Two Movies, Several Workshops Planned

For two days, an international collection of experts will present and attend panels, lectures and films on the hot button issue of teaching race and ethnicity in higher education.

St. Francis College English Professor Athena Devlin and Sociology and Criminal Justice Professor Emily Horowitz are co-chairs of the event. "We've gotten an amazing response already with dozens of people signed up from around the country and across the globe," said Professor Horowitz. "This is a topic that is being dealt with everyday on every college campus. It's our goal to share ways professors navigate through the turbulent waters of race and ethnicity as they teach their students."

Attendees will explore the use of antiracist teaching strategies, definitions of racial, ethnic and minority groups and the innovative use of literary works in fields like Anthropology and Sociology as well as the use of social science textbooks in liberal arts classes.

On Saturday beginning at 3:30pm, Monique Walton will screen her film Still Black, at Yale, a 2006 documentary that follows up on the 1974 documentary by Warrington Hudlin (Boomerang, BeBe's Kids). Both films look at the African-American experience at Yale and how it relates to society at large. Hudlin and Walton will be there for an extended discussion directly afterwards.

A third film is Under the Skin of Multiculturalism, a documentary by Steve Spencer that looks at racial and religious issues in higher education in the United Kingdom. Under the Skin will be shown Friday at 5:00pm. Spencer will also be there to present his film.

"Few academic conferences deal with our daily experiences in the classroom," said Professor Devlin. "This is an exciting opportunity to collaborate across disciplines on our shared experiences, problems, and solutions teaching race."

The keynote address will be delivered by Bonnie TuSmith, Co-editor of Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics.

The event is sponsored by the St. Francis College departments of Sociology and Criminal Justice and English, as well as the college's Institute for International and Cross-Cultural Psychology; and the Centre for the Study of Anthropology, Sociology, and Politics at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

To pre-register, please email Professor Emily Horowitz at [email protected]. The three films are free and open to the public.

St. Francis College, founded in 1859 by the Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn, is located in Brooklyn Heights, N.Y. Since its founding, the College has pursued its Franciscan mission to provide an affordable, high-quality education to students from New York City's five boroughs and beyond.
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St. Francis College, 180 Remsen Street, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
www.sfc.edu