The Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity (CCDE) celebrated its official opening with three days of events on May 27 through 29. Below is a recap of the workshops, panel discussions, guest speakers, and reception through text, videos, and photos.
May 27: Humans communicate on many levels: spoken language, tone, body language, style and personality. The fact that we have complex cultural identities and a host of differing past experiences increases the probability of cross-cultural miscommunications. This workshop, led by Rosetta Lee, presents major cross-cultural communication theories, ways that cultural values, power, privilege and differences affect the way we communicate, tools for questioning assumptions, and ways to improve cross-cultural communications skills.
May 28: Students of the Minority Leaders in Communication (MLC) group hosted a panel discussion focused on racial representations in the FOX television show “Empire.”
May 29: Opening Remarks
The founding Director of the CCDE Ralina Joseph kicked off the final day with an introduction, along with one of her mentors Sheila Edwards Lange, Vice President for Minority Affairs & Vice Provost of Diversity at the UW.
Keynote Address
Introduced by Divisional Dean of Social Sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences Judy Howard, Herman Gray presented the keynote speech titled “Precarious Diversity: Media, Representation, Inequality.”
Gray is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz and his work traverses a wide terrain of knowledge, including metatheoretical mediations on politics of difference in media; historiographies of racialized television industries; critiques of Black men’s images on television; elucidations of racialized representations in the news; explorations of the nuances of marketing to African Americans through media; and studies of jazz music, musicians, and industries.
Staged reading of “The Mamalogues”
Introduced by Sonnet Retman, Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies and Affiliate Faculty of the CCDE, Lisa B. Thompson offered a chance for attendees to explore the intersections of race, class, and motherhood in the age of anxiety with her reading of “The Mamalogues.” The performance explored how past and current racial traumas shape contemporary black motherhood, while illustrating the frustrations of all women who find it difficult to find their bearings within the current cultural landscape.
Thompson is a playwright and Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and affiliate faculty in the departments of English, Women and Gender Studies and Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently the Associate Director of the John L. Warfield Center of African and African American Studies.
Panel: “Is Equity a Scholarly Responsibility?”
Scholars take it upon themselves to transform academia by pushing the limits of modern and historical theories and practices by actively engaging with several communities of different backgrounds. The purpose of the panel was to challenge students and researchers across different disciplines alike to discuss how they investigate, communicate, and address equity.
Panelists:
- Dr. Manoucheka Celeste, Assistant Professor (Ph.D., 2011) – Haiti in 2010, inequity across different areas and contexts
- Carmen Gonzalez – Ph.D. project at USC
- Michelle Habell-Pallan, Associate Professor – How do we leverage the sustainable preservation on archiving documents on women at the UW
- Dr. Wadiya Udell, Assistant Professor – How to provide access to care for adolescents without needing a parent
- Philip Garland (B.A., 2001; M.A., 2003) – How racial profiling was covered before and after September 11
Moderated by Stephanie Smallwood, Associate Professor
“It’s not just about more bodies, it’s about increasing epistemologies and the language of evaluation” @mhabellpallan #uwccde #uwcdrg
Comm & Difference (@UWCDRG), May 29, 2015
Panel: “Thinking With and Through Difference: Popular Representations, Race and Political Economy”
Popular culture – visual, aural, and textual – has increasingly been seen as significant to an understanding of political economies by a diverse range of disciplines including history, anthropology, and political science. Researchers connected from different disciplines to discuss how they better understand difference – as a vector, a category, a modality.
Panelists:
- Madhavi Murty, Assistant Professor (Ph.D., 2011)
- Ron Krabill, Associate Professor
- Sonnet Retman, Associate Professor
Moderated by LeiLani Nishime, Assistant Professor
The final reception offered a chance for guests to see the newly renovated space in the CMU building. As part of a premier public research institution, CCDE offers a cohesive space for all groups to utilize in deploying skills of scholarship, communication, and critique the bout against the inequalities that persist in the face of our changing world.
To view all the photos from the opening events, visit our Flickr page >>
