All Events
Race & Literature
Intimacies to Apocalypso: Decolonial Feminism & Archipelagic Relationalities
Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vasquez
Online
How do we map relations across the Afro-Atlantic? How do the diasporic cultural productions of the sole Spanish-speaking nation in Subsaharan Africa connect with works emerging from Afro-Cuban, Afro-Puerto Rico, and Afro-Dominican diasporas? What insights do we gain by reading these contemporary works alongside each other? This lecture will examine the long history of Atlantic crossings between Equatorial Guinea and the Latinx Caribbean and engage in a robust discussion about colonialism, diaspora, and decolonial feminisms and relationality. We will trace how themes of intimacy, witnessing, dispossession, reparations, and futurities are remapped in a series of works and will consider how Black diasporic histories are impacted by interlocking structures of oppression. By centering often-peripheralized Afro-Atlantic peoples through a set of diasporic texts we can come to understand how they not only reveal violence but also forms of resistance and the radical potential of archipelagic thought.
IS EVERYBODY STUPID?
MCC Lounge
Hilarious and daring, this timely multimedia performance-lecture is a detailed look into American apathy, disengagement, and the commoditization of death and incarceration in rap culture. Ise Lyfe is an award-winning spoken word & recording artist, justice advocate, and author. His core teaching focuses on social literacy and is grounded in a pedagogy that fosters an environment for students to explore the root causes of poverty and apathy, deconstructing popular narratives charged by prejudice and fear.
Race Matters Series
Joy Through Radical Sex Positivity
Ericka Hart
Online
Sexual health and wellness are intrinsic to any movement toward social justice and pleasure for all bodies at the intersections of their identity. You simply cannot talk about sex without talking about race and gender and the immense impact our identities have on our access to pleasure. This conversation will explore sexual health and wellness from a queer, anti-racist lens. It will center those who navigate society from its margins and help participants identify their own complicities in racialized systems of unjust, foster practical ways to make spaces safer for marginalized groups and apply a pleasure and consent based inclusive approach to their professional and personal lives.
Ericka Hart (pronouns: she/they) is a black queer femme activist, writer, highly acclaimed speaker and award-winning sexuality educator with a Master’s of Education in Human Sexuality from Widener University. Ericka’s work broke ground when she went topless showing her double mastectomy scars in public in 2016. Since then, she has been in demand at colleges and universities across the country, featured in countless digital and print publications including Buzzfeed, Washington Post, Allure, Huffington Post, BBC News, Cosmopolitan, LA Weekly, Vanity Fair, W Magazine, Glamour, Elle, Essence, Fader, Refinery 29, and is the face of three running PSAs on the television channel VICELAND. Ericka’s voice is rooted in leading edge thought around human sexual expression as inextricable to overall human health and its intersections with race, gender, chronic illness and disability. Both radical and relatable, she continues to push well beyond the threshold of sex positivity. Ericka is currently an adjunct faculty member at Columbia University’s School of Social Work and the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, a bratty switchy Sagittarius service bottom and misses Whitney more than you.
Social Media: Twitter, Instagram - @ihartericka
Co-sponsored by the UCSB Women's Center and the UCSB A.S. Black Women's Health Collaborative.
JSJLS Community Projects: Ancestral Power – An Oral History Archive
Rachelle Ignacio
TBD
DATE, TIME AND LOCATION TBD. CHECK BACK WTIH THE MCC FOR UPDATES
WEEK 7
An oral history archive of conversations between students and their parents or caregivers surrounded upon cultural history and familial relationships.
Each spring quarter, the Jackson Social Justice Legacy Scholarship (JSJLS) program culminates with each intern developing their own Community Engagement Project (CEP). Through their individual CEPs, Jackson Interns apply the tools and skills they acquired throughout the program into their own individual projects, which are shaped by their own interests in community care and coalition-building. These CEPs aim to not only uplift, restore, and empower their communities, but also forge meaningful connections between the UCSB student body and the broader off-campus community. The events will occur during the weeks 4-10 at various locations. Check back with the MCC for updates.
