Workshops and Working Groups
Dissertation Incubator
The CSRPC Dissertation Incubator (formerly the Reproduction of Race and Racial Ideologies workshop) is committed to providing doctoral candidates from the Humanities and Social Sciences Divisions with a supportive and engaged scholarly community for the development of dissertations on race, broadly conceived. The Incubator provides a forum for the collaborative, interdisciplinary study of global, trans-historical formations and phenomena that have shaped and been shaped by race.
The workshop continues the structure begun in 2021-2022, in which students receive stipends and an opportunity to receive feedback on a dissertation chapter from fellow workshop members and a scholar of their choice, from any academic institution worldwide. This structure aims to increase both intellectual engagement and professional networking opportunities for workshop participants.
In addition to formal workshop presentations, the workshop will host professionalization events and informal community-building gatherings with food for members of the workshop and guests.
You can stay up to date on the workshop schedule and presenters by joining the listserv! For more information >>
The Race Workshop enjoys support from the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC).
Mass Incarceration Working Group
The Mass Incarceration Working Group explores how the University of Chicago can address social injustices caused by mass incarceration and begin to imagine how we might create pathways to higher education for system-impacted individuals and communities. The group aims to raise awareness about mass incarceration and, in particular, to make visible the unique challenges and the stigma facing formerly and currently incarcerated individuals seeking higher education.
Founded in 2019, participants include faculty, staff, and students in the College, the Division of the Humanities, the Division of the Social Sciences, the School of Social Science Administration, the Law School, and other campus divisions and units.
The group explores how the campus community can foster a sense of belonging and full participation of students, staff, and faculty who may have a history of incarceration, as well as those affected by the incarceration of family members.
The group also hosts short-term residencies with visiting scholars who are doing related work at other universities, including Michelle Jones on October 30 and 31.
The Mass Incarceration Working Group is convened by Alice Kim, Director of the Human Rights Lab, and Tracye Matthews, Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. The project is backed by the Office of the Provost.
For more information and to get involved with the working group, please contact Lab Graduate Assistant Durrell Washington. For more information >>
Race and Pedagogy Working Group
The Race and Pedagogy Working Group at the University of Chicago was founded in the spring of 2015 by Ainsley LeSure and Emily Marker, in affiliation with the CSRPC, to expand the critical attention paid to race in pedagogical settings throughout the university. The group's aim is to foster a community of scholars and teachers committed to addressing race as a subject of both practical and theoretical interest in our classrooms.
To that end, the group organizes events and assembles resources that encourage the cultivation of new pedagogical tools and approaches for thinking about race across the disciplines. An archive of notes from our discussions is maintained and compiled here. To find out about upcoming events, you’re welcome to join the listserv.
In the 2016-17 academic year, the organizers of the Race and Pedagogy Working Group are Madeleine Elfenbein, Sonia Gomez, and Caroline Séquin. For more information >>
The Race and Pedagogy Working is supported by the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, with additional support from UChicagoGRAD Development and Diversity and the Chicago Center for Teaching.
Slavery & Visual Cultures Working Group
The Working Group on Slavery and Visual Culture is an interdisciplinary forum created to discuss research related to images of slavery and the slave trade as well as the creation and use of images and objects by enslaved peoples and slaveholders. Our aim is to explore the multivalent relationship between slavery and visual cultures, examining themes such as visuality and memory of the slave trade; the role of the gaze and surveillance in slave societies and societies with slaves; regional comparisons of visual regimes associated with slavery; visual culture’s connection to racialized regimes of slavery; and the roles played by self-fashioning and the accumulation of visual capital by the enslaved.
The Working Group meets on campus three times a quarter, all of which have a distinct format and focus: Public lecture, workshop, or conversation with a guest speaker about research related to our Working Group’s themes. Reading group to discuss texts and/or visual material related to historical and theoretical reflections on slavery and visuality. Workshop of a pre-circulated paper to engage with the current research of the Working Group’s participants.
For more information >>
The Working Group is housed and supported by the CSRPC, and by the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Chicago (CLAS).