Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies Initiative - RIGS UMN

06/21/2021

Spread the word! We are eager to promote this free virtual workshop from the UMN Religious Studies Department, June 22-23, 2021.

Full schedule and registration: https://bit.ly/3xzlUyn

This workshop is intended to aid faculty members and advanced graduate students who teach about religion in thinking through the pedagogical issues involved in teaching about racial justice and privilege within and with respect to religious practices, ideas, communities, and institutions. It will provide opportunities for sharing resources and methods across disciplines while also engaging interdisciplinary approaches.

Religious Studies Workshop June 22, 2021 - 9:30am to June 23, 2021 - 1:00pm Please register through our Zoom link! Although many in the academy have been cognizant of issues around race, whiteness, and religion for some time, the public psychic shift set off by the disdain for the humanity and right...

06/16/2021

Minnesota Transform, a grant-based racial justice initiative at the University of Minnesota, is currently hiring for one graduate assistantship!

Spread the word for UMN-TC grad students and postdocs interested in gaining project administration experience and working directly with community partners.

https://www.facebook.com/job_opening/231874881793248/?source=share

05/14/2021

How do we talk about public protest and public memory? How have we remembered the movements for racial justice in the past year, the past decade, the last century?

The new CLA class with Tracey Deutsch and Kevin Murphy will engage racial justice movements in public history.

Open to all UMN undergraduates!

05/10/2021

It is almost the end of spring semester! We are pleased to conclude the Spring 2021 RIGS Scholar Spotlight Series with Juliana Hu Pegues this Wednesday May 12 at 5:15pm CST.

The Virtual Book Talk + Roundtable will celebrate the release of Professor Hu Pegues’s new book, Space-Time Colonialism: Alaska's Indigenous and Asian Entanglements (The University of North Carolina Press, 2021). Invited guests will include Iyko Day (Associate Professor of English and Critical Social Thought, Mount Holyoke College), Audra Simpson (Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University), Manu Karuka (Assistant Professor of American Studies, Barnard College), and Scott L. Morgensen (Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Cultural Studies, Queen's University). Panelists will engage in a discussion of Professor Hu Pegues's book followed by an audience Q&A.

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui (Professor of American Studies, Wesleyan University) will introduce speakers and the event and our RIGS director Kat Hayes will moderate! This Zoom event concludes our RIGS Scholar Spotlight Series for Spring 2021 and will not be recorded. Be sure to register with the link below!

Wednesday May 12, 2021 || 5:15pm CST
Free registration: https://bit.ly/2SveCMH

We are grateful to our co-sponsors, U of MN Asian American Studies, Department of American Indian Studies - University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota History Department, the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota and the events team from the Institute for Global Studies Outreach without whom this event would not be possible.

We look forward to seeing you on May 12!

05/05/2021

Join the ICW Teach In TODAY at 5:15pm CST! Envisioning New Futures: Protest, Politics and Public Safety beyond Policing

Free registration: https://bit.ly/3vpSbGZ

04/30/2021

Calling in our friends and colleagues to join the public ICW Teach-In: Envisioning New Futures: Protest, Politics and Public Safety beyond Policing

Wednesday May 5, 2021 || 5:15pm CST
Free registration: https://bit.ly/3vpSbGZ

The protests that started last year in the wake of George Floyd’s murder have continued and even picked up in recent weeks in the wake of the Derek Chauvin Trial and the recent murder of Daunte Wright. While last year’s protests no doubt created the conditions that led to the “speedy” arrest of police officers involved in Mr. Floyd’s death and pushed the Minneapolis City Council to embrace the abolitionist language of defunding the police, activists refuse to accept that solutions rest primarily in the criminal legal system and remain critical of the slow pace of change. Rather they have raised new concerns about how the trial has prompted the surveillance and militarization of the city. Nearly one year after these protests began, how have these movements as well as the debates about police reform and abolition changed and evolved? What are the new (and continuing) critical movements and political issues that we should be focusing on in the coming months?

This Teach-In will feature student scholar activists, who are struggling for justice on their campuses and in the communities within which their campuses are situated. The Teach-In will also feature professionals, scholars, and activists, whom our student scholar activists have identified and would like to be in conversation with and introduce to our Teach-In audience.

Moderator AK Wright, is a first-generation activist-scholar pursuing their doctorate degree in Feminist Studies with a minor in African American studies at the University of Minnesota. Taylor Dews (she/her) is a junior sociology and anthropology major at Spelman College, from Chesapeake, Virginia. Julien Serrano-O'Neil is a graduating Senior Political Science Major and Bonner Scholar at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. Sean Lim (he/him/his) is a 21 year old community organizer graduating from the University of Minnesota, with a dual degree in Environmental Sciences, Policy, Management (ESPM) and Political Science. Andrew Darling is criminal defense and civil rights attorney.

04/27/2021

The RIGS Spotlight Series is celebrating the launch of Professor Terrion Williamson's book, Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest. In this much needed disruption of the image of white “Middle America”, Professor Williamson brings the voices of Black Midwesterners front and center. This event will feature invited guests Erik McDuffie and Keona Ervin, and contributors Zenzele Isoke, Leslie Barlow, Kidiocus King-Carroll and poet Kisha Nicole Foster. Professor Catherine Squires will MC.

Tomorrow April 28, 2021 || 5:15pm CST
Free registration: https://bit.ly/3dY2IU6

This event made possible by the Ruby Parnell Fund for Faculty Retention. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter for more info as the event approaches.

04/26/2021

We’re excited to highlight this important event from IAS:

Emerging Immigration Histories of the Pandemic || MONDAY April 26th, 4pm CST
Free registration: https://bit.ly/3eur1YO

We are still beginning to understand the full impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on the United States, but it is already clear that the disease has disproportionately affected immigrant, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Many are at the frontlines of "essential" industries and have been at greater risk of infection and mortality. Some have been in industries that have shut down or greatly contracted during the pandemic. Others have been at the forefront of increased PPE distribution and vaccine development. This panel highlights emerging immigration histories of the pandemic to help us explore the roots of these contemporary challenges as well as how historians have begun to document the pandemic's impact on immigrants and refugees.

Moderated by Jennifer Gunn; featuring Wayne Soon, Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College; Erika Lee, Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota; Maddalena Marinari, associate professor of history at Gustavus Adolphus College; Lei Zhang, Ph.D. candidate of American studies at the University of Minnesota; Eunice Kim, 2nd-year graduate student in the history department at the Univeristy of Minnesota;
Catherine Lim, senior at Gustavus Adolphus College, where she is majoring in biology and history with concentrations in Europe and the United States; Lillie Ortloff, junior at Gustavus Adolphus College.

Cosponsored Monday, April 26, 2021 | 4:00 - 5:00 pm CDT Zoom Webinar Free and Open to the Public (Registration Requested) We are still beginning to understand the full impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on the United States, but it is already clear that the disease has disproportionately affecte...

04/24/2021

Join three amazing women and artistic directors as they discuss Native and AAPI Relationships in the Theatre Ecosystem at New Native Theatre! NNT's Rhiana Yazzie hosts Mu's Lily Tung Crystal and Perseverance Theatre's Leslie Ishii in the conversation.
Monday, April 26 at 7pm CST.
Watch live on NNT's website or YouTube channel: https://linktr.ee/newnativetheatre

04/22/2021

We’re excited to welcome Dr. Joanne Barker, citizen of the Delaware Tribe of Indian and chair of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, to speak with us through the Institute for Advanced Study TODAY at 3:30pm CST.

Free registration: https://bit.ly/3awqRyZ

Dr. Barker will present new research, modeling and theorizing water as an analytic of Indigenous feminisms. This presentation will integrate artwork, and discuss Indigenous feminist politics defined in our present historical moment by the refutation of sexual violence, extractive capitalism, and the empire’s apologia; respect of original teachings and cultural practices and the elders who care for them; and the futurisms of science fiction and eco and poly eroticism.

Following her talk, Dr. Barker will be joined in conversation by Agléška Cohen-Rencountre, Caroline Fidan Tyler Doenmez, and Kai Pyle.

04/21/2021

Still time to register for the Critical Disability Studies Research Colloquium Lightning Symposium! TODAY at 2:30pm CT.

REGISTER HERE: http://bit.ly/3xd6pfX

Featuring faculty, fellows, students, and partners from across disciplines exploring critical disability studies research, pedagogy, praxis, and interdisciplinary initiatives! The presentations will be followed by a 15-minute break and then Q&A. After you RSVP, you will receive a link to attend the event on Zoom as well as PDFs of the presenters’ publications.

Cosponsors for this event include the Critical Disability Studies Collective; the Imagine Chair in Critical Disability Studies; the Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies (RIGS) Initiative; the Department of American Studies; and the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies.d Teaching)