As a follow-up to the public discussion #SaySomething, The Problem with Kindness: What Should Educational Leaders Know, Dr. Terri N. Watson speaks with her former student Dr. Gina Charles, reflecting on their relationship and the importance of Black women teachers for Black girls. — Dr. Gina Charles: I am a product of New…

Short description: Practicing Distance is a multi-part guide for preparing for our futures together post-quarantine. In each part, Jeff Kasper offers a series of short practices, beginning with an introduction on four proxemic distances—intimate, personal, social, public—then facilitating guided creative exercises to engage with solo or with a partner in imagined physical proximity during…

Short description: Practicing Distance is a multi-part guide for preparing for our futures together post-quarantine. In each part, Jeff Kasper offers a series of short practices, beginning with an introduction on four proxemic distances—intimate, personal, social, public—then facilitating guided creative exercises to engage with solo or with a partner in imagined physical proximity during…

Short description: Practicing Distance is a multi-part guide for preparing for our futures together post-quarantine. In each part, Jeff Kasper offers a series of short practices, beginning with an introduction on four proxemic distances—intimate, personal, social, public—then facilitating guided creative exercises to engage with solo or with a partner in imagined physical proximity during…

Queenie Sukhadia As George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade’s murders, among many others, at the hands of the police, ignited a raging blaze across the United States, I saw people choosing to engage with racial oppression in diverse ways. On one hand, thousands took to the streets to chant “Black Lives Matter,” the…

[español abajo] Diarenis Calderón Tartabull I live on an island of beautiful greenwoods with blue-green waters towards the southern edge of the capital, being independent, occupying myself with issues and topics which make existence fluid. I share with people I know and ones that I don’t, close to them as a human being…

[español abajo] Dear Audre: I am writing you from an Afro-dystopian period. Right now, a pandemic is killing Black communities in the United States, and a similar fate can be seen for many of the Black and indigenous peoples in America. From here I write to thank you. I am a…

[español abajo] AnouchK Ibacka Valiente When I arrived in Berlin in 2009, I already knew of Audre Lorde. Nonetheless, I didn’t know her contribution to the building of the Afro-German community. I had the luck of being introduced to Audre’s work in my twenties in the 90s by a friend from Djibouti….

[español abajo] Conor Tomás ReedIn this incomparable epoch of endangered mortalities, distressed essential labors, mounting austerity waves, explosive opposition to the innate brutalities of policing, and social regenerations, the medicine I have sought the most is the writings of Audre Lorde. Our abolitionist pandemic poet laureate, Lorde dedicated her life to conjure radical dignity…

Short description: Practicing Distance is a multi-part guide for preparing for our futures together post-quarantine. In each part, Jeff Kasper offers a series of short practices, beginning with an introduction on four proxemic distances—intimate, personal, social, public—then facilitating guided creative exercises to engage with solo or with a partner in imagined physical proximity during…

Short description: Practicing Distance is a multi-part guide for preparing for our futures together post-quarantine. In each part, artist Jeff Kasper offers a series of short practices* in blog-format, beginning with an introduction on four proxemic distances—intimate, personal, social, public—then facilitating guided creative exercises to engage with solo or with a partner in imagined…

Music since Maidan Beginning in November of 2014, Ukraine was thrust into a three-month struggle, now known as the Revolution of Dignity. At the urging of journalist Mustafa Nayyem, students and young activists began gathering on Kyiv’s Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti or simply “Maidan”) to protest the government’s turn away from negotiations with the…

The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY seeks to build on the legacy of radical, de-colonial, anti-racist pedagogies at CUNY. A former CUNY educator, Audre Lorde’s teaching methods and practices are central to this legacy, and her vital work as a poet and activist continues to model survival and living for Black…

Alexandra Juhasz The VHS Archives working group closed out its second year with an End of the Year Party, Workshop, and Demo. While “party” had been serving as a metaphor during our 2018-2019 meetings to express our commitments to creating opportunities for enjoying and using archives together, this time we were not…

The VHS Archives working group has been meeting for the last 2 years at the Graduate Center, CUNY, to think through questions of archiving, preserving, and activating VHS material as a collective process. For the last three meetings, working group members host a ‘party,’ a communal “gathering of humans to work collectively and in real-time”…

Kyle Croft The Visual AIDS Archive Project was co-founded by painter Frank Moore and writer David Hirsh in 1994 to document the work of artists living with HIV, who were dying too quickly, too young, and without estate planning. In the twenty-five years since then, Visual AIDS has continued to work to preserve these…

Bibi Calderaro Mitigating climate change by 2050, if not earlier, has become the milestone goal for climate action for non-governmental and grassroots organizations and for some governmental agencies alike (at municipal, state and national / international levels) [1]. This goal depends on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 80%, particularly in the US….

Catherine Engh Last summer, Christina Katopodis and I decided that, as co-leaders of the Ecocriticism Working Group, we wanted to work on the creation of a climate change syllabus. We felt inspired by Ashley Dawson’s Climate Action Lab and wanted to supplement that initiative with one that would yield concrete contributions to climate change…

Kaitlin Mondello This is the inaugural year of the Climate Action Lab (CAL), a working group that brings together academic research, teaching and activism around issues affecting climate change, with a particular focus on our local communities in New York City. Our first topic of discussion was food. The seminar focused on presentations…

Image description: Four flyers hang beneath a string of lights that alternatively feature the words “stories” and “share!” Ugeita Tewari Why should our stories matter? Our stories define who we are. They are our identities, the experiences, and mistakes which have taught us valuable lessons. Indo-Caribbean Stories, held at the Richmond Hill branch…

Image description: The following text appears typewritten on a yellowed page, with torn and bent edges, “A SEASON IN HELL by Arthur Rimbaud * Englished by Muriel Rukeyser *” Christopher Clarke I’m fortunate to have been involved with Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative for several years now. My interactions with…

Alexandra Juhasz For two years, the VHS Archives Working Group has brought together scholars, students, librarians, archivists, technologists, and community members to discuss and act upon questions and best practices about the use, preservation, digitization, and research of VHS collections that are held by organizations, scholars, artists, and activists. In the 2017-2018 academic…

Harry Blain Getting one artist to settle on a concept is hard enough. How, then, can eight—each from different disciplinary backgrounds—not only find some unity of thought, but a final conceptual product? This was the near-herculean challenge facing the team of researchers developing artist Mariam Ghani’s project Dis-Ease through the Center for Humanities,…

Weather Woman by Cai Emmons is a Climate Fiction novel about the life of Browyn Artair, a graduate student turned meteorologist who discovers she possesses the unique ability to control the weather. Feeling isolated and unsure of how to use her newfound power, she voyages around the world to Siberia where climatologists are studying methane…