Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Photo: David Regen
25th Annual International Roundtable
Beyond Blood and Skin: The Global Production and Consequences of Race and Racisms
October 11-13, 2018
Public discourse about the impacts of racism have gained momentum in recent years. Yet, race as a concept remains widely misunderstood. Racial discourse continues to be dominated by physiological signifiers such as skin color and other expressions of genetic heritage. Race is conflated with ethnicity, culture, and language. At the same time, the material and affective consequences of racism, usually negative, are borne by those at the bottom of racial hierarchies organized within and across societies. If we are to eliminate the malignant grip of racism on the human condition and create any real potential for racial justice, we must explore the mechanisms through which race is constructed and maintained within and across social institutions, including higher education itself.
The 2018 International Roundtable will spur our campus and surrounding communities to move beyond blood and skin, beyond diversity and representation, and beyond how it feels to be raced. The Roundtable will prompt us to pinpoint the historical sources of race and to understand how overlapping fields have maintained its mythology for the accumulation of material, political, and social capital for a segment of the population. The Roundtable will encourage us to ask different questions in the hope of taking a reparative path to destroy racial ideologies.
IRT 2018 Co-Chairs:
Brian Lozenski, Educational Studies
Donna Maeda, Institute for Global Citizenship and American Studies
Devavani Chatterjea, Biology
Dianna Shandy, Institute for Global Citizenship and Anthropology
Dorothy Roberts is the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor and George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Rick Kittles is professor and founding director of the Division of Health Equities within the Department of Population Sciences and Associate Director of Health Equities in the Comprehensive Cancer Center at City of Hope Hospital in California.
Premesh Lalu is Director of the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.