CFAES Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Speaker Series

CFAES 2022 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Speaker Series

Photo of the flyer promoting the speaker seriesThe CFAES Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is hosting a speaker series in 2022! Featured speakers come from diverse fields and will highlight DEI issues that appeal to a broad audience. Please save the dates so you can join us for all events! All sessions will take place on Zoom from 12:00 pm-1:15 pm EST on the third Thursdays in February, April, June, September, and November. Each session will involve a presentation followed by Q&A. See below for titles, descriptions, speaker bios, and registration links. To receive direct communications about upcoming DEI programs, please sign up for the monthly CFAES DEI Newsletter.

 

Dates, details, and speaker bios


 

What Honey Bees Can Teach Us About Shaping Social Change

February 17th 2022 – 12:00pm-1:15pm EST
Ang Roell (they/them)
Organizational Culture Consultant and Founder of They Keep Bees

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Description: 

In this talk Ang Roell (they/them) will take us into the honeybee hive and examine what honeybees, a “super-organism”, can teach us about building generative social systems.  We'll discuss building collaborative groups through setting group terms, sharing power, building collective understanding, and shaping consensus.

About the speaker:
Non-binary white person with short hair and arm tattoos wearing red lipstick and a multi-color scarfAng Roell is a beekeeper, consultant, and founder of They Keep Bees - an LGBTQ+ run apiary co-located in Western Massachusetts and South Florida that raises queen bees and produces hive products. As a consultant, Ang is committed to helping clients make the changes necessary to shift organizational culture & practice from a model of dominant power to a model of cooperative power, inspired by the ecological world. Ang holds a Master of Science in Social Justice Education from Boston University. Ang’s book Radicalize the Hive is available to download for free online. Information about their research on queen rearing is also available. They are a seasoned public speaker, and educator.  To learn more about Ang please visit their website They Keep Bees

 


 


A Close Look at Fatphobia: What it is, Why it Exists, and What it Costs Us

April 21st 2022 – 12:00pm-1:15pm EST
Savala Nolan (she/her), Executive Director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice
UC Berkeley School of Law

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Description: Fatphobia (or anti-fat bias) is widespread and has deep roots in the United States--but it isn't inevitable or innate.  It is learned, and it is particular to specific times, places, and cultures.  Why do some cultures regard fat bodies as positive or neutral while others regard fat bodies as problems to be avoided and solved?  In this talk, we'll explore a constellation of ideas that create and flow from fatphobia, from anti-black racism to patriarchy, from the BMI and the Health At Every Size rubric to core concepts of the fat liberations/body neutrality movements.  We'll consider the uses of fatphobia--what work it does in the culture--and consider what it might be like to have a world free from this learned and harmful bias.  

About the speaker:

Photo of Black woman with short hair, wearing a black blouse, red lipstick, and glassesSavala Nolan (she/her) is an author, professor, and lawyer. She is the author of Don't Let It Get You Down: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Body (Simon & Schuster; see NYT review) and is executive director of the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she teaches about the role of identity in lawyering. She and her writing have been featured in Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, Time, Harper’s Magazine, Forbes, and more.  Last year, Nolan served as an advisor on the Peabody Award-winning podcast, The Promise.  Born and raised in California, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. Photo credit: Andria Lo.

 


 


Decolonizing Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) Curricula 

June 16th 2022 – 12:00pm-1:15pm EST
Dr. Meganne Masko (she/her), Assistant Professor
Department of Music and Arts Technology, IUPUI

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Description: What does it mean when we talk about decolonizing science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) curricula? What does it look like in practice? This presentation focuses on the joint history of colonization and STEAM, how colonization manifests in modern American STEAM curricula, and how to actively work against colonization in designing and implementing curricula. Dr. Masko will contextualize these concepts within her own experiences as a disabled STEAM scholar, educator, and curriculum designer.

About the speaker:

white woman with shoulder length blonde hair wearing glasses and dark sweaterMeganne Masko, Ph.D., MT-BC/L is a board-certified and licensed music therapist. Her clinical specialties include adult oncology, palliative, and hospice care. Dr. Masko’s teaching areas of expertise include music cognition, music therapy theories and methods, and research methods. Dr. Masko earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Drake University and her Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from The University of Iowa. She is a collaborative scientist whose research explores possible epigenomic responses to music therapy, as well as the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of music therapy in addressing the spiritual care needs of patients at end-of-life.

 



Wikipedia Editing for Knowledge Equity

September 15th 2022 – 12:00pm-1:15pm EST
Dr. Alexandria Lockett (she/her), Assistant Professor of English
Spelman College

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Description: In this presentation, Dr. Lockett will discuss how Wikipedia represents historical and contemporary politics of knowledge production. She will address how Wikipedia editing among culturally diverse editors has the potential to both cultivate the development of transferable skills and fill major knowledge gaps, in terms of race and gender, across disciplinary, geographic, and institutional contexts.

About the speaker:

Smiling Black woman with long dark braids wearing a dark blouse and pink lipstick

Alexandria L. Lockett is an Assistant Professor of English at Spelman College where she teaches business, professional, and technical writing courses that center on public writing such as Wikipedia editing and copywriting for real clients. In addition, Dr. Lockett publishes the technocultural politics of knowledge production. She is the lead author of Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods (WAC Clearinghouse, April 2021, free pdf available) and co-editor of Learning From the Lived Experiences of Graduate Student Writers (Utah State University Press, May 2020, Winner of the 2021 International Writing Center Association Outstanding Book Award)Her research also appears in articles featured in Composition Studies, Enculturation, and Praxis, as well as chapters in Wikipedia @ 20: An Incomplete Revolution (MIT Press), Humans at Work in the Digital Age (Routledge), Out in the Center (Utah State University Press), and Black Perspectives on Writing Program Administration: From the Margins to the Center (SWR Press). 

 



(Mis)understanding Critical Race Theory and the Need to Confront Hard History 

November 17th 2022 – 12:00pm-1:15pm EST
Dr. Hasan Jeffries (he/him), Associate Professor,
Department of History, The Ohio State University

Description: What is Critical Race Theory? What is it Not? This presentation will separate fact from fiction, while underscoring the need to confront the most difficult aspects of America’s past honestly and directly.

About the speaker:

Smiling Black man with short facial hair wearing a white and blue pinned suit and dark tieDr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University where he has been teaching courses on African American history for the last eighteen years.

He is the author of the award-winning book Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt, and the editor of Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement, a book of essays by leading civil rights scholars on how to teach the Civil Rights Movement. He also wrote and narrated the 10-episode Audible Original series Great Figures of the Civil Rights Movement.

Dr. Jeffries has worked on several public history projects, including serving as the lead historian for the $25 million renovation of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. He is also the host of the podcast Teaching Hard History, a production of Learning for Justice, a division of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

He earned a BA in history from Morehouse College and a Ph.D. in American history with a specialization in African American history from Duke University.