Community Programming
Artist-in-Residence Program
The goal of the program is to provide outstanding artists whose work addresses issues of race and ethnicity the opportunity to present their work at the University of Chicago and to draw on the University's resources, its libraries, archives, performance spaces, its critical faculty, and student body to develop, advance, and disseminate their creative work in venues and in ways appropriate to their creative medium. Residencies range from one week to one academic quarter, with quarter-long appointees teaching one course of their design. Click here to see past Artists-in-Residence and current requests for proposals.
Faculty Mini-Conferences
Annually the Center provides support to faculty affiliates to mount mini-conferences on topics related to their research interests. These small conferences are meant to bring together academics, policy-makers, students and community members from across the globe around specific issues with the hope of initiating important discussions and collaborative efforts that might be sustained over an extended period. Click here for information on past conferences. Upcoming conferences can be found here.
Cultural Programming
The Center supports and sponsors a number of events geared towards promoting an investigation of the ties between race, ethnicity and culture. These events are often co-sponsored with University of Chicago Registered Student Organizations (RSOs), other campus centers and academic units, as well as community-based institutions. Past programs include a film series co-sponsored by International House's Global Voices Series; an on-going collaboration with ArtSpeaks to host discussions with artists Bill T. Jones, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Kara Walker; as well as screenings and performances by Artists-in-Residence such as Aishah Shahidah Simmons's NO: The Rape Documentary on sexual violence in African American communities and Kristina Wong's Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on the high incidence of anxiety, depression and mental illness among Asian American women.
Current Issue Programming
Periodically the Center sponsors programs that focus on issues for which we believe there is a need for informed deliberation. Most recently, we sponsored the panel discussion, Race, Gender and the 2008 Election in the Fall of 2008. Past program topics have included a series of events on the politics of Hip Hop, including the groundbreaking 2005 conference, Feminism & Hip Hop; and the panel Does Hip Hop Hate Women?, in conjunction with Rap Sessions.
