Conversation

Audre Lorde Great Read – “Zami: Talkback & Testimonials”

Mon, May 17, 2021

6:00 PM–7:30 PM

This event will take place online via Zoom. Please register below.

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We invite you to the culmination of a semester-long celebration of Audre Lorde’s life and work, focusing onZami: A New Spelling of My Name (A Biomythography). Join us for a roundtable with event organizers to consider possibilities of allyship and care for others, followed by a town hall and brainstorming check-in with the audience. This final event embraces Lorde’s call to resist tactics of “horizontal hostility” in order to make room, rather, for alliances and coalition building across positionalities. Together, we look forward to May/June: Mental Health Awareness Month, AAPI Heritage Month, Juneteenth, and Pride.

6:00-7:00 Organizers Roundtable

7:00-7:30 Town Hall & Check-in

Speakers: Nicole Flores, Francis Merencillo, Lise Esdaile, Mary Phillips, Matt Caprioli, Olivia Moy & Christian Dell’Armo

This event is part of the Audre Lorde “Great Read” at Lehman Collegeand co-sponsored by Activism in Academia and Transformative Learning in the Humanities. Click here to learn more about the Audre Lord “Great Read” at Lehman College, CUNY.

#CunyxAudre Lorde #AudreLordeGreatRead

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Meet our Event Organizers!

Nicole Flores is a Junior double majoring in Honors English Literature and Philosophy. She is Assistant Coordinator at the Lehman College Wellness Center. The aim of work is to foster a culture of health and well-being on campus as well as to empower students to make healthy, informed choices. Nicole believes strongly that activism and education are inextricably linked. Her focus is eliminating the stigma around mental health, especially in Hispanic/underserved communities. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. once she graduates. In her free time, she loves to read and write as well as cuddle with her two cats.

Lise Esdaile

teaches writing-intensive courses at Lehman College. She has taught at the Eugene Lang School and the Bayview Correctional Facility for Women, which was part of Bard College’s Prison Initiative Program. Her areas of interest include feminist/womanist literature and theory; African-American literature and theory; the African-American detective in film and fiction; and cinema studies, with a focus on horror and the intersection of literature and film.

Christian Dell’Armo

is a part-time Academic Advisor for CUNY Lehman College’s GPS Program. GPS ( “Go. Persist. Succeed.”) serves the first-time, full-time student population of Lehman, from their very first year of studies to the “finish line” that is graduation. GPS provides its caseload of future innovators with the tools necessary to successfully register for beneficial courses each enrollment cycle, as well as continual support of their individualized academic trajectories through various advisement initiatives. Christian is an honors graduate of Concordia College (Bronxville, NY), receiving his B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies in May 2019 (English/History Concentrations.) Since 2009, Christian has been an Honorary Member of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2285 (Eastchester, NY), additionally functioning as the post’s inaugural Social Media Coordinator. From casual conversations about career ambitions to simply administering faculty contact information, Christian does so with genuine care, consideration, and shatterproof optimism for the Lehman community. Christian vehemently believes in the ironclad benefits of academic advisement, and knows that when students feel connected with one another and genuinely supported, anything and everything can be accomplished without impediment. In his often minute spare time, Christian finds himself immersed in the wondrous world of freelance writing and poetry, utilizing the boundless nature of such writing to express his most inward thoughts and emotions, whilst anticipating a future of professional publications.

Francis Merencillo

was born and raised in Davao City, Philippines, and is a graduating senior studying English with a concentration in Honors Literature at Lehman College. His interests are in Victorian literature and culture, 19th and early 20th century Filipino literatures, Literary Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Poetry and Poetics, and Aesthetics.

Olivia Loksing Moy

is an assistant professor of English at Lehman College specializing in nineteenth-century poetry. She is Director of the English Honors Program (EHP) and Associate Director of the Lehman Scholars Program (LSP) and Macaulay Honors College (MHC). She also serves as faculty on the (Dis)ability Studies minor, a faculty supporter for the Crystal Queer Club, and director of The CUNY Rare Book Scholars. Professor Moy was named a 2019 Nancy Weiss Malkiel Scholar by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation) and is the recipient of a Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. research grant from the Keats-Shelley Association of America. Along with Dhipinder Walia and Lise Esdaile, she is co-organizer of the Activism in Academia Symposia.

Matt Caprioli

joins Lehman College as a Lecturer in Professional Writing. He most recently worked in financial consulting as a Senior Editor and Researcher for Blue Heron Research Partners. He previously worked in content and product marketing for several software companies. Matt started his career as an Arts and Culture Reporter for The Anchorage Press, Alaska’s largest weekly newspaper, and has since contributed to dozens of media outlets, including The Anchorage Daily News, The Paris Review, HuffPost, and The Red Hook Star-Revue, where he was the Arts Editor. He has written forewords for the classics imprint of Shakespeare & Co. and summaries of business books for SuperSummary. He has also published fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in several anthologies and literary journals, including Best Gay Stories 2017,Chicken Soup for the Soul, Newtown Literary, Best Emerging Poets, and Worn in New York, which will be featured in the Netflix docuseries Worn Stories. His memoir, One Headlight, is forthcoming from Cirque Press. He holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Hunter College, a BA in English literature and psychology from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and a certificate in publishing from Columbia University.

Mary Philipps

(BS, Michigan State University; MA, The Ohio State University; Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College. Her fields of interest include the Modern Black Freedom Struggle, Black Feminism, and Black Power Studies. She was selected as a 2018-2019 award recipient for the American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship.