Monthly Archives: April 2014

Avery Receives National Endowment for the Arts grant! Julie Dash to direct the film

We are very pleased to announce that the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston has received a $75,000 grant from the National Endowment for theArts to produce a film about the life and works of VertaMae Grovesnor.

Grosvenor is a poet, actress, culinary anthropologist, writer, and a National Public Radiocorrespondent.

A native of Hampton County, South Carolina, Grosvenor has been involved in making several documentary films including Slave Voices: Things Past Telling; and Daufuskie: Never Enough Too Soon.

She is also the author of the autobiographical cookbook Vibration Cooking, also known as The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, and of the book Thursdays and Every Other Sunday Off: A Domestic Rap.

The film will be directed by American filmmaker Julie Dash. Dash is best known for her critically acclaimed 1991 independent film Daughters of the Dust.

“I am so thrilled that we have been awarded this prestigious grant,” says Patricia Lessane, Executive Director of the Avery Research Center. “It’s my honor to work with Julie Dash to bring well-deserved attention to VertaMae’s life story and contributions to American culture—her elevation of Gullah culture through her culinary acumen and literary works, but also her role in the Beat and the Black Arts Movements, and her work in American journalism.”

NEA Acting Chairman Shigekawa said, “The NEA is pleased to announce that the Avery Research Center is recommended for an NEA Art Works grant. These NEA-supported projects will not only have a positive impact on local economies, but will also provide opportunities for people of all ages to participate in the arts, help our communities to become more vibrant, and support our nation’s artists asthey contribute to our cultural landscape.”

Upcoming at Avery Research Center: “The Souls of Black Comix” | April 18, 2014 at 6:00pm

SoulsBlackComix

Mark your calendars! Avery Research Center, April 18, 6:00 pm, McKinley Washington Auditorium 

“The Souls of Black Comix,” John Jennings, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York 

In the last decade, a new generation of black scholars, publishers, creators, archivists, documentarians, and curators have come forth with a re-imagined vision of what it means to depict the African American experience via the comics medium. An underground movement has been operating unseen, flowing in tandem to the mainstream but showing very different levels of the American experience. The Black Age of Comics is an attempt to shift the paradigm of how black images and stories are portrayed in the medium of comics. In this presentation, Dr. John Jennings discusses the history of Black images in the comics medium, and presents his own recent work, including his upcoming graphic novelization of Octavia Butler’s KINDRED (with collaborator Damian Duffy).

 

Education Reform Expert to Speak in Charleston

Education Reform Expert to Speak in Charleston.

Posted on 20 March 2014 | 12:08 pm

On April 17, 2014, the College of Charleston will host Roslyn Mickelson, an expert in school reform. She will speak at 4:30 p.m. in room 235 of the Robert Scott Small Building (175 Calhoun St.). The event is free and open to the public.

Roslyn Mickelson

Roslyn Mickelson

Her studies have concluded that children of any race who attend diverse schools are more likely to succeed, in areas like graduating, avoiding crime and attending college. She’ll talk about this in her presentation, entitled “Majors, Leavers, and Avoiders: The Interactive Influences of Gender, Race, Social Class, and Institutional Forces along the Pathway to STEM Degrees in North Carolina.”


[Related: Read about Mickelson’s research in a 2013 New York Times article.]


Mickelson’s research focuses on the political economy of schooling and school reform, particularly the relationships among race, ethnicity, gender, class, and educational organization, processes, and outcomes. She investigated school reform in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools from 1988 to 2008, focusing on the ways integration and resegregation influenced educational equity and academic achievement. Her coedited book, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: The Past, Present, and Future of (De)segregation in Charlotte will be published in 2014 by Harvard Education Press.

Roslyn Arlin Mickelson is professor of sociology and public policy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In 2011, Mickelson received the First Citizens Bank Scholar Award from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in recognition of her career as a distinguished scholar. She is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the National Educational Policy Center.

For more information about this event, contact Lauren Saulino at saulinole@cofc.edu.

Events, Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs

 

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2014 Student Diversity Conference (April 11-12)

Register for the Student Diversity Conference

2014 SDC

$25 per student for Non-CofC Students

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

EVENT SCHEDULE

2014 College of Charleston
STUDENT DIVERSITY CONFERENCE
Be the Movement. Be the Solution!

Schedule of Events

Friday, April 11th

10:00 am
Morning Teach-In with Bob Moses
Burke High School

***

5:00-6:00 pm
SDC Kick Off Reception
Women’s & Gender Studies Garden
7 College Way

***

6:00-6:15
Student Diversity Conference
Welcome & Opening Remarks

6:15-7:00
Racial Taboo Screening

7:00-7:45
Panel Response to the Documentary
Physicians Auditorium
72 George Street

***

8:00-10:00
Gay Straight Alliance 2nd Chance Prom
Stern Ballroom
71 George Street

***

Saturday, April 12th

8:30-9:30
Registration and Breakfast

9:30-9:50
Welcome & Opening Poets
Robert Scott Small Lobby

Morning Workshops – Concurrent Sessions

10:00-11:30
 Women’s Sexuality: A Double Bind

Are Prisons Protecting Us?

Diversity Leadership: From the Freshman Year Forward (Freshman Only)

In Denial? The Persistence of Racial Stereotyping & Profiling

Building Campus Movements

~~Cistern Yard Lunch Break~~

11:45-12:45
BOX LUNCH –Distributed in Physicians Promenade

***

1:00-2:00
Keynote Address by Cecilia Fire Thunder
Physicians Auditorium

***

Afternoon Workshops – Concurrent Sessions

2:00-3:30
Just Jokes or Just Plain Wrong? The Role of Race and Gender in Comedy

The Art of Social Change

From the Language of Oppression to the Terms of Resistance

LGBTQ Organizing beyond Marriage Equality: What do Race and Class have to do with it?

Visibility of Disability: How student lives are affected by public awareness of diverse abilities
***

3:30 – 3:45
~~ Afternoon Break with Refreshements ~~

***

4:00-5:30
Be the Movement Student Showcase
Introduction of Evaluation Panelists
Three 25 min presentations

5:30-6:00
Closing Remarks & Closing Ritual