Author Archives: Christina Katopodis

Peace-building through awareness and improvisation

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This post was written by Contributing Authors Heather Huggins and Aviva Geismar, collaborating professors at Queensborough Community College. 

peace-building through awareness and improvisation 

Part 1 

Friday, March 12, 2021 at 10:30 am 

Our program was a celebration of a participatory action research methodology known as Social Presencing Theater, a body-based approach for sensing and enacting change. It was also an invitation to engage with QCC’s student and alumni practice group, which began in April 2018.  

Social Presencing Theater (SPT) decolonizes learning by reclaiming the body as an equitable way of knowing and being. SPT centers first-person experience via an improvisational and cyclical process, inviting participants to perceive a larger present. Because SPT is practiced in community, it positions our relational spaces, and the distinct cultures that emerge from them, as worthy of reflection and development. The “theater” in SPT refers to a shared place where something of significance is made visible. Continue reading →

Teaching Africana Women’s Responses to the Covid-19 Crisis (Event Reflection)

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This post was written by Contributing Author Mariama Khan, an adjunct lecturer at Lehman College.

On March 23, 2021, I participated in the “Transformative Learning in the Humanities” workshop on “Teaching Africana Women’s Responses to the Covid-19 Crisis,” under the theme “Ubuntu Pedagogy in Pandemic Times.” The workshop was chaired by Professor Bertrade Ngo-Ngijol-Banoum, chair,  Africana Studies Department, Lehman College. Her discussion on the Ubuntu Pedagogy framework was followed by my presentation on dome-ndeye and badenya, Wollof and Mandinka concepts on interpersonal and communal solidarity. The two concepts were useful to how I personally responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. Some Lehman College students also made presentations during the workshop. Continue reading →

Voices of the Unheard: Afro Latinx Experiences, March 24, 2021 (Event Recap)

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This post was written by Contributing Author S. Lenise Wallace, a motivational speaker, communication professional and college professor teaching communication courses at CUNY.

Where is “home”? Literally and figuratively? This was a theme that arose from the screening of the documentary Latinegras: The Journey of Self-Love through an Afro Latina Lens directed by Omilani Alarcon. The film screening and panel discussion that followed was moderated by Dr. Sonia Rodriguez and panelists were filmmaker Omilani Alarcon and CUNY professors Drs. Ryan Mann-Hamilton and S. Lenise Wallace.  Continue reading →

Exploring Untold Stories: Analyzing Family Primary Sources (Upcoming Event!)

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 This post was written by Contributing Author Madeline Ruggiero, Assistant Professor at Queensborough Community College.

  This workshop takes a granular look at a portion of  a book chapter written by the speaker Madeline Rugiero entitled, “Untold Stories: An Introduction to Primary Sources,” to be released later this year in the book, The Community College Library Reference and Instruction, . This session focuses on a student centered assignment created to motivate and engage students to be active learners. Students are asked to locate and analyze family primary sources such as a document, letter, artifact, photo, or oral history/ interview.   Continue reading →

Performance as Narrative Medicine: Reflections on Virtual Performances (Event Recap)

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This post was written by Contributing Author Alyse Keller, facilitator of the “Performance as Narrative Medicine” workshop held on March 19, 2021. 

For this Performance as Narrative Medicine Workshop participants are led through an active and participatory performance workshop. Narrative medicine, as conceived by Rita Charon at Columbia University, is a theory and practice that emerged as a way to teach physicians and medical professionals, “to practice with empathy, trustworthiness, and sensitivity toward individual patients.” Over time, narrative medicine has evolved in order to bring the “powerful narrative skills of radical listening and creativity from the humanities and the arts to address the needs of all who seek and deliver healthcare.” Merging the central tenets of narrative medicine with the fundamental principles of performance, this workshop allows participants to share, reflect, and heal through the creation and presentation of personal performances of health and illness—specifically as they relate to their experiences with Coronavirus Continue reading →

A “Conditions for Change” Reflection (Event Recap)

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This post was written by Contributing Authors Quilan Arnold and Jessica Nicoll, facilitators of the “Conditions for Change: A Pedagogical Cypher” workshop held on March 24, 2021.

“Conditions for Change: A Pedagogical Cypher,” an interactive workshop, engaged faculty and students in structures that support trusting socially just classrooms. As Cathy Davidson writes, “You cannot counter structural inequality with good will. You have to structure equality.” One structure Conditions for Change used is an Africanist socio-political tool: the cypher or bantaba. Embracing the philosophy of the circle – see all and welcome being seen by all – showcases possibilities for non-hierarchical learning systems within academic spaces. Other workshop structures called upon experiences with Bohmian Dialogue Circles, Onye Ozuzu’s Technology of the Circle and Lois Weaver’s Long Table. Continue reading →

UnHomeless NYC: Sharing the Value of Community-Based Education

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This post was written by Contributing Authors Midori Yamamura and Tommy Mintz and edited by Jason Leggett.

“That was the best of all the webinars and whatever I’ve been clocking into!”

“This was a very powerful conversation on the topic of homelessness. The biggest takeaway for me is to hear this topic approached from grassroots and not top-down perspective.”

These reactions came from participants of UnHomeless NYC: an information session. This two-day workshop examined homelessness with artists, community activists, students, educators, and attendees in dialogue around activities leading up to a public exhibition in the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022 at Kingsborough Community College. Together, educators across disciplines along with students, activists and artists are transforming educational spaces to critically reflect about perceptions of homelessness as agency for social change. As one activist, Manon Vergerio, reflected after the event, the voices from the street can be a powerful pedagogical tool that triggers us to see things differently, not just scholars writing for other scholars. Continue reading →

Creating Community Media: A Panel Discussion between Asian American Filmmaking and Activism (Event Recap)

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This post was written by Contributing Author Alex Ho, who teaches in the Center for Ethnic Studies at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC).

When I worked at the Museum of Chinese in America, we would use one of the first photographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown, “An Unsuspecting Victim” by Arnold Genthe, to show how an author’s intent through what they choose to show and to hide and to editorialize would affect the impression a photograph could give a viewer. The photograph is stripped of the other white Americans, darkened, and given dimensions much more familiar to our vertical-video smartphone world. It jibes with a persistent fantasy about ethnic enclaves like Chinatown–that they are mysterious and dangerous for white America. Continue reading →

Post-Event Reflections on “There is No Separate Survival” by Dillonna C. Lewis

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This post was written by Contributing Author Dillonna C. Lewis, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, and a facilitator of the event.

In post-panel processing with students, an underlying theme emerged–the ongoing relevance and impact of Audre’s poems and prose for our current socio-political realities. Students reflected on the need for additional community “read-in” spaces at Hunter College where they can dialogue with peers, professors and other participants from the larger community.  Bringing Audre back to the community, and listening to the intergenerational interactions in break out groups, honored the power of poetry to speak to us all, to teach us all and to hold our complexities. In our small group conversations, we were able to lift up difference for conscious introspection and publicly name what sustains us in community and what divides us. One panelist shared her experiences with feeling dissected, probed and interrogated in White feminist circles where she was expected to speak for all Black women. The repetitive notion that academic spaces can only hold one brilliant Black woman at a time feeds this “under the microscope” phenomena that threatens current attempts to organize movement-building that defines and empowers.  Continue reading →