Professors to Speak at Virtual Events on Racism, Diversity
By Brian Hiro
Two Cal State San Marcos professors are invited speakers who will be participating in virtual events about racism and diversity within the next week.
On Thursday, July 16, history professor Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall will be part of a watch party, Twitter conversation and public Zoom discussion about the 2016 award-winning documentary film “I Am Not Your Negro,” based on an unfinished book by famed writer James Baldwin.
On Wednesday, July 22, sociology professor Dreama Moon will be one of the panelists on a webinar presented by INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine that will bring Black and white women together to share experiences, perspectives and solutions to common and often challenging interactions.
The Baldwin event is sponsored by the Forum for Scholars and Publics (FSP) at Duke University, which has hosted more than 300 conversations, performances, workshops and panel discussions, and welcomed over 500 invited guest speakers from around the world since its founding in 2013. Its #docuhistory series began this summer as an initiative by Joe Schmidt, the social studies curriculum specialist for the New York City Department of Education, who has gathered groups of scholars to help lead discussions for K-12 teachers on particular historical documentaries.
At 1 p.m. Pacific time, the FSP will stream the documentary on Netflix (there are other ways to watch listed on the website). During the stream, viewers are invited to browse and join the discussion on Twitter by searching the #docuhistory hashtag or checking the Twitter feeds of Sepinwall and Schmidt, the discussion moderators. After the screening, at 3 p.m., Sepinwall will be one of the guests for a moderated Zoom conversation about the film.
The event is free, but registration is required. If you can’t watch it live, a video of the panel discussion will be posted afterward.
“I Am Not Your Negro,” by Haitian-born filmmaker Raoul Peck, envisions the book Baldwin never finished, “Remember This House.” The result, according to the FSP website, is a “radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin’s original words and a flood of rich archival material.” The documentary “is a journey into Black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter.”
The INSIGHT Into Diversity event takes place on July 22 from 10 a.m. to noon. The webinar is titled “Women of Color Need Courageous Allies in the Academy: An Open Dialogue with White and Black Women,” and it will be moderated by Holly Mendelson, co-publisher of the magazine. The description reads, in part, “At a time when many people are overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent racial unrest throughout our country, the willingness and knowledge of how to effectively engage with one another is essential.”
Registration for the Zoom event is closed, but members of the public can watch of the livestream on Facebook by “liking” and following INSIGHT Into Diversity on its Facebook page. The webinar will also be recorded and posted to the publication’s website in the future.
Viewers are encouraged to send questions for the panelists beforehand to lpearlstein@insightintodiversity.com.
Media Contact
Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306