In collaboration with the UNC Office for Diversity and Inclusion and the School of Social Work, the Jordan Institute for Families is co-hosting the Race, Racism, and Racial Equity (R3) Symposium virtual series. Our goals with this series are to 1) highlight the work of UNC scholars to confront racism, 2) foster collaboration between scholars including faculty, research scientists, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students, and 3) make connections to the wider campus and community. The events are moderated by Dr. Travis Albritton, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the School of Social Work. Our first event on September 10 addressed the following theme: “The Historical Exploitation of Black and Brown Bodies at UNC: Learning from the Past to Change the Present.” Our panelists were:
- Brandon Bayne, an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, whose current research focuses on issues of race, religion, memory, and erasure, connecting the 20th century memorialization of colonial missionaries in the U. S. southwest to white supremacist monuments in the American South and their purposeful erasure of Indigenous and Black histories.
- Laura Hart, technical services archivist in Wilson Special Collections Library, who writes and edits archival description chiefly for the Southern Historical Collection and Southern Folklife Collection and co-chairs the University Libraries’ Conscious Editing Steering Committee, which guides descriptive practices and narrative framing that is centered in diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.
- James Leloudis, Professor of History and Peter T. Grauer Associate Dean for Honors Carolina, co-chairs UNC’s Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward with Prof. Patricia Parker. He has published extensively on the history of the American South. His latest book is Fragile Democracy: The Struggle Over Race and Voting Rights in North Carolina.
- Sonoe Nakasone is the Community Archivist for the University Libraries’ Mellon-funded Community Driven Archives project, housed in the Southern Historical Collection of Wilson Special Collections Library. Community Driven Archives seeks to address imbalances in the archival record by supporting marginalized communities to collect and preserve their own historical records. Sonoe is also co-chair of the Libraries’ Conscious Editing Steering Committee.
- Donna Nixon, Electronic Resources Librarian and Clinical Assistant Professor of Law, teaches legal research and Introduction to Law of the U.S. She is curator of the digital collection Law School First – The African Americans Who Integrated UNC-Chapel Hill and the North Carolina Law Review essay which documents the successful legal fight by the five men who integrated UNC-Chapel Hill.
Find the recording and additional resources here.
On Wednesday November 1, the second event, entitled “Cultural Industry, Techno-capitalism, and Labor: The Mediated Exploitation of Black and Brown Bodies,” featured scholars from across UNC, including Business and Communication, who shared their work addressing issues of language, representation, cultural appropriation, and decontextualization of Black and Brown labor as it appears through a variety of media. Panelists included:
- Kiara Childs, a fourth year doctoral student in the Department of Communication, who studies Black women’s digital culture and how social media is both a place of invisibility and visibility for Black women;
- Dr. Stephanie Mahin, Clinical Assistant Professor in the Management & Corporate Communication Area at Kenan-Flagler Business School, who examines how organizations use social media and social networks to mobilize stakeholder groups from purchase interest to protest;
- Ashley Mattheis, PhD. Candidate in the Department of Communication and a Doctoral Fellow with the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right, who studies communicative processes of manufacturing consent to cultural hegemony, online media using gendered logics to circulate racism, and exploring how media are used in ongoing attempts to ontologize racial difference; and
- Dr. Michael Waltman, Professor in the Department of Communication, whose research examines texts that are sources of identification for different social and hate groups (e.g., racist novels, manifestos, webpages, memes, on-line newspapers) to illustrate how hate speech contributes to the radicalization of group members, ethno-violence, identity formation among hate mongers, and collective memories of extremist groups.
You can view the recording here.
Our third event will be held in early February and focus on the use of visual arts interventions to confront bias and racism.