences in ways that preserve the rigor and credibility of their work.

This workshop will offer a framework, tools, and actionable strategies to write research narratives that inform and engage non-specialist audiences. It will focus on how to develop a brief, effective research summary tailored for one or more publics beyond your field who may or may not have research backgrounds.

We will explore how to create common ground, prioritize key points, preserve credibility, and invite curiosity. The principles we will discuss can be applied to a wide range of genres such as op-eds, educational case studies, and summaries for funding proposals.

Participants will:

Identify one or more publics as your target audience
Focus your argument for that audience
Draft the first sentence of your next writing project

Held on 11/2/22 with YaliniDream and Meenadchi

Marking the launch of the oral history collection “Tamil Feminist Liberation: An Archive of What Could Be,” the PublicsLab and South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) will be hosting a participatory, interactive workshop on holding complexity when facing traumatic histories of communal violence. This in-person workshop is catered towards practitioners and individuals who work with, are part of, or connected to communities and diasporas experiencing post-war collective trauma, histories of ethnic cleansing, and internecine (in-group) violence.

Oftentimes, communities that have endured civil/structural/armed violence simultaneously include recipients, witnesses, and perpetrators of harm. Sometimes the same person can identify with all three categories. The diasporic Ilankai (Sri Lankan) Tamil community is no exception, having endured decades of violence at the hands of the Sri Lankan state, majoritarian forces, global migration regimes, and from within the Tamil community itself. Under these conditions, healing community trauma means embracing the complexities of violence inflicted and endured by members of the same ethnicity, locality, and family.

Listening to complexities and nuances Tamil feminists offer in their storytelling, we will have the opportunity to reflect upon our relationship to complexities we embody. We will explore how the capacity for complex realities and possibilities live in the communities we value, love, or move through. This interactive participatory workshop guides you to notice the wisdom of your body through journaling, breath, gentle movement and storytelling.

Portions of this workshop will include references to violence. You are encouraged to arrive with materials that are grounding to you (i.e. a smooth rock in your pocket or wearing a fabric that reminds you of soft warmth). Folks are always welcome to participate in the manner that is comfortable to you and to honor your needs and self-care during the course of our time together.

This workshop builds on the launch event for “Tamil Feminist Liberation: An Archive of What Could Be” held on September 30, 2022.

Held on 2/15/22 with Nic Caldwell, J. Silvia Cho, Emily Drabinski, Diana Moronta, Sal Robinson, and Madeleine Barnes

Libraries are places of refuge in times of crisis. As we confront conspiracy theories, misinformation, political unrest, violence, and ongoing systemic failures, we turn to libraries for reliable information, pedagogy, activism, and community. Responding to urgent needs, library professionals are fighting to address the barriers that prevent marginalized communities from accessing library resources. Like radical activist and librarian Audre Lorde, these information professionals recognize libraries as spaces for organizing and challenging the ways that current social infrastructures work for and against people. As such, they are confronting the ways that library classification systems reflect and reinforce systems of power outside of library walls and developing tools to help create more accessible and equitable libraries.

This panel features librarians, library workers, and curators who will discuss the role of social justice in their work and share insights into social justice initiatives that are being led by the library profession. Panelists will discuss the exciting ways that libraries are currently incorporating social justice practices into their work through:

critical cataloging
critical information literacy
classification work
anti-racist pedagogy
the development of open educational resources
community engagement
collaboration with instructors
immigrant representation in library systems, and more.

Panelists will also address misconceptions about libraries and shed light on the often invisible labor, advocacy, critical thinking, and care involved in librarianship. Following in Lorde’s footsteps, these panelists are breathing new life into library spaces and ensuring that we all have access to the information resources we need now and in the future. As a culture, we are familiar with the idea that libraries are essential to a healthy democracy. This panel will examine the role of libraries in creating not only an equitable society, but a better world.

Held on 2/22/22 with Michael Ryan Clark, Gab Mejia, Michael O. Snyder, and Julian Victor

In moments of historic crisis, art often emerges as one way humanity wrestles with what is happening around us. In this virtual exhibition, photographers and filmmakers who have dedicated their lives to documenting the climate crisis come together to showcase their work and provide insight into what they have learned while traveling the world and witnessing the effects of climate change. In a media landscape dominated by grim climate news, these media makers demonstrate the importance of optimism, beauty, and a commitment to justice.

Held on 3/1/22 with Marina Anderson, Chris Morgan, Kara Norton, Monica Varsanyi, and Michael Ryan Clark

While large corporations and the wealthiest nations are primarily responsible for the fossil fuel emissions that drive the climate crisis we are now facing, the worst impacts of that crisis will be felt most keenly in communities around the globe that have not benefited from rapid industrialization. Climate justice has emerged as a concept that acknowledges this disparity and calls for approaches that center the experiences and voices of communities that face the greatest threats.

In this panel, experts representing the fields of ecology, earth and environmental sciences, journalism, and indigenous activism will discuss their own approaches to climate justice and what those of us in the academy can do to help the cause through our own teaching, research, and activism. Topics covered will include:

The ethics of collaboration between scholars and communities, especially indigenous communities
Resources and methods educators can use to bring climate justice into the classroom
Countering misinformation and false narratives around climate change
The interconnectedness of wild spaces to the health of our communities, and the broader relationship between culture and ecosystems
The importance of incorporating science communication into our curricula

Held on 4/5/22 with Timmy Châu, Victoria Copeland, Jada Shannon, Azadeh Zohrabi, and Cameron Rasmussen

This panel conversation will bring together organizers, educators, and students engaged in abolitionist organizing and education, in and around colleges and universities. While organizing on campuses has long challenged prisons, punishment, and police, there have been important organizing efforts that have emerged over the past several years. Education efforts for people in prison and those coming home have also played an important role in advancing possibilities for abolition and decarceration. This conversation looks at how these various efforts emerged, the work they are engaged in, what they have learned in their organizing and education efforts, and to share about building abolitionist organizing and education campuses more generally.

Held on 5/3/22 with Leah Paulos

Producing scholarly work is no small undertaking. After months or years of writing, editing, and revising your work, you won’t want your efforts to go unnoticed. Whether you’re at the publication stage, drafting a prospectus, or somewhere in between, you might wonder if there are steps you can take along the way to make your work stand out to multiple audiences. What can you do to help your work make a visible impact within and beyond academia, and how can you ensure that your work receives the attention it deserves?

Join Leah Paulos, founder and principal of Press Shop PR, an independent book publicity firm based in Brooklyn, for a workshop on generating interest in your work. Named one of the country’s top PR firms by the Observer, Press Shop helps authors and publishers secure high-profile media coverage for their books. Paulos will help demystify aspects of book publicity and share her strategies for working with academic authors who want to reach multiple publics. You will be invited to participate in short writing exercises aimed to help you identify the potential reach of your work, and Paulos will share practical advice about what you can do now to set yourself up for success.

Read the blog post by Daniel Valtueña about fostering curriculum change.

Held on 9/29/21 with the PublicsLab

Please join the PublicsLab for a workshop on transforming doctoral curriculum in the humanities and humanistic social sciences at The Graduate Center for the good of the public. Together, we will consider the promise and potential of doctoral education in the humanities to be both more student-centered and more public facing. We will address the following central question: How can we support graduate students in doing public scholarship and preparing for careers both inside and outside the academy?

This two-hour workshop is required for anyone who intends to apply for an $8,000 Doctoral Curriculum Enhancement Grant* from the PublicsLab, but all Graduate Center faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences are invited to register. We will hear from the 2019 and 2020 DCEG recipients about the progress of their projects and consider in detail what changes might be made specifically to the curriculum of a department.

*2021 will be the last round of DCEGs that the PublicsLab will distribute from the current round of Mellon funding.

Held on 9/30/21 with Sandra Lopez-Monsalve, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Latif Nasser, and Andrew Viñales

In the last fifteen years, podcasting has emerged as an important mode of telling stories, disseminating knowledge and advancing discourse. As podcasting has become more popular, scholars have taken up the form to both advance their research and use their skills and training in creative ways. This panel, comprised of podcasters both inside and outside the academy, will consider podcasting’s potential for scholarly communication, public scholarship, and alternative careers.

This panel will address such questions as: What aspects of academic training are useful in podcasting? What kinds of stories and conversations are best suited for podcasting? What is the relationship between podcasting and other modes of knowledge production inside and outside the academy?

Held on 10/14/21 with Alyssa A.L. James and Brendane Tynes, hosts of Zora’s Daughters podcast

Creating a podcast that speaks to and from their research can help academics broaden their impact and refine their unique scholarly voice. In this workshop Alyssa and Brendane, the PhD candidates behind Zora’s Daughters podcast, will help participants turn their scholarly interests into an idea for a widely accessible podcast.

This 90 minute workshop will cover:

How podcasts are useful for boosting your scholarly and public profile
Choosing a topic and developing a podcast around it
Finding your Why
Identifying your audience

Held on 10/26/21 with Anna Malaika Tubbs

The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation started out as Anna Malaika Tubbs’ PhD dissertation in sociology for Cambridge University and ended up as a critically acclaimed and popular publication with Macmillan Publishers.

Writing for broader audiences not only opens doors for academics as writers; making scholarly work more accessible can also open doors for those who are not usually included in academic conversations. In this workshop, Anna will walk participants through conceptualizing their dissertations to reach a much broader audience than traditional scholarly monographs.

This one-hour workshop will cover:

Choosing and refining a topic with broad appeal
Making the material (particularly theory) accessible to a wide audience
Finding a publisher
Promoting the book
Navigating the relationship between the book and your dissertation
Being a scholar in the public eye

Held on 10/27/21 with Anna Malaika Tubbs and Robyn C. Spencer

Join Anna Malaika Tubbs for a discussion of her groundbreaking and critically acclaimed book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. In this “dynamic blend of biography and manifesto” (The New Yorker), Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America’s most pivotal heroes. The author speaks with Robyn C. Spencer, professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center and Lehman College and author of The Revolution has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party.

Held on 11/5/21 with Sean Campbell, Jeffrey Butts, Mariely López-Santana, and Kara Norton

Every day, thousands of experts are contacted by members of the media to offer context, commentary, interpretation, and opinion on current events. Academics and PhDs all have areas of expertise, many of which can be relevant to these current events. But there is a gulf of uncertainty between knowing your area of expertise and positioning yourself as someone who journalists can call on –– and then, of course, there is the question of what to do if you are called. Nonetheless, for academics and PhDs who want to have an impact beyond their disciplines, media engagement can be an important tool in the toolbox.

This panel –– which consists of both members of the media and faculty who engage frequently with the media –– will consider the ins and outs of media engagement for academics and PhDs. Topics covered include:

Why, when, and how academics might want to engage with the media
Genres of media engagement (op-ed, TV interview, print interview, etc.)
The priorities and objectives of journalists and academics
The role of media in scholarly communication
Social media as media

Held on 11/9/21 & 11/16/21

Many researchers hope their research will have an impact on the world, whether that means influencing the way people see themselves and others, affecting public policy, curing or preventing disease, or telling an as-yet untold narrative. In addition to reasons of altruism, we also know that impact is important for grant applications and building a career. But how can we as researchers increase the chances that our research will be noticed and therefore have the impact(s) we want it to?

In this two-part workshop led by science journalist Kara Jamie Norton, and award-winning filmmaker and photographer Michael Clark, we will explore how to build an impact campaign through different types of media that will make your work accessible to a broader audience.

In our first session, we will consider social media as a tool to disseminate research findings, including:

Breaking down new and innovative research for a general audience
Infographics and visual representations of research
Speaking to and working with journalists

In our second session, we will consider the importance of film and photography for impact, including:

Crafting story for film and video
How to film compelling stories with a smartphone
Working with filmmakers and photographers and how they bring value
Building impact into your grant applications

Held on 6/1/21 – 6/2/21 with Mike Mena

GOAL: This 2-day workshop will introduce three ways to utilize YouTube as an academic: 1) As a platform to present research and scholarship to a wider public; 2) As a place to upload creative ‘visual essays’ and/or ‘lecture videos;’ and, 3) As a way to advance your own career in academia.

DESCRIPTION: Starting a YouTube channel can be a daunting task. Day One of this workshop focuses on two video formats: ‘visual essays’ and ‘lecture videos.’ ‘Visual essays’ can be thought of as a way to produce knowledge for public consumption—intentionally backgrounding jargon and foregrounding academic themes through story telling. The ‘creative lecture video’ is presented as a way to relay information driven by creativity and timeliness. Day Two is a walk-thru of Mike’s YouTube channel with a focus on branding and what it means to “niche-down” (to specialize on one theme/topic/area). Attendees will see the ‘backstage’ area of a creator YouTube account which provides detailed analytics/statistics that can be used to help your channel grow. Mike will also talk about the ways he has used his YouTube channel to advance his own career in academia.

TAKEAWAYS: At specific moments during the workshop, attendees will be given time to brainstorm ideas to either modify their current YouTube channel or conceptualize a future YouTube channel. Through this scaffolded approach, attendees will leave with a coherent entry point to YouTube stardom!

Held on 2/18/21 – 2/19/21 with the Futures Initiative and PublicsLab

The Futures Initiative and PublicsLab of The Graduate Center, CUNY invite you to attend a free virtual conference and workshop: Graduate Education at Work in the World on 18-19 February 2021. The conference will bring together practitioners, students, faculty, and administrators to collectively imagine and redesign graduate education to support students, scholarship, and the public good.

For more information, including the program schedule and event registration, please visit the official conference website.

Read the reflection blog post by Tania Avilés Vergara about this event.

Held on 3/10/21 with Brian Jones

Activists and historians both attempt to revise popular narratives about our collective past in order to inform and expand our collective imaginations in the present. Historians rely on archives, but they can also be useful to activists. Using the archives to explore the history of activism presents one way to engage students in formal educational settings, and to make useful historical knowledge accessible to activists and a broader public. In this workshop, Brian Jones will discuss several ongoing projects in which he is involved in connecting archives, educators, and activists.

Read the reflection blog post by Madeleine Barnes about this event.

Held on 3/12/21 with Anthony Arnove, Zakiya Collier, Ansley Erickson, Dominique Jean-Louis, and Brian Jones

Panelists will talk broadly about the ways in which scholars, archivists, and activists can and do use activist archives in formal and informal educational spaces to make historical information accessible and useful to the public.

Moderator: Brian Jones, Associate Director of Education, Schomburg Center

Panelists:

Anthony Arnove, Director, Voices of a People’s History of the United States

Zakiya Collier, Digital Archivist, Schomburg Center

Ansley Erickson, Historian, Teachers College, Columbia University

Dominique Jean-Louis, Public Historian & doctoral student, New York University

Read the recap and reflection blog post by Madeleine Barnes for this series of workshops.

Held on 9/9/20 – 9/11/20 with Siovahn Walker

This workshop is perfect for humanists who have an entrepreneurial streak and want to make a difference in the world. In the course of three 90-minute seminars, we will explore how to envision, plan, launch, and run your own mission-driven business or nonprofit. Packed with practical tips and focused on the actual nitty-gritty of building a mission-driven organization, this workshop is a perfect reminder that the best career may be the one you build for yourself.

9 September 2020 (11:00am-12:30pm ET)
Imagine It: Envisioning and Planning Your Business or Nonprofit

10 September 2020 (11:00am-12:30pm ET)
Launch It: Funding and Starting Your Business or Nonprofit

11 September 2020 (11:00am-12:30pm ET)
Run It: Tools for Making it Through Your First Year

Read this reflection blog post by Stacy Hartman on curriculum change.

Held on 9/25/20 with the PublicsLab

Please join the PublicsLab for a workshop on transforming doctoral curriculum in the humanities and humanistic social sciences at The Graduate Center for the good of the public. Together, we will consider the promise and potential of doctoral education in the humanities to be both more student-centered and more public facing. We will address the following central question: How can we support graduate students in doing public scholarship and preparing for careers both inside and outside the academy?

This two-hour workshop is required for anyone who intends to apply for one of our four $8,000 Doctoral Curriculum Enhancement Grants from the PublicsLab, but all Graduate Center faculty in the humanities and humanistic social sciences are invited to register. We will hear from the 2019 DCEG recipients about the progress of their projects and consider in detail what changes might be made specifically to the curriculum of a department.

Read the recap and reflection blog post by Madeleine Barnes for this event.

Held on 10/7/20 with Weshoyot Alvitre, Lee Francis IV, and Will Fenton

Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga (Red Planet Books and Comics, 2019) is a graphic novel about the Paxton massacres of 1763. However, as the title suggests, the Paxton vigilantes associated with this tragedy are peripheral to this story. This volume introduces new interpreters and new forms of evidence in order to foreground Indigenous victims, survivors, and kin in ways that colonial printed records – with their focus on colonial elites – cannot do alone. Written, illustrated, and published by Native partners, Ghost River confronts challenges that accompany studies of colonial America. How can we tell difficult stories that don’t reproduce past assumptions? Can we recollect tragedy without eulogizing it? And how can acts of artistic reinterpretation reveal the fluidity of history, memory, and collective mythology?

In a roundtable conversation, artist Weshoyot Avlitre (Tongva), author Dr. Lee Francis IV (Pueblo of Laguna), and editor Dr. Will Fenton will discuss the scholarly and creative collaboration behind this project, and how artistic reinterpretation of colonial records enabled the team to create imagine a narrative that re-centers the Indigenous past and present in studies of colonial America.

Explore GhostRiver.org

Watch the Documentary

Read the Digital Edition

Held on 10/8/20 with Will Fenton

In this 90-minute workshop, Will Fenton, Director of Research and Public Programs at the Library Company of Philadelphia, will offer a brief tour of his Scalar-based digital humanities project, Digital Paxton, followed by an introduction to Scalar (Alliance for Networking Visual Culture) as an online publishing platform with a comparative analysis to Omeka, Manifold, and WordPress. In addition to discussing the limitations and affordances of such platforms, Fenton will guide participants through the first steps of developing their own Scalar book or project.

Held on 11/9/20 with Jill Cirasella

Sometimes you write for other scholars, and sometimes you write for the broader public. But is there really such a stark distinction between audiences? When the public can access your scholarly works as well, you can reach readers you never imagined. Furthermore, your research can be discussed, cited, linked to, and built on in ways you never expected. We will discuss the many reasons to make your scholarly works open access, and cover best practices for ensuring long-term access for all.

Held on 11/19/20 with Mike Mena

iMovie continues to be one of the most accessible and powerful editing programs available for free to all Apple/MacOS users. It is, however, notoriously intimidating to taking your first steps into the video editing world.

In this 1.5-hour workshop, Mike Mena will guide participants through the process of editing a video from beginning to end, privileging the needs of educators wishing to make lecture videos. Mike will verbally explain each step while his iMovie screen is “shared” through the Zoom platform. Participants will be able to ask questions, take notes, and walk away with the recording of the live video editing session.

Mike will cover the following:

Trimming the beginning/end of video
Cutting out mistakes, stumbles, and pauses
Raising the volume of your video
What are the important function “buttons”
How to crop/re-size for video
How to add a title-screen
How to overlay text/keywords
How to add pictures/PowerPoint slides

…and more.

Held on 5/26/20 with Mike Mena

Module 1 will take a ‘crash course’ approach to audio/video production, or, how to produce a basic video on a laptop and/or phone. Serving as the first in a series of workshops on online teaching, this module will focus on:

theoretical approaches to the idea of ‘quality’ media;
clearing up misconceptions about what must be prioritized;
the technology needed to create audio/video; and
the top 5 things to do and top 5 things not to do.

The emphasis of this workshop series will be on recording and production, but will also include discussion of digital pedagogy.

Held on 5/27/20 with Mike Mena

This second module of the series will guide attendees through the process of capturing better sound when producing videos for online teaching. Topics covered include, but are not limited to:

Why is audio more important than video?
Capturing audio on a laptop versus a phone
Sound treatment and sound proofing
Proper mic placement
Technology needed

The emphasis of this workshop series will be on recording and production, but will also include discussion of digital pedagogy.

Held on 5/28/20 with Mike Mena

This third module in the series will guide attendees through the process of capturing better video when producing videos for online teaching. Topics covered include, but are not limited to:

Using a laptop versus phone
Built-in webcams versus external webcams
Do I need to purchase anything, or can I do this on a budget?
Proper video framing
Lighting techniques
Future of digital pedagogy
Presenting conference papers on a video platform

The emphasis of this workshop series will be on recording and production, but will also include discussion of digital pedagogy.

Held on 8/18/20 with Mike Mena

This workshop will take a ‘crash course’ approach to producing videos for online teaching when working with time constraints minimal video production equipment. In this short workshop we will focus on:

Reviewing the most popular video formats (Where do I sit? Should I use text on screen? Should I use PowerPoint?)
The importance of camera angles (best placement for your laptop/phone for recording lectures)
Designing your background for video (Should I sit in front of a blank wall? Or, should I decorate my background?)
Top three things to prioritize

Held on 8/19/20 and 8/20/20 with Mike Mena

During these community feedback sessions, Mike Mena will be providing constructive feedback on short 2-3 minute videos created by a handful of instructors/faculty. The goal is to provide a platform for the community to participate in these discussions in addition to Mike’s expert insights.

Held on 2/13/20 with Siqi Tu, Robert Yates, Cihan Tekay, and Katina Rogers

At this workshop co-led by the Futures Initiative and the PublicsLab, we will discuss the following questions: What is the public––or publics? What does being a scholar in public mean to you? And more importantly, how can we develop a public voice as early-career scholars? With the help of panelists experienced in engaging with public audiences, we will brainstorm answers to these questions and come up with concrete and measurable plans to develop a public voice this semester. We strongly encourage attendees to come to the event with ideas on how to engage with the public in connection with their scholarship.

Held on 3/9/20 with Bianca Williams, Stacy Hartman, Anne Valk, and Luke Waltzer

Graduate Center students often have years of experience designing and teaching courses, facilitating classroom discussions, selecting and supporting educational technologies, aligning learning goals with curricula, and supporting students with a range of needs. How, though, does one translate such experiences to work beyond the classroom? This workshop, co-sponsored by the PublicsLab and the Teaching and Learning Center, will feature presenters who have utilized skills gained from teaching in other projects and organizations (e.g. within higher education, in the public sector, in social justice organizing, etc.). Attendees will learn how to translate their teaching skills across various contexts and locations. They will also have the opportunity to gain firsthand experience with the language and techniques necessary to implement these methods.

Held on 5/1/20 with Katina Rogers, Cihan Tekay, Stacy Hartman, and Justin Beauchamp

In place of the postponed Graduate Education at Work in the World conference, we are excited to announce ‘Graduate Education for the Public Good’ on May 1st, 2020 from 3:00-4:00pm (ET), co-sponsored by the PublicsLab and the Futures Initiative. The conference organizers will be hosting a special edition of HASTAC’s Digital Fridays online workshop series to discuss how building a university that is truly worth fighting for means thinking more expansively about what constitutes scholarly success—not only to support individual career pathways, but also to work toward greater equity and inclusion in the academy.

Held on 9/16/19 with Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff

Many of us are used to expressing ourselves in the classroom or through the formulaic forums of academic research, writing, and conferences, but how do you communicate your expertise outside of academia? This workshop will provide a 360-degree approach to thinking about your professional communications strategy, messaging, and content (and what all of that means), how to find your voice(s), and how to tell your story to a variety of audiences across different platforms to keep it fresh and relevant.

Held on 9/27/19 with Patricia A. Matthew

In a guided discussion that focuses on the topics listed below, graduate students will have the opportunity to develop a plan for how their research can be disseminated to audiences beyond their peers and the academy. We will focus on the importance of tone, prose, and timing as they relate to when and how to join a public conversation. Our conversation will include close structural analysis of two essays written for the public. Topics will include:

Best practices
Managing risks
Rewards
Anatomy of a public essay

Held on 9/27/19 with Patricia A. Matthew

As colleges and universities face more scrutiny and critiques under the guise of ‘freedom of speech’ and diversity terms are co-opted beyond recognition, it is more important than ever that faculty reevaluate their subject positions in the classroom and reconsider teaching practices that need to be reoriented for contemporary students. Based on her essay in Profession (‘Academic Freedom in the Classroom: Students and the Trouble with Labels’), Professor Matthew’s talk offers faculty productive ways to think about whiteness as an institution that move beyond the language of ‘privilege’ and ‘intersectionality.’

Held on 10/15/19 with Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff

Have a killer concept based on your doctoral research and want to share it to a wider audience? Academics are increasingly writing for a variety of media outlets. But how, exactly do you get your work published in the non-academic press? Join us as we talk about what makes for a good story, how to find a place to publish your work, identifying who to send your story proposal to, what makes a good story pitch, what the process is like (from preliminary research to pitching and editorial review), and tips from the front lines of how to build your portfolio.

Held on 10/22/19 with Bianca Williams, Glory Edim, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Christen Smith, and Jamia Wilson

Toni Morrison. Octavia Butler. Claudia Rankine. During times of political strife and social change, Black women writers such as these are truth-tellers who remind us of who we are and where we’ve been while imagining new futures. Their writing anchors organizing communities and book clubs—on and offline—as readers passionately discuss their texts, make new friends, seek refuge within community, and strategize action steps toward liberation. In recent years, the literary world has taken notice, as newly published Black (trans and cis)women authors shine on best-selling lists. Join Glory Edim (Creator, Well-Read Black Girl), Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Founder, Brilliance Remastered), Christen Smith (Creator, Cite Black Women), and Jamia Wilson (Editor, The Feminist Press) discuss how people are using Black women’s writing to create communities of care and action, and the power of reading in this political moment. Moderated by Bianca Williams (CUNY, Graduate Center), the panelists engage in a conversation about how they channel their love for feminist practice and Black women’s literature into their professional careers.

Held on 10/23/19 with Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Are you ready to be more free than you were when you woke up this morning? Join Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs for an interactive space where we activate our memories, each other and Black feminist books as oracles towards the world we need right now. This workshop will use poetry, listening and self-reflection to create a space of growth, transformation and trust.

Held on 10/23/19 with Christen Anne Smith

Black women’s work is often undervalued, appropriated and/or erased. This is particularly true when it comes to citation inside and outside of the academy. This workshop will lead participants in a series of guided conversations on citation as radical praxis. How can we disrupt historical patterns of erasing and appropriating Black women’s contributions? What steps can we take to reframe how we create and circulate knowledge? How can we heal after erasure? Key topics are building awareness; strategies for critical engagement; the politics of acknowledgement; amplifying Black women’s voices to create equitable spaces for everyone; and healing as empowerment.

Held on 10/23/19 with Jamia Wilson

Jamia Wilson, Editor of The Feminist Press (FP), discusses the future of feminist publishing. Participants will learn about how feminist publishing is practiced at FP, and how the organization believes it impacts the publishing industry at large.

Held on 10/23/19 with Glory Edim

In this presentation, Glory Edim talks participants through her journey from creative strategist at Kickstarter to author and community builder as Founder of Well-Read Black Girl. Participants interested in learning about marketing and creating community on and off-line will be especially interested in this workshop.

Held on 11/4/19 with Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff

We’ve all had the nightmare that exposes our fears of public speaking, the one where you’re alone on stage in front of an audience. This workshop will help you improve your oral presentation skills and conquer your fear of being alone on stage. We’ll review your approach towards oral communications, focusing on a variety of formats including elevator pitches, informational meetings, public presentations/featured speaker roles, panel and roundtable talks, radio appearances, and podcasts.

Held on 11/15/19 with Sara Ogger

Join Executive Director of Humanities New York Dr. Sara Ogger to consider how we center the needs of humans when designing humanities programming and spaces for a range of publics. What sorts of ethical and pragmatic choices help promote equity and access for members of the community who are often excluded? How may we better articulate the values of the humanities through these choices, and what tools in the humanities toolbox do we bring to this discussion?

This challenging, interactive, and team-based workshop will address these questions in both philosophical and concrete terms. Attendees will have the chance to think about specific opportunities and challenges related to creating humanities programming and spaces and to collaboratively tackle problems facing those who create humanities programming every day.

Held on 11/18/19 with Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff

Perhaps part of your professional communication strategy includes penning a few opinion-analysis pieces, but where do you start? Why should you consider writing an op-ed (at least once)? What makes for a good op-ed, how do you go about placing it, and what can you expect from the experience? We’ll cover these questions and more as we dig deeply into the fine art of the op-ed.

Held on 9/14/22 with Dr. Lorgia García Peña and Bianca C. Williams

Join the PublicsLab and Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) for a conversation with Professor Lorgia García Peña, Mellon Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University, on her groundbreaking new book, Community as Rebellion: A syllabus for surviving academia as a woman of color (2022, Haymarket Press). In conversation with PublicsLab Faculty Lead and Associate Professor of Anthropology Professor Bianca Williams, Professor García Peña will offer practices for creating liberatory spaces within institutions that are historically and perhaps inherently violent, colonialist, exclusionary, and inequitable. The conversation will consider how we –– as teachers, activists, and scholars –– can resist the academy’s extractive and exploitative practices, and how we might transform existing institutional spaces in ways that create more liberation and cultivate community for students and faculty of color.

Held on 9/16/22 with Dr. Lorgia García Peña

As a follow up to the event, “Community as Rebellion: A Conversation with Dr. Lorgia García Peña,” the PublicsLab and Transformative Learning in the Humanities (TLH) invites currently-enrolled graduate students at the CUNY Graduate Center to join Dr. García Peña for an in-person workshop to discuss her book, Community as Rebellion: A syllabus for surviving academia as a woman of color (2022, Haymarket Press), in greater detail and be in community with one another.

Held on 9/30/22 with Sharika Thiranagama, Mahendran Thiruvarangan, Meenadchi, YaliniDream, Aanjali Allegakoen, and Kartik Amarnath

Join the PublicsLab and South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) as we celebrate the launch of the oral history collection “Tamil Feminist Liberation: An Archive of What Could Be.” This oral history collection is one of the first attempts to document the legacies of feminist dissent in the Sri Lankan Tamil community. Sri Lanka was home to one of the longest civil wars in modern history, reaching a bloody climax in May 2009, where tens of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians were massacred by government forces. Enforced disappearances, acts of genocide, torture, and internecine assassinations continue to reverberate in today’s ‘post-war’ era as Sri Lanka faces the worst economic crisis in its postcolonial history. The purpose of this oral history collection is to document the transformative and liberatory potential of a Tamil feminist politics when practiced across political and social difference while faced with the adversities of armed and structural violence.

Join us as we examine what a feminist politics, practiced in the context of Sri Lankan Tamil political struggle, can teach us about facilitating transformation in today’s global era of rising fascism and sea levels. This virtual launch will include a panel of project advisors and interviewees.

Held on 10/15/22 with Dána-Ain Davis, Njera Keith, Simin Farkhondeh, Natalie Gomez-Velez, Lauren H, Brenna McCaffrey, Zoey Thill, and others

The PublicsLab and CUNY for Abortion Rights welcome you to an in-person gathering to learn and strategize with the movement for safe, legal, and free abortion access. In an opening panel, breakout sessions, and a concluding assembly, we will exchange lessons between organizers, scholars, and frontline workers. All participants will emerge from this event with connections and tangible skills to contribute to the urgent struggle for reproductive justice in New York and beyond.

Intentions for the day include:

Hear firsthand accounts of recent abortion rights victories in Latin America and Ireland.
Gain insight from Black liberation analyses on bodily autonomy.
Build bridges between abortion care inside and clinic defense outside.
Activate media skills to document, educate, and disseminate information.
Strategize how to expand this struggle in our workplaces and universities.