Consciousness from the Margins
The Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service (CSJ) at Georgetown University is hosting a speaker series titled “Consciousness from the Margins” during the 2018-2019 academic year. The current state of global affairs – including the rise of populism, increase in anti-immigrant sentiment and regulations and spread of fake news – leaves marginalized peoples in heightened vulnerable positions. Whole populations have been systematically and structurally marginalized and yet they have also banded together and produced significant movements and protest as evidenced through Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March and the youth-led March for Our Lives that have led to consciousness-raising. Through this seminar and salon series, we will explore the relationship between social action and consciousness-raising by a reconsideration of the pivotal texts of revolutionary writers – Paolo Freire, Frantz Fanon, and Albert Memmi – in our current time of contestation. How did these theorists challenge Western philosophy from marginalized places of resistance? What was the context in which their work was written and received? How are their texts relevant to consciousness-raising and social justice now?
Unfamiliar with the use of word “salon” in this context? This is what Wikipedia has to say: “A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host. They are generally defined as a cultural event linked to literature, art or discussion. Historically, salons are associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries.”
This salon and speaker series is funded by the Global Humanities Faculty Seminar Grant from the Office of the Vice President for Global Engagement and Georgetown College.
To request accommodations related to a disability for any event below, we kindly ask that you fill out this form or contact Center for Social Justice Operations Officer, Caitlin.Miller@georgetown.edu. A good faith effort will be made to meet requests made with 5 business days notice.
Schedule of Events
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
9:00am-10:30am
Faculty Club in Leavey Center
Breakfast salon with Professor Donaldo Macedo, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, on Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Georgetown graduate students, faculty, and staff members – please read invitation and RSVP here.
4:00pm-5:30pm, with reception to follow
Arrupe Multipurpose Room in Pedro Arrupe, S.J. Residence Hall
Introduction by Senior Associate Dean, Adanna Johnson
Critical Educators’ Recusal to De-Guccify: Anti-Praxis in Situated Written Critical Discourse by Professor Donaldo Macedo, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education at the University of Massachusetts at Boston
Professor Macedo who will give a 25-minute talk about his research on critical theory and pedagogy as it relates to deconstructing the contradictions between social justice discourse and praxis among educators. For example, he will deconstruct the contradiction inherent in the denouncement of neoliberalism and racism at the level of words devoid of the necessary action.
Dr. Macedo has been a central figure in the field of critical pedagogy for more than 20 years. His work with Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, broke new theoretical ground, as it helped to develop a critical understanding of the ways in which language, power, and culture contribute to the positioning and formation of human experience and learning. Macedo was Freire’s chief translator and English language interpreter. His published dialogues with Paulo Freire are considered classic works not only for their elucidation of Freire’s theories of literacy but also for adding a more critical and theoretically advanced dimension to the study of literacy and critical pedagogy. Macedo’s and Freire’s coauthored book, Literacy: Reading the World and the Word, is central to critical literacy in that it redefines the very nature and terrain of literacy and critical pedagogy.
Responses will be offered by Georgetown Professor Fida Adely, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, and Nicholas Subtirelu, Linguistics Department, and followed by questions from the audience.
This event is open to all – please RSVP here. It is a part of CSJ’s Education Week.
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
9:00am-10:30am
Faculty Club in Leavey Center
Breakfast salon on The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon with Professor Kathryn Sophia Belle, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University, and Founding Director of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers
Georgetown graduate students, faculty, and staff members – please read invitation and RSVP here.
4:00pm-5:30pm, with reception to follow
Arrupe Multipurpose Room in Pedro Arrupe, S.J. Residence Hall
Introduction by Professor Rosemary Ndubuizu, Department of African American Studies
70 Years Later: A 1949 Debate Between Claudia Jones (“An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women!”) and Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex) by Professor Kathryn Sophia Belle, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University, and Founding Director of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers
This paper imagines a debate between Claudia Jones (“An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women!”) and Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex) paying particular attention to Jones’ triple oppression analysis (of Black women as simultaneously raced, classed, and gendered) that centers Black women’s experiences. In contrast, Beauvoir often takes what I have termed an analogical approach (e.g., analyzing gender oppression against white women as analogous with racial oppression against Black men), centering white women and almost altogether ignoring Black women’s experience.
Kathryn Sophia Belle changed her name from Kathryn T. Gines in 2017 to honor her maternal grandmother. Professor Belle’s primary research and teaching interests lie in Continental philosophy (especially Existentialism and Phenomenology), African American/Africana Philosophy, Black Feminist Philosophy, and Critical Philosophy of Race. She has also taught in African American Studies/African Diaspora Studies. Some of the major figures she writes about and teaches include Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Anna Julia Cooper, Claudia Jones, and Richard Wright. She has published articles on race, assimilation, feminism, intersectionality, and sex and sexuality in contemporary hip-hop. Under the name Kathryn T. Gines, she co-edited an anthology titled Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2010) and authored Hannah Arendt and the Negro Question (Indiana University Press, 2014). Professor Belle is the founding director of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers (CBWP), the former director (2010-2016) of Cultivating Underrepresented Students in Philosophy (CUSP), and a founding co-editor (2013-2016) of the journal Critical Philosophy of Race (CPR). She is also founder of La Belle Vie: Coaching. Workshops. Retreats, offering executive academic coaching, workshops, and retreats for administrators, faculty, and graduate students.
Response by Professors Marcia Chatelain, Department of History, and Elizabeth Velez, Department of English and Women’s and Gender Studies, followed by questions from the audience.
This event is open to all – please RSVP here.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019 – The Lannan Symposium: Africa Imagines
9:30am-10:30am
Location TBA
Decolonizing the Mind: Country, Campus, Canon
The words ‘decolonizing the mind’ are taken from the seminal text by Ngugi wa Thiongo. In this session Mukoma wa Ngugi, Tope Folarin (a former Rhodes scholar) plus Georgetown University’s April Sizemore, discuss the impact of Rhodes must fall, what it means to decolonise education and whether Africa needs its own literary canon. This session is moderated by Colin Parsons.
Open to the public.
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
9:00am-10:30am
Faculty Club in Leavey Center
Breakfast salon on the work of Ngugi wa Thiongo and Albert Memmi with Mukoma wa Ngugi, Kenyan novelist, poet, activist, and Assistant Professor at Cornell University.
Georgetown graduate students, faculty, and staff members – please read this invitation and then RSVP here.