All Events
DIVERSITY LECTURE
Revenge of the Bad Girls: Sor Juana, las Maqui-Locas, the Salem Witches, and Alma López Alicia Gaspar de Alba
MCC THEATER
Alicia Gaspar de Alba analyzes how specific brown/female bodies have been framed by racial, social, cultural, sexual, national/regional, historical, and religious discourses of identity—as well as how Chicanas can be liberated from these frames. Employing interdisciplinary methodologies of activist scholarship that draw from art, literature, history, politics, popular culture, and feminist theory, she shows how 'bad women' are transgressive bodies that refuse to cooperate with patriarchal dictates about what constitutes a 'good woman' and that queer/alter the male-centric and heteronormative history, politics, and consciousness of Chicano/Mexicano culture. Prof. Gaspar de Alba is a founding faculty member of the Chicana/o Studies Department at UCLA.
Cup of Culture
3 ½ Minutes
MCC THEATER
In 2012, four African-American teenagers stopped at a gas station to buy gum and cigarettes. One, Jordan Davis, got into an argument with Michael Dunn, a white man parked beside them, over the volume of music playing in their car. The altercation turned to tragedy when Dunn fired 10 bullets at the unarmed boys, killing Davis almost instantly. This riveting documentary film presents the danger and subjectivity of Florida’s Stand Your Ground self-defense laws through the trial of Michael Dunn. Discussion with Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson following the screening. 98 min., English, 2015, US.
Cup of Culture
Margarita, with a Straw
MCC THEATER
Laila is a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy. She is a student at Delhi University as an aspiring writer. She then gets admitted to New York University and decides to move with her mother. Living in Manhattan, she falls in love with an activist whose passion sparks a journey of sexual discovery and strains the relationships between her family and friends. 100 min., English/Hindi with English subtitles, 2014, India.
Race Matters
Less Prison, More College: a Civil Rights Agenda for the 21st Century James Forman, Jr.
MCC LOUNGE
Over the past few years, the US has begun to pay more attention to one of the nation's central contradictions: the world's wealthiest nation and oldest constitutional democracy is also the world's biggest jailer. James Forman, Jr. will discuss the problem of mass incarceration, focusing on how we got here and how to create a different future. James Forman, Jr. is a Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School and is writing a book about African American attitudes toward crime and punishment in the era of mass incarceration.
