THE CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES

2020-2021 ANNUAL REPORT CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES

© 2021 Center for the Humanities The Graduate Center, CUNY

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Director's Report 5

Student Mission 11

Faculty Mission 31

Public Mission 53

Statistics 76

About the Center for the 78 Humanities

3 Center for the Humanities’ biweekly staff meeting, January 27, 2021. Image courtesy Cara Jordan. DIRECTOR'S REPORT

“We (literally) couldn’t have done [the Africana Philosophy Conference] without you—and that’s plain simple fact! Thanks, yet again, for your efficiency and enterprise and enthusiasm and energy. Let’s hope for many more such successes to come.”

—Charles Mills, Distinguished Professor, Philosophy

“Let me express my thanks here as well—yes, this was a historic conference, and it would not have happened without your help, good cheer, knowledge, and shared commitment to what Charles and I were hatching, and hopefully, will continue to hatch!​”

—Linda Alcoff, Professor, Philosophy

“The relaunch of the MALS translation track ... owes a great deal to the brilliant work [the Center for the Humanities] did for Translating the Future, for which I am forever and ever in your debt.” ​

—Esther Allen, Professor, French and Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures

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Morris Dickstein. Photo: Richard Alcorn.

On behalf of the entire staff of the Center for the Humanities, I would like to acknowledge the sad passing of our founding director, Morris Dickstein (1940–2021), to whom we would like to pay tribute with this publication. In everything we do at the Graduate Center, CUNY and beyond, we hope to honor and perpetuate his vision to engage a public beyond academia.

One of the roles of the Center is to be open Manhattan to accommodate new realities, and welcoming, and we envision our projects, from the financial and the practical to the exhibitions, and programs as an eclectic existential. Through this year of physical and wide-ranging part of the public face of distancing, we have, as ever, kept our pub- this fine research institution. As a good host, lic-facing efforts “free and open to all,” while we entertain all-comers, delivering projects critically scrutinizing what making such an in collaboration with the faculty, staff, and offer means in practice. students from our postgraduate academic base, while working closely with an array of It has been a challenging but rewarding year, individual, community, and organizational and the many researchers we worked along- partners around the city and further afield. side have been more appreciative than ever In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, of our efforts (as we have been of theirs) and we have adapted our activities in Midtown of the support that our collaborative model

6 DIRECTOR’S REPORT of working has offered through these difficult programming—from the accessibility of times. Together, we have been rethinking our events to the quality of delivering and our modes of engagement: every day finding archiving them—all of which serves to innovations, adaptations, and workarounds, increase our training capacity for students and continuing to deliver programming while and faculty when it comes to public-facing finding that we have new and unfamiliar global research and dissemination. audiences to serve. Never has working at the hyper-local level felt so valuable, so isolated, while so connected.

Because the Center is formed in coalition, we are each able to take our responsibilities and freedoms from a shared supportive base. While we are well positioned to shine a light on the existing areas of research strength Julian Louis Phillips, Court Crier, 2018. here at the GC, we increasingly look to lead Phillips is a graduate of Social Practice Queens and explore the many other contexts in which (SPQ). Image courtesy Julian Louis Phillips. humanities research can flourish. We are Over the past academic year, we have been delighted that we are joined this year by a delivering our programs and projects with new initiative: Social Practice CUNY, led by a shared drive for the sort of accessibil- Greg Sholette and Chloë Bass, with generous ity that is afforded by virtual events and support from the Mellon Foundation. Social online delivery.​ In looking to serve Blind and Practice Queens has been an MFA strand low-vision and Deaf and hard-of-hearing of socially engaged art practice, running for audiences, as well as those for whom English the past ten years between Queens College is not their first language, we are increasingly and the Queens Museum, and with whom producing hybrid events with live captions, the Center and the James Gallery have had interpretation, and translation into other long fruitful collaboration. Social Practice languages. This has been an exciting new CUNY, a new project, will bring Sholette and initiative, albeit expensive both to produce Bass to the Center for the Humanities and the and to archive. We ask all of our research Graduate Center over the next three years, partners and funders to assist with prioritising with a view to uniting the broad but currently the budget for interpreting, live captioning, dispersed socially engaged art community of and archiving. We are now opening conversa- the wider CUNY network. tions with other centers and institutes at the Our activities evolve in response to those GC to develop protocols and guidelines to we work with and in response to wider help optimize accessibility across the board. political and world events. Throughout, This has involved making visual descriptions we look to set high standards in our public for the images we use, often encouraging

7 CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES participants in events to offer descriptions and hosting initiatives like the Wellcome’s of themselves as part of the introductory Mindscapes project; from growing our own chat, and evolving an augmented role for the digital publishing platform Distributaries to event mediator as we take a lead on increas- creating new forms of team research like ing accessibility. the development of a sizzle trailer for the film project Mae West: Boxer in a Corset, we We continue to support the research work seek to manifest the sort of creativity and of often marginalized educators with small openness to reinvention that we ask of all the but vital grants like our collaborative project co-investigators we work with. with the Gittel Urban Studies Collective, The CUNY Adjunct Incubator. Entities like ours This work is made possible only with the can help an early career educator to make generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon their first public event a success, to refine a Foundation for their funding of the Seminar research idea, to make their first research on Public Engagement and Collaborative publication or pull together a community Research and the Curatorial Practice Seminar agreement when working with outside and Fellowships at the James Gallery; Amie partner groups. We are a generator of new and Tony James for their support of all the research across the disciplines, integrated, James Gallery programs, research and artist collaborative and diverse. We complement residencies, as well as the Object Library the foundational work of subject-specific and the Mae West residency project; the programs by creating transformational Engaging the Senses Foundation, Margo environments in which to co-research. We and Anthony Viscusi, and the Early Research establish spaces for dialogue and encour- Initiative, and Poets & Writers for their support age real engagement with publics over time of Lost & Found: the CUNY Poetics Document so that together we are able to address Initiative; the Sylvia Klatzin Steinig Fund and shared challenges to building a sustainable the Gittell Collective for their support of the civil society. This year, more than ever, we CUNY Adjunct Incubator; the Wellcome have increased our digital offer, extending Trust for their support of the Postdoctoral the breadth and reach of the research that Curatorial Research Fellowship; Max Palevsky we house. for his endowment of the Irving Howe Lecture and the family of Stanley Burnshaw for their From the extraordinary work of the Mellon endowment of the Stanley Burnshaw Lecture, Seminar on Public Engagement and established by Professor Morris Dickstein and Collaborative Research, in its remark- hosted every other year by the Harry Ransom able third iteration, to the James Gallery’s Center for Research in the Humanities seamless reinvention as an entirely online at the University of Texas, Austin; World Lost and Found: The CUNY Poetics offer; from Poetry Books and Bread Loaf Translators Document Initiative elegantly digitizing its Conference, Boston University, Tess Lewis, popular in-print publications to developing Middlebury College, Yiddish Book Center,

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LTI Korea, and Princeton University for their economic crises—within an ever-widen- support of the Translating the Future confer- ing frame: to work with academic partners ence; the Vera Shlakman Irrevocable Trust for across the US and further afield to imagina- their support in honor of the Herbert Gutman tively connect complementary international Memorial Fund; and the Provost’s Office humanities hubs, growing partnerships old at the Graduate Center for their support of and new to support our shared endeavours. the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research, the Object Library, Please enjoy the following brief summary Lost & Found, and the James Gallery. Finally, of our activities throughout the past year this work depends on the active and engaged that we have organized into our three core participation of our publics, to whom we missions—to engage students, faculty, and extend our heartfelt thanks. the public—although you will find that so much of what we do involves all three in assembly. We collaborate with a truly extraordinary Over the next year, whether online or in community of researchers working creatively person, please come join us in study. We look alongside all our many co-investigators. forward—more than ever—to welcoming you. We serve many audiences cultivated over the years by our complex and varied work. Keith Wilson In bringing scholars and non-academics Director together in creative combination, we hope to remain always a pluralist Center, with an ever- open door. If you recognize the need for and importance of our work, then please consider making a contribution or please contact us to discuss your donation directly.

Support the Center for the Humanities →

The past year has tested everyone, and I would like to pay special thanks to the staff at the Center for rising to each new challenge with good humor and unstinting commit- ment in service of the projects that we all value. While we hope to retain the best of our innovations over the past year, we also look forward to the return of the missing dimen- sions of our work together, in person. We want to extend our research—into social justice, racial equity, mental health, ecological and

9 Watch: “Art As Social Action: 10 Years of Social Practice Queens”. STUDENT MISSION STUDENT MISSION

The Center is committed to the professional development of CUNY students by supporting skill development, directly funding student research initiatives, tailoring community networks, and offering researchers expertise and logistical support. We help students develop innova- tive and creative strategies to increase the quality, the impact, and the reach of their research projects whether across the CUNY system, across New York City, or beyond to reach audi- ences further afield.

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Dannie Harris as Mae West. Image courtesy Faction North 2021. Mae West: containing ephemera, film, photographic Boxer in a Corset records, scripts, correspondence, and more. As reported by Carolyn McDonough (Digital In late fall 2019 and early spring 2020, the Humanities) in Distributaries, the COVID-19 Center partnered with Edinburgh-based pandemic forced much of the team’s activ- documentary film director Virginia Heath and ities online, including both weekly meetings producer Grant Keir to build an interdisci- and archival research. Their April 2020 “Pitch plinary group of CUNY students to aid in the Salon,” in which the students shared their research phase of their docu-fiction film on findings with the director, was also shuttled 1930s comedienne Mae West. Produced by online. However, the digital turn had unexpected Edinburgh-based Faction North, Mae West: creative consequences as well, including a Boxer in a Corset is a hybrid documentary that video performance of West’s song “And Then” reveals Hollywood comedy star Mae West’s (1913) by Alyssa Kayser-Hirsh. personal empathy with Queer and African American cultures in 1920s America and cele- Since meeting with the CUNY team, Heath brates why her controversial, groundbreaking began to rethink the project and adapted work as a playwright inspires artists and audi- West’s experience to Glasgow, where she ences today. found a drag performer, CJ Banks, who embodies West in their performances. With Led by Research Lead Elyse Singer (Theatre), Banks’s help, Heath produced a sample trailer a group of eight students was selected to that was used to market the film. And, in May research 1920s vaudeville, West’s more trans- 2021, the film, now titled Mae West: Boxer in a gressive plays, the links between West’s period Corset, was nominated as one of Inside Out’s and 2020, and the Harlem Renaissance in NYC. International Finance Forum finalists as part of The team was briefed with delving into archives its 2021 film festival.

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Adam Hogan and Laura Stayton, courtesy Mariam Ghani + Indexical Films.

international collaborative cultural project. Spotlight: Ghani, the artist-in-residence for the Mariam Ghani New York component​ of the project, was hosted by the Center for the Humanities, Mariam Ghani visited CUNY’s Advanced and worked with a team of CUNY graduate Science Research Center (ASRC) to film students to conceptualize and conduct interviews as she works to complete the research for the film. feature length version of Dis-Ease, an essay-film investigating the linguistic and visual metaphors we use to understand illness. Dis-Ease was initially developed as part of Wellcome’s Contagious Cities, an

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As part of their interactive public humanities research, the Countermapping the Humanities team utilized Twitter to name the project.

new space for Polis, and provide a powerful Counter-mapping new tool to researchers in the digital human- the Humanities @ ities and the social sciences. This project also resonates strongly with my personal com- CUNY mitment to breaking down disciplinary silos, moving information into the public realm, and An extensive machine-learning survey about increasing public participation in decision public humanities practices is being devel- making.” oped on the digital platform Polis, by a team of five interdisciplinary scholars—includ- In addition to the overarching survey project, ing two GC student fellows in the Seminar this platform is being used by numerous on Public Engagement and Collaborative projects in the Seminar to conduct surveys— Research—who hope to explore the uses of which participants can themselves add and computational analysis in community-en- make suggestions to—on issues including gaged humanistic discourse, scholarship, student food insecurity and access on CUNY and activism. The collaboration between the campuses, the twin crises of racism and Seminar and the Computational Democracy COVID-19 in NYC public schools, and parent Project, Polis’s parent company, marks the experience of pandemic response in Harlem. first relationship of this kind for both entities. For more on Countermapping the Humanities, Darshana Narayanan of Polis says, “This please see this article co-authored by project project has the potential to open up a whole leads here.

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Mellon Seminar: • Podcasting and Pedagogy by Ellen Meiser Digital Fellow • Flipping It Horizontal by Katherine E. Nga Than Entigar • Prefigurative Activism as an Inspiration Drawing on digital humanities methodolo- for Expanding Pedagogical Possibilities gies, Digital Fellow Nga Than encourages by André Luis Leite de Figueirêdo Sales social science students to frame research • Communities and Emotions in the questions and to conduct their research Digital Classroom by Nga Than projects creatively and rigorously. As Nga says, “I teach faculty and graduate students She also worked as part of a research team in computer and social sciences who wish that launched the podcast “Voices of the Gig to learn digital and technical skills how to run Economy,” which applies sociological thinking surveys, conduct interviews, produce and to the lived experiences of gig workers before market podcasts, and clearly contextualize and during the COVID-19 pandemic. the stories they tell with sociological theory.” Listen to this episode on “Hungry Panda, Food Delivery in Immigrant Communities.” This year, Nga commissioned and organized a series of essays for our publication platform Distributaries on how teachers in higher-edu- cation classrooms adapted their approaches to pedagogy in the wake of COVID-19, including:

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Mellon Seminar: elaborate the social, psychological, political transformations we all faced as educators From My Window … and students in 2020 and beyond. and Other Places The project had two parts. The first was an open call for creative documentation, sharing Led by Seminar Teaching Fellow Fernanda and reflection of student perspectives on the Blanco Vidal moment using social media. The second was The Teaching and Learning Center and an ongoing focused inquiry group: a small the Seminar on Public Engagement and group of CUNY students who reflected more Collaborative Research invited CUNY deeply and collectively about their experi- students to participate in an ongoing ences through the spring 2021 semester visual and textual sense-making project to using artistic and written projects, taking part document and reflect collectively upon this in workshops with artists Tracey Berglund and unprecedented moment of the COVID-19 Ryan Seslow. Both parts worked together to crisis. document our moment and offer a collective reflection upon our common past, present, Led by Fernanda Blanco Vidal, a critical and future. psychologist with a focus on environmen- tal trauma, disaster, and displacement, From My Window … and Other Places #CUNYFromMyWindow was a space for expression, connection, and reflection to

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Jadele McPherson. Photo by Jon Vachon. Mellon Seminar: to promote wellness and creativity during the Afrofuturist Sound pandemic. As McPherson said of the first event in this Ecologies series:

Led by Teaching Fellow Jadele “On the eve of December 4th, Cubans who McPherson observe begin celebrating Santa Barbara- Changó, who represents music and social Working collaboratively with artists, students, justice, with parties that have delicious food and scholars, Mellon Seminar Teaching Fellow and sweets, live music, and the power to Jadele McPherson has been exploring ecology elevate everyone’s spirits who attend. This locally through Afro-Caribbean music and year I will genuinely miss these parties since performance to study how sound can alter or we cannot gather in large groups, and so the shift environments. launch of this series will bring artists together As part of the public-facing element of this through sacred sound by other means. We project, she organized the event series Mind, will channel that spiritual energy to make Body & Soul: Afrofuturist Sacred Sounds. space and to discuss how we are keeping our emotional creativity alive and practicing This event series explored embodied art prac- wellness while living under the compounded tices during the COVID-19 pandemic and amid duress of the pandemic. In this first installa- proliferating rebellions protesting systemic tion of the series, we invoke our ancestors’ racism, the police state, and carceral practices voices, chat as if we were hanging out in that have resulted in the state-sanctioned killing someone’s living room, and share intimate, of Black people. This series brought communi- live performances that will inspire us to enter ty-based Afro-Latinx artist practitioners, poets, a New Year refreshed and fortified.” performers, healers, and activists together 17 CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES

Mellon Seminar: how city government, CUNY, and commu- nity organizations can nourish meaningful Resilient Participatory ongoing relationships among city agencies Budgeting and local groups who share common goals that might help to advance agendas toward Led by Faculty Lead Michael Menser food justice and climate resilience.

Resilient Participatory Budgeting builds inclusive and collaborative roots for system transformation through participatory democ- racy practices led by CUNY students. The topics discussed range from participatory democracy, budgetary justice, food security, and climate resilience, among others. Over the course of the past year, Professor Michael Menser worked with GC PhD student Kristen Hackett and Civic Tech Assistant Cecily Wu, an undergraduate student at Brooklyn College, to map connections that show

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Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative publications. Lost & Found: The tribal college in California. Shining a light on understudied aspects of literary, cultural, and CUNY Poetics political history, these previously unpublished Document Initiative materials are compiled by doctoral student editors conducting research in personal and Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document institutional archives in the United States and Initiative (L&F) publishes previously unknown, abroad. L&F creates new ways for archives genre-bending writing from the archives of to be activated as living sites of inquiry and twentieth-century poets. innovation while working with emerging CUNY poets and scholars to critically and creatively L&F’s catalogue includes syllabi by Audre redefine literary and cultural histories in Lorde, June Jordan, and Toni Cade Bambara; broader, more complex and inclusive terms. Pedro Pietri’s conceptual art and sex activism during the early AIDS crisis; Amiri Baraka’s Student Fellowships and Publications correspondence with Ed Dorn; a translation Each year, L&F partners with the Early of an essay on John Keats by Julio Cortázar; Research Initiative to award fellowships to GC and Jack Forbes’s strategic plans drafted students performing original archival research. during the founding of D-Q University, the first

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Forthcoming publications developed and • Jaime Zabinksky (English), on Grace edited by past fellowship recipients include: Paley.

• Jim Schoppert: What Price This Pound of • Khaled Al Hilli (Comparative Literature), Whale? and Other Unpublished Writings, on Sargon Boulus. edited by Chris Green. • Jadele McPherson (Cultural • Jacques Viau Renaud: Selections from Anthropology), on Eusebia Cosme and “Permanence of the Cry,” edited and the Poetics of Afro-Latinx Performance translated by Ariel Francisco. in New York City. • Lucia Berlin: “Dearest Dorns”—Letters • Sam O’Hana (English), on “Examined 1976–1989, edited by Megan Paslawski. Lives.” • Sargon Boulos: “This Great River”— • Shoumik Bhattacharya (English)​, on Translating the Beats into Arabic, edited Meena Alexander. and translated by Khaled al-Hilli. • Wendy Barrales (Urban Education), • KULCHUR 1-20 (1960–1966): Selections, Women of Color Archive (WOCA). edited by Ammiel Alcalay and Chris Clarke Student-Led Public Programming and and including George Bowering’s “The Poetry Scholarship New American Prosody,” Diane di Prima’s “Murder Cake,” Gilbert Sorrentino’s L&F brings together poets and scholars to “Remembrances of Bop in New York, mobilize the living legacies of 20th-century 1945–1950,” and music reviews by A. B. poets and poetic movements through its public Spellman. programs. Past highlights include a gathering of UMBRA Workshop members, reunited for the This year’s L&F Archival Research Award first time since their historic African American Recipients are: poetry education program, who met regularly • Sarah Akant (English), on the “Poetics on Friday nights on the Lower East Side of of Flicker,” a research and translation Manhattan; a conference on June Jordan’s project. teaching and poetry organized with Cave Canem and her estate; and a two-day confer- • Onur Ayaz (English), Correspondence ence entitled “Poetry Studies Now” convened between Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, by ACLS visiting scholar Dorothy Wang and L&F Denise Levertov, Joel Oppenheimer, John editor and poet Tonya Foster. Wieners, Ann Charters, Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara, and Donald Allen. L&F organized 32 events in 2020–21, including readings, conferences, and lectures with Joy • Joseph Caceres (English), on Miguel Harjo, Harmony Holiday, Cedar Cigo, Eileen Algarín. Myles, Cecil Taylor, and Joyelle McSweeney,

20 STUDENT MISSION among many others. Below are a few examples to better understand the cultural impact of this past year’s student-led public programs. of archives and special collections. This episode created a curriculum around • The Craft We Didn’t Learn: Retroactive the mimeograph revolution on the Writing Advice from the Archive was an Lower East Side AWP panel of L&F editors that contrib- uted to a timely conversation about the rich instructional writing history avail- able in radical and marginalized literary archives.

• The School of Toni Cade Bambara with Makeba Lavan, Linda J. Holmes,

Thabiti Lewis, and Louis Massiah show- Covers of Hornswoggle and Silver magazines. cased Bambara’s late 1960s efforts at Courtesy of From a Secret Location website. City College as a teacher and cultural • Radiating Black ~ Puerto Rican worker and screened the documen- ~ Feminist Studies from the City T.C.B. School of tary-in-progress The University of New York to the Americas Organizing. and the Caribbean was a series orga- nized by Conor Tomás Reed while in residence at Wendy’s Subway. Co-editor of Toni Cade Bambara’s “Realizing the Dream of the Black University,” Reed organized “Radiating Black ~ Puerto Rican ~ Feminist Studies” in order to share archives and lessons on the entwined legacies of Black, Puerto Rican, and feminist studies movements at CUNY in the 1960s and ’70s with current educators and activists.

Toni Cade Bambara, n.d. Courtesy of Karma Read the L&F Newsletter Part 1 and Bambara, Executor of the Toni Cade Bambara Estate. Part 2 for more news, ongoing discoveries and research from the archives, past and future projects, new writing, audio and • Poetry and Revolution on the Lower East video recordings, collaborations and public Side with Mary Catherine Kinniburgh programming, memorials and tributes, was part of NYPL’s Doc Chat series, pre- L&F Fellows’ projects, and a sneak peak of senting teaching and research methods Series 9.

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Fungus Guy, Decolonize (Gore Street), Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, 2014. Graffiti mural. Open access image available at Wikimedia Commons.

art. Speaking from different geographies, James Gallery: nationalities, generations, sociopolitical Indigenous contexts and standpoints, the three artists featured in these presentations introduce Perspectives: the public to their careers, oeuvres, chal- Conversations with lenges, and aspirations.

Contemporary Artists María Beatriz H. Carrión (Art History) took part in the Decolonizing Curatorial Practice María Beatriz H. Carrión, James Gallery Mellon Seminar in Art History, co-taught Mellon Fellow in Global Art in spring 2020 by James Gallery Curator Katherine Carl and Professor Claire Bishop This series of conversations illuminated (Art History) and was selected for the James the complex and diverse practices of Gallery Mellon Fellowship in Global Art for Indigenous artists in Latin America, the year 2020–21. In fall 2020, Carrión chose North America, and Oceania in order to three Indigenous artists whose work exem- destabilize homogenizing definitions and plified these concerns and in the spring narratives about contemporary Indigenous conducted interviews via Zoom. The project

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Amaru Cholango, Thou Shall Have Other Gods before Me, Chapel of Our Lady of Angels, Quito, 2011. Mixed media. Image courtesy of Rodolfo Kronfle Chambers.

Lori Blondeau, COSMOSXQUAW (detail), 1996. Duratrans in lightbox, 10.6 x 8.3 in. John Cook Collections. Photo courtesy of Bradlee Laroque.

The second artist, Lori Blondeau (Cree/ Saulteaux/Métis), is from Canada who works Amaru Cholango, Saramama/MON 810, genetically modified corn; and Amaru Cholango, primarily in performance and photography. Multiculturalism, used clothes, Museo de la Ciudad Quito, 2011. Image courtesy of Rodolfo Her work critically examines both the repre- Kronfle Chambers. sentation of First Nations women in popular culture and media, and also considers issues transcripts and video excerpts are being of family, history, and colonialism. In addition presented publicly on the gallery website. to her artistic production, Blondeau was a The first artist, Amaru Cholango (Kichwa), is founding member and director of TRIBE: A based in Ecuador. His interdisciplinary and Centre for the Evolving Aboriginal Media, primarily conceptual work consists not only of Visual and Performing Arts Inc. installations, video installations, photography, The third artist, Ayesha Green (Māori, Kai objects, and performance, but also painting, Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu), is based in Aotearoa, drawing, and poetry. His art builds a bridge New Zealand. Her work, primarily pictorial, between the ancient Andean Cosmogony and explores questions of identity, family rela- contemporary art. tions, history, and everyday life.

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Ayesha Green, Nana and Grandad, 1994 (New Zealand Gothic), 2016. Acrylic on ply, 57.3 x 48.1 in. Courtesy of Jhana Millers.

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Daniel Paul, Mills Falls: Kejimkujik, n.d. Photo by Daniel Paul. James Gallery: of Indigenous objects and pushed the tools of digital repatriation to operate differently. In Expanding light of the limited options made available by Options for Digital museums and long, drawn-out legal repatri- ation battles, how can options be reimagined Repatriation and expanded for the return of objects to Indigenous communities? How can the flow Anna Orton Hatzis, James Gallery Andrew of money and resources used in legal battles W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow be reoriented into Indigenous hands as part of restitution efforts? Digital models, virtual Travis Wysote, Listuguj Mi’gmaq and augmented reality, computer animation researcher and video games may be tools to imagine In their collaborative research toward a ways to reorient resources into Indigenous virtual exhibition in fall 2021, PhD student hands that are needed to remake the con- Anna Orton Hatzis (Art History) and nections of the objects, people, and land. Indigenous scholar Travis Wysote interro- Throughout their research this year, Orton gated the current structures of repatriation Hatzis and Wysote have focused on the

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Mi’kmaq chief’s regalia, including coat, on Mi’gmaq treaties, the aesthetics of leggings, and moccasins made of navy-col- sovereignty, the politics of genocide recog- ored wool duffel, which is currently in nition, and the state of exception. Travis’s storage in the Melbourne Victoria Museum in current research analyzes the aesthetics of Australia. It is decorated with red, olive, and resurgence and refusal enacted in the doc- gold silk ribbon appliqué and embroidery, as umentary films of Abenaki filmmaker Alanis well as intricate beadwork of hundreds of tiny Obomsawin, with particular reference to his glass beads attached by moose or horse hair. family’s roles in Incident at Restigouche and The outfit was the property of Louis Benjamin Our Nationhood. Peminuit Paul, a chief from the Sipekne’katik District, today’s Colchester County area. Records show that it was sold in 1840 to S. D. S. Huyghue, a captain in the British military who had been serving in Nova Scotia and later returned to Great Britain. In 1851, he emigrated to Australia and, after his death, the items were donated to the museum. Orton Hatzis and Wysote’s project continues to imagine further where legal repatriation efforts for the regalia, led by Heather Stevens operations supervisor at the Millbrook Centre, slowed since her proposed bill for Canadian repatriation was rejected by the Senate in May 2019.

Orton Hatzis took part in the Decolonizing Curatorial Practice Mellon Seminar in Art History co-taught in spring 2020 by James Gallery Curator Katherine Carl and Professor Claire Bishop (Art History) and was selected for the James Gallery Mellon Curatorial Fellowship for the year 2020–21.

Travis Wysote is a Listuguj Mi’gmaq researcher, currently working on his inter- disciplinary PhD in humanities at Concordia University on Haudenosaunee territory. His research interests are related to Mi’gmaq history and settler colonialism, with writings

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Linda Nochlin teaching an art history class, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, 1959. Archives & Special Collections, Vassar College Library.

field in new ways—from methodological James Gallery: and pedagogical issues to labor-related Ethics and Labor in conflicts. The full intellectual and admin- istrative support of Katherine Carl and Art History Whitney Evanson at the James Gallery enabled us to convene the virtual event, Organized by PhD students Lauren invite esteemed artists and art histori- Rosenblum (Art History), James Gallery ans to workshop practical strategies for Presidential Fellow, and María Beatriz teaching and learning, and financially H. Carrión (Art History), James Gallery compensate attendees for their work. Mellon Fellow in Global Art Bringing together peers from across “As PhD students immersed in art educational institutions, socio-cultural historical scholarship, working collabo- and racial backgrounds, and subfields, ratively on our project Ethics and Labor we confronted the impact of academia in Art History provided the opportunity to on one’s personal life and professional consider larger stakes of the academic future, ultimately developing solidarity

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among graduate students based provided a rare chance to create solidarity throughout the country.” among distant colleagues who confront disparate working conditions while ultimately —Lauren Rosenblum and sharing stakes in the future of art history. María Beatriz H. Carrión In advance of these meetings participants completed a self-assessment reflecting on This intensive two-day virtual convening of their scholarship and pedagogy, read short 25 art history graduate students selected texts on disciplinary demography and canon from nearly 100 submissions from across formation, prepared a short presentation in the country aimed to articulate the state of response to the program’s topics, and con- the field, the conditions of our employment, tributed to a shared bibliography. For the first and the ethical transgressions and future session, participants broke out into focus directions of the discipline. This event equally groups to collectively examine their own posi- prioritized knowledge gleaned from peers tionalities, entanglements, and investments. and the expertise of established scholars and Graduate students, who are simultaneously artists. Recent responses to the colonialism students and educators, are already shaping of art history have posed important questions and being shaped by art history. A plenary concerning the ethics of the field and how session brought together these small groups young scholars can address this criticism to envision the discipline as a more reflexive through their research and in their teaching. humanistic endeavor. To this end, how do art history students confront the burdens of their field while The artist collective BFAMFAPHD led a promoting its relevance? How do art history program to encourage expansive thinking students envision the future of art history, its about the role of academic art history as teaching, and its audiences? How can they a linked site within a network that must, in work toward diversity and inclusivity in the art their words, “analyse and reimagine power history classroom? How do they shape their relationships in the arts.” A series of activities own scholarly paths while also navigating offered an alternative pedagogical framework tenuous working conditions and a precarious that emphasizes contemplation, collabora- field of employment? How can emerging art tion, community, and political economy. historians enact change in an art world of predominantly white voices and while elite Next, Roland Betancourt (Professor of institutions in urban centers dominate the Medieval Art, University of California, Irvine) discourse? facilitated what evolved to be a deeply self-re- flective and nurturing session for the group The participants gathered in small dis- on Art History, Ethics and Pedagogy. Unlike cussion groups to digitally unite students in the social and medical sciences, most art organized across geographical regions and historical education does not include training size of educational affiliation. This platform in ethics; in fact, much research in the field

28 STUDENT MISSION receives very limited ethical oversight. This lack of criticality is the most problematic in light of the current sociopolitical and envi- ronmental realities of our times, as well as of the controversial history of the field. Can we ethically study works of art that are foreign temporally, religiously, racially, or culturally? How can we diversify our bibliographical footprint without tokenizing minorities and scholarship from the Global South? In what terms and with what goal is it appropriate to study images of violence? When is it appro- priate to advocate for the destruction of cultural heritage?

Mia L. Bagneris (Associate Professor of Art of the African Diaspora & Studies of Race in Western Art, Tulane University) led the final and vibrantly creative session on Inclusive, Anti-Racist, and Decolonial Pedagogies. Recently, students and scholars have begun to question who has access to an art history education and whether one’s pedagogical approach should reflect and speak to the positionalities of different student bodies and institutions. How can instructors not only teach non-Western artwork, but also effec- tively incorporate non-Western cosmologies and philosophies? How can art historians learn and use tools like fieldwork from other disciplines like anthropology in order to better work with living people, oral histories, and community traditions? How can we diversify the student body that constitutes most art history classrooms? How can we guarantee that students in suburban and rural areas have equal access to museums as those in metropolitan sites?

29 Watch: Professors and Mellon Seminar Faculty Leads Ryan Mann-Hamilton, Ángeles Donoso Macaya, Naomi Schiller, and Michael Menser in “Food justice, activism, and the public university: a conversation” FACULTY MISSION

The Center is committed to offering faculty support in taking their research out of our building to reach audiences both within the university system and well beyond. We are pleased to offer time, space, and expertise to help faculty researchers share new knowledge with publics beyond academia. We help realize individual research projects, assist in the delivery of faculty-led public programs, and facilitate longer-term collaborations between faculty and community partners.

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Watch: Of Islands and Archives: Celebrating Île en île and World Literature in French.

Of Islands and bibliographies, excerpts of prose and Archives: Celebrating poetry, and an audio and video archive. Île en île will remain online but transitioned in Île en île and World 2020 to become a fixed archive. This was an Literature in French opportune moment for a group of scholars, including Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, November 16, 2020 Françoise Lionnet, Thomas C. Spear, and Alex Gil, to address the evolution of schol- This dialogue, co-sponsored by the Center arly research and pedagogical methods of and the GC’s French Department, marked Francophone studies, in geography, technol- the culmination of two decades of research ogy, and with parallel fields of the humanities. work building Île en île, a digital human- These speakers addressed the transfor- ities archive documenting the cultures mations that have taken place in the last with special focus on the literature of the decades in the field of Francophone studies world’s Francophone islands. A pioneering as well as with the digital resources available addition to the French-speaking internet, Île to scholars, students, readers, and teachers. en île has presented to a global audience works by authors far removed from a Parisian “center.” Online since 1998, it is an extensive archive with biographies,

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Translating the many others. It billed itself as “the first inter- national literary translation conference in the Future United States” and had a major impact on US literary culture. May 12–September 25, 2020 Weekly Translating the Future events In spring 2020, professors Esther Allen and occurred throughout the late spring and Allison Markin Powell began to reconceive a summer 2020, attracting thousands of two-day conference that they had scheduled viewers from around the world. Topics for fall 2020. In mid-May 2020, Translating included the relationship between translation the Future launched with weekly hour-long and ecopoetics, children’s literature, and online conversations with renowned transla- plays, among other areas, and the 1970 World tors hosted on the web platform Howlround. of Translation conference.

The conference, co-sponsored by PEN The series culminated in late September America, the Center for the Humanities, 2020 with a lineup of five events hosted and the Cullman Center for Scholars and by Allen and Powell on topics as diverse Writers at the New York Public Library, with as Democracy and Translation, a gather- additional support from the Martin E. Segal ing of Olga Tokarczuk’s translators, and Theatre Center, commemorated and carried Postmonolingual New York. In total this series forward PEN’s 1970 World of Translation con- of events reached an audience of over 9,000 ference, convened by Gregory Rabassa and people from 87 countries, a good example Robert Payne, and featuring Muriel Rukeyser, of how transitioning online can build a much Irving Howe, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and larger and more international audience.

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Pioneers of Africana Black philosophers have played a crucial role in pioneering what is now known as critical Philosophy philosophy of race: the philosophical exam- ination of race from a “critical,” anti-racist March 19–20, 2021 perspective.

Stemming from the long-term collaboration This conference paid tribute both to the with the GC’s Philosophy Department, the historic pathbreakers of the past and the Center sponsored a two-day conference living pioneers of the present who—under organized by Professors Charles Mills and the most difficult and unfavorable condi- Linda Martin Alcoff on the subject of Africana tions—were eventually able, after decades philosophy. of struggle both within and outside the academy, to get Africana philosophy and “Africana philosophy” is the term that has critical philosophy of race recognized as been coined to designate philosophy in Africa legitimate areas of philosophical exploration and the African diaspora (the Caribbean; and inquiry. But it also looked forward—given the two Americas, North and South; Europe; this historic experience of racial oppression— Asia), both in the pre-modern and modern to exploring the contribution Africana thinkers periods. In modernity, this philosophy will can make to the understanding of our present be fundamentally shaped by the experience national crisis, and to developing suggestions of transnational racial subordination: racial for how best to resolve it. chattel slavery in the Atlantic world, colo- nialism, and then continuing diasporic racial Previous co-produced conferences have oppression in nominally post-slavery and explored topics including Black Women postcolonial societies. Thus, it is arguably in Philosophers (2019), #MeToo and Epistemic modernity that a subset of Africana philoso- Justice (2018), and Racial Inequality (2018). phy becomes “Black” philosophy. As such,

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Dr. Terri N. Watson (front center) with students in her 7th grade class at Junior High School 45, including Dr. Gina Charles (front, to Dr. Watson’s right).

Mellon Seminar: City’s desegregation efforts. In Professor Terri Watson’s words, this project “ampli- The Schools We Need: fies the agency of Harlem’s mothers as a Lessons Learned from powerful resource in education research and advocacy. Drawing from the MLK’s theoreti- Harlem cal framework, Beloved Community grounds school transformation and leadership in the Led by Seminar Faculty Lead Terri Watson ‘five Cs’: care, courage, critical reflection, commitment and community.” Watson brings The Schools We Need: Lessons Learned the five Cs to life through theory, action, and from Harlem highlights the ways in which education. the institution of Black motherhood has transformed and works to foster agency, This year, Watson presented a public lecture community, and discourse around New York and a symposium around the theme of

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“Creating the Beloved Community.” The symposium featured presentations by five keynote speakers on each of the five Cs: Christopher Emdin, Noliwe Rooks, Wendy Luttrell, Shannon R. Waite, and David E. Kirkland, as well as a panel discussion on the theme of community led by Watson.

As an extension of many of the themes of this work, Watson also published a conversation with her former middle school student Dr. Gina Charles about the importance of Black women teachers in the lives of Black girls on our publishing platform Distributaries and A Love Letter to Babette Edwards: Harlem’s “Othermother” on the blog of the Gotham Center for New York City History about the life and education activism of Babette Edwards, a parent activist, educational advocate, and community leader (a noted pioneer in the movement for community control), who has worked to support the education of children in Harlem throughout her career.

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Alexandria Eregbu, Water Women, 2017. Collage on paper. Image courtesy of the artist. Mellon Seminar: research, recreation, and civic engagement around issues related to environmental Environment justice and access.” In the broadest sense, Community Mann-Hamilton sees and reinforces connec- tions between groups, helping to resource Humanities Oasis and sustain those connections through coali- (ECHO) tion building around common aims. This year, ECHO has launched a website that Led by Seminar Faculty Lead Ryan collects information about its manifold activ- Mann-Hamilton ities, including a series of public events, an As Faculty Lead Ryan Mann-Hamilton says, oral history project, and infrastructural inter- “Environmental Humanities Collaborative ventions including: Oasis (ECHO) establishes longstanding • Just Strategies: Pathways to Water, connections between CUNY and NYC to Food and Wellness, a conversation that re-envision the local landscape as a site of cross-pollinated communities that are

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navigating the climate crisis to amplify Community College’s Faculty and Staff efforts and experiences in NYC, the of Color Collective (FSOC) to screen the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico documentary Latinegras: The Journey that focus on water, food, and wellness. of Self-Love through an Afro Latina Activists Ysanet Batista (Woke Foods), Lens, directed by Omilani Alarcon, and Jacqueline Pilati (Reclaim Seed NYC), discuss it alongside other Afro Latinx Olatokunboh Obasi (Omaroti, from the experiences within higher education Well of Indigenous Wisdom & Herbalists and beyond. without Borders International), and • The installation of three water catch- Amara Abdal Figueroa (Tierrafiltra) ment systems in the town of Mayaguez, discussed their projects to inform, inspire, PR, in collaboration with Bemba PR and and incite student-led and community- ISER Caribe based efforts organized at and adjacent to LaGuardia Community College. • A visit to Fusion Farms Vertical Garden Facility.

• An oral history project at LaGuardia that gathers Narratives of Food and Movement.

Ysanet Batista, Jacqueline Pilati, Olatokunboh Obasi, and Amara Abdal Figueroa.

• A conversation between Alexandria Eregbu and Chelsea Mikael Frazier about the intersections of Ecology, Ancestral Healing, and Visual Art.

• Voices of the Unheard: The Afro Latinx Experience, which gathered LaGuardia

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Watch: a short clip of President’s Society: Environment, in which students at LaGuardia present their visions for the closure of streets adjacent to their campus to create an open space for community use.

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Watch: Are We Feeding the Crisis? Pandemic Hunger and Food Justice: A Discussion and Screening of the short film “On the Line”. Film still from On the Line. Carts lined up against a colorful graffiti wall along the sidewalk in the Lower East Side; a bicycle blurs by in the foreground. Mellon Seminar: activism and land-use activists from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, On the Line: Land this project also contributes to debates about Use, Food Access, how to advance democratic and just decision making around land use in New York City. Climate Justice and As Schiller writes, “It is our hope that the Organizing in New collaborative learning in our collective oral history project will produce knowledge and York City tools that will have a democratizing impact on the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure Led by Faculty Lead Naomi Schiller (ULURP), the city’s decision-making process for making changes to land use, such as Professor Naomi Schiller brings together rezonings.” anthropology, history, documentary film- making, and urban planning in her approach to understanding civic processes around land use and food distribution. Working with activist-artists focused on anti-displacement

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This year, Schiller worked with artist, writer, low-income Chinese and Chinese American and organizer Vanessa Thill as well as people. This group also organized a screen- Brooklyn College interns Onyx Clarke and ing of the film and a discussion “Are We Teresa Rodriguez to initiate ongoing efforts Feeding the Crisis? Pandemic Hunger and to document and make accessible histo- Food Justice” about the broader terrain of ries and activist knowledge of land-use food insecurity and justice. organizing, particularly around changing On the Line waterfronts. This project will involve a series See the trailer for the short film of public discussions anchored around an here. oral history archive, a handbook for action, As Schiller has said, “On the Line has allowed and a public exhibit. me to forge new collaborative relation- The other core component of this project is to ships that bring together what have been facilitate conversation and listening surround- largely separate facets of my life: activism, ing the Sixth Street Community Center’s scholarship, teaching, and service work. Weekly Food Distribution Line. The Sixth For the first time, my intellectual, artistic, Street Community Center (SSCC) has been and community-based commitments are involved in community organizing around cross-pollinating.” food, health, and the environment in the Lower East Side since 1978. Since the onset of the COVID crisis, SSCC has been involved in direct relief work, distributing boxes of food once a week. Working with SSCC Program Director Jen Chantrtanapichate and interpret- ers Chloe Lin and Ziyi Li, this team is helping to facilitate logistics of the food distribution process and sparking conversations among people waiting in line about their lives, needs, concerns, and hopes.

As part of this process of initiating conver- sation, Schiller, Lin, Chantrtanapichate, and filmmaker Dan Fethke joined together to make a 10-minute documentary, On the Line, which explores the frustration of hours waiting in line for donated cheese, the pressure on the community to adapt to unfamiliar foods, and the power of mutual aid amidst the crises of hunger, health, and violence facing

41 CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES Lost & Found Faculty Engagement This year brought an incredible opportunity for Lost & Found to work closely with Lehman College colleagues on two interrelated poetry programming endeavors.

Image Collage from One Book One Bronx (Left to right: Sun Ra, Cover of Olio by Tyehimba Jess, Audre Lorde, Tyehimba Jess and Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets.

One Book One Bronx Felipe Luciano, and Woodie King Jr), Rodney Terich Leonard, Lise Esdaile, Trapeta B. Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Mayson, Grisel Y. Acosta, Juliana Costa, Ochy Initiative partnered with One Book One Bronx Curiel, Tanya L. Saunders, Monnette Sudler, and Literary Freedom Project in collabora- Harmony Holiday, and Hanif Abdurraqib. tion with the Leonard Lief Library at Lehman The series culminated with a performance College, CUNY, to host a series of virtual by Pulitzer Prize–winner and CUNY professor programs and reading groups as part of a Tyehimba Jess from his book Olio. nationwide initiative, Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters. Our collab- oration with One Book One Bronx/Lehman College brought audiences closer to the intersection of Black language and music.

Programs organized by CUNY faculty focused on the Last Poets, Sun Ra, and Audre Lorde, among others, and included Tara Betts, Sequoia Maner, Tony Bolden, Mariposa Fernandez, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Patricia Spears Jones, Hank Williams, The Last Poets (Abiodun Oyewole, Umar bin Hassan, and

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Audre Lorde Great Read at myself in outline,” Notes, Journals, Syllabi, Lehman & an Excerpt from Deotha. Monthly events featured international panelists, includ- ing Queer Black and Latinx students and During the spring 2021 semester, Lehman scholars from Colombia and Brasil, as well faculty, staff, and students dove into the as talented student poets and writers from oeuvre of Audre Lorde, drawing connec- the Bronx. The organizers were Nicole tions not only to the inequalities made Flores, Francis Merencillo, Matt Caprioli, Lise starkly apparent by the Black Lives Matter Esdaile, Sarah Ohmer, Mary Phillips, and movement and in the midst of the pandemic, Olivia Loksing Moy. but also linking and reminding ourselves of a very important history of labor movements, Their great read was highlighted by Black Black intellectual thought, community-based Cuir Revolutions. Grounded in Lorde’s pedagogy and ethics of care, and queer “Learning from the 60s” and Black Queer/ feminisms that have been rooted in many of Cuir voices from the Caribbean and Latin our CUNY campuses. America, Black Cuir Revolutions engaged Black History and Women’s History Months Affiliated instructors assigned monthly with Sarah Ohmer, Tanya L Saunders, Ochy readings across courses in English, sociol- Curiel, Juliana Costa, and Grisel Y. Acosta, ogy, women’s studies, Latino/Latin American who considered the ways in which Black studies, and more. Among the four books Queer/Cuir experiences and perspectives by Lorde assigned monthly was the Lost contribute to current revolutions. & Found publication Audre Lorde: “I teach

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“I teach myself in outline,” Notes, Journals, Syllabi, & an Excerpt from Deotha, is a collection of Audre Lorde’s teaching materials from her time as an instructor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Hunter College, which spanned the years of 1970-1985. The volume also includes a chapter of Lorde’s unpublished novel Deotha, and an editors’ introduction that elucidates Lorde’s teaching philosophy through an in-depth look at her classroom documents.

Publishing with Manifold Excerpt from Deotha and June Jordan “Life Studies,” 1966–1976. We are launching these Manifold is an intuitive, collaborative, open- digital versions of our physical texts as part source platform for scholarly publishing that of an ongoing effort to make our pedagogy CUNY recently installed. With Manifold, you series available to all who might use them in can publish dynamic digital texts with rich their daily education, liberation, or self-care media support, powerful annotation tools, practices. and robust community dialogue: a perfect “The CUNY Manifold team is delighted virtual home for Lost & Found. CUNY’s to partner with the Center for Humanities Manifold, led by Professor Matthew K. Gold and Lost & Found on this amazing project. with support from colleagues Robin Miller We’ve been developing the CUNY instance and Wendy Barrales, is a free publishing of Manifold as a hub for open educational platform for the CUNY community. Lost & materials (OER) across the 25-campus Found texts are now available on Manifold for CUNY system, and these primary source custom classroom use, self-study, and group documents are an amazing trove of engagement and annotation. materials that will be of wide interest and The first two of our publications from our that will be used in a number of CUNY CUNY Pedagogy Series are now available classrooms.” on Manifold: Audre Lorde: “I teach myself —Matt Gold in outline,” Notes, Journals, Syllabi, & an

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“I’m especially happy that the first wave of CUNY poet-activist-pedagogy digital editions by Audre Lorde and June Jordan are avail- able through CUNY’s Manifold. An open online edition like this activates poetry as a knowledge practice in classrooms across CUNY while ensuring the continual presence and influence of these authors in a CUNY-specific context, the context in which they sharpened their craft and shaped institutional futures as part of stu- dent-led struggle. To say that the classes they taught, the lessons they learned, and the poems they wrote while doing so are still necessary is an understatement—these teaching documents and creative texts help readers understand how poetry and pedagogy can and do work together toward collective uplift, especially at CUNY, institutional home to so many poets.”

—Kendra Sullivan

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The seminar began with the activist movement James Gallery: Decolonize This Place, whose understand- Decolonizing ing of decolonization is a confluence of Indigenous rights activism, Black liberation, Curatorial Practice Palestinian nationalism, and anti-gentrification. Annotated Since the Whitney protests, they have grav- itated beyond the art world and towards the Bibliography Project radical formation FTP (“Fuck the Police,” “Free the People,” or “Feed the People”). Françoise Vergès, a feminist activist and intellectual The annotated bibliographies in this booklet based in Paris, told us about her decolonial were completed this year and are the outcome tours of the Louvre, her attempts to establish of the Decolonizing Curatorial Practice Mellon a “museum without objects” in La Réunion, Seminar in Art History co-taught by James and her innovative pedagogic methods for Gallery Curator Katherine Carl and Professor people of color. Nigerian art historian Chika Claire Bishop (Art History) at the Graduate Okeke-Agulu (Princeton University) pre- Center in spring 2020. The group examined sented his co-curated exhibition Who Knows the growth of decolonization movements in Tomorrow (Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2010) and art and activism that began in earnest in the spoke powerfully against the “decolonial,” 2000s with the Maison des Civilisations et de arguing that West Africa is still in a postcolo- l’Unité Réunionnaise MCUR in La Réunion, nial moment. Paul Chaat Smith, curator at the and the Decolonizing Architecture Art National Museum of the American Indian in Residency (DAAR) in Beit Sahour, Palestine. Washington, DC, expressed skepticism about In New York, such efforts have taken the form the accessibility of the term “decolonization” of calls to decolonize the museum both in and presented his co-curated exhibition terms of its exhibitions and organizational Americans (2018–ongoing) as an attempt structure—from the exhibition This Place to appeal to a broad public without conde- (Brooklyn Museum, 2016) to the campaign to scension or moralization. Julieta González’s remove Warren Kanders from the board of the exhibition Memories of Underdevelopment: Whitney Museum of American Art (2019). The Art and the Decolonial Turn in Latin America, seminar set out to trace the various histor- 1960–1985 (Museo Jumex, Mexico City, 2018), ical and theoretical inflections of the term by contrast, understood Latin American “decolonization” in North and South America, decolonization through the lens of 1960s Europe, Africa, Australia, and South Asia, and anti-imperialism and dependency theory. their impact upon exhibition practice. Due to generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Berlin-based independent curator Claire Foundation, the seminar was largely based Tancons energized the class with her around visiting speakers with expertise in research into Caribbean carnival practices these regions.

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Al-Idrisi’s world map from ‘Alî ibn Hasan al-Hûfî al- Qâsimî’s 1456 copy of the Kitab Rujar. According to the French National Library, “Ten copies of the Kitab Rujar or Tabula Rogeriana exist worldwide today. Of these ten, six contain at the start of the work a circular map of the world which is not mentioned in the text of al-Idris”. The original text dates to 1154. Note that south is at the top of the map.

and candid approach to the difficulty of trans- students contributed five entries for an anno- lating these into exhibition formats. Wanda tated bibliography, each student focusing on Nanibush, curator of Indigenous art at the Art a particular continent or region. The follow- Gallery of Ontario, discussed the notion of ing booklet presents the outcome of this “performing sovereignty” through her rehang literature review, with groupings of texts on of the J. S. McLean Centre for Indigenous & decolonial artistic and curatorial strategies Canadian Art, which included a rejection of in Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin chronology and informational labelling. America, South Asia, and the United States.

Download Our last speakers were Monica Narula and booklet here. Jeebesh Bagchi of Raqs Media Collective (New Delhi), who confirmed that in South Asia decolonization still tends to refer to the partition of India in 1947; the term “decolo- nial” is emerging as a paradigm to replace the postcolonial/global, but its temporal and geographic reach are still waiting to be more closely defined. In preparing the class, we were struck by the dearth of material that linked decolonization to art history and museums. As part of their final assignment,

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Tania Bruguera and Claire Bishop, May 2018. James Gallery: action and gesture, how to navigate unex- pected co-production of artwork with a Blurring the Lines state apparatus, and reflections on the Between Art and artist’s responsibility to the audience when the artwork involves danger to the artist. Activism Questions from the audience were incredibly timely, and the participants offered thoughts Public conversation between Tania on how artists respond to dictatorships and Brugera, Claire Bishop, and Irene Small what we in the US can learn from interna- tional examples.​ This conversation between Tania Brugera, Claire Bishop, and Irene Small addressed the A controversial figure working in installa- Tania Bruguera in Conversation new book, tion and performance, Cuban artist Tania With / en conversación con Claire Bishop , Bruguera has consistently blurred the lines through an exchange of different views between art and activism. Defining herself on aspects of Brugera’s art. The speakers as an initiator rather than an author, she worked through differences between often invites spectator participation and

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Watch: Blurring the Lines Between Art and Activism: A Conversation with Tania Bruguera works in a collaborative mode, working with work in Cuba in the 1980s, motivated by her various organizations, institutions and indi- political activism, and her shift from intimate viduals to challenge political and economic performances to the orchestration of the power structures and the control they hold large-scale interactive situations and events over society. that characterize her work today.

This panel discussion looked at different The panel also delved into Bruguera’s current aspects of Bruguera’s career, including her work, as she has said that this publication exploration of the ways in which art can be is closing a chapter in her life. “I sometimes applied to everyday life, and how its effects feel I am carrying those works that belong can translate into political action. Panelists to the past around too much. From now on, explored topics covered in this eleventh title those that want to know about them, will have in the Fundación Cisneros’ Conversaciones/ to read the book … I am at that point in time Conversations series, which delves into terms where I want to look to the future.” Bruguera has developed and or adapted over the last decade to “illuminate” her work: For more information about the publication Arte de Conducta (Behaviour Art), Political please visit the Cisneros Foundation. Timing Specific Art, Arte Útil (Useful Art), Est -Ética (Aest-ethics) and Artivism. Bruguera’s story, as discussed with Bishop over several years, runs from the development of her early

49 CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES

Watch: Adjunct Incubator recipient Kendra Krueger demonstrates how to build a DIY carbon dioxide sensor as part of her project The Community Sensor Lab.

CUNY Adjunct policy change on public health and envi- ronmental justice, a multimedia project that Incubator documents stories of community and neigh- borhood resilience in the South Bronx, and a Co-sponsored with the Gittel Urban Studies class that integrates virtual reality and environ- Collective, the CUNY Adjunct Incubator mental social justice, among several others. supports the critical and community-engaged scholarship of 10 CUNY adjuncts across This year’s grant recipients were: 8 CUNY campuses. This year, they began developing a wide range of public and applied • Alicia Grullon (Art Department, Social projects in the arts, humanities and humanistic Practice Queens, Queens College, social sciences, including an interdisciplinary CUNY and The School of Visual Arts) for art project focused on creating a community Seed Books seed bank, a project that promotes the use • Tania Avilés Vergara (Spanish for of archives as open educational resources in Heritage Students and Hispanic the Spanish language class, an oral history of Linguistics, Lehman College, CUNY) CUNY adjuncts, a lab that seeks to equip youth for “Teaching and Learning Spanish and community members with research tools at CUNY: Public Language Education and STEAM skills to better advocate for local Through Archival Resources”

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• Chloe Smolarski (American Social Deportation Defense Case Study History Project/New Media Lab, CUNY Curricular Toolkit Digital History Archive, and The Center • Michelle Gaspari (Sociology, for Teaching and Learning at The Anthropology, and Women and Gender Graduate Center, CUNY, and Adjunct Studies, Baruch College, CUNY, and Instructor, Entertainment Technology/ a Co-Organizer at The CUNY Adjunct Emerging Media, New York City College Project) for The Adjunctification of of Technology, CUNY) for CUNY Adjunct Higher Education: A Guided Syllabus Oral History Project • Dominika Ksel (New Media Arts, New • Kendra Krueger (Advanced Science York City College of Technology, CUNY, Research Center, The Graduate Center, and Baruch College, CUNY) for Virtual CUNY) for The Community Sensor Lab Reality and Environmental Social • Mariposa Fernandez (Faculty member Justice presents “TrashTalk: A VR in the Women and Gender Studies Exploratorium” Program and Africana Studies • Apeksha Mewani (Health and Human Department at Lehman College and the Performance at York College, CUNY) Black Studies Program at City College for Public Health Informatics Careers of New York) for Be A Buddy Multimedia Dashboard Project: Stories of Strength from the South Bronx

• Jasmina Sinanović (Anthropology, Gender Studies and International Studies Department, The City College of New York, CUNY; Director of Development and Finance at the Center for LGBTQ Studies, CLAGS, The Graduate Center, CUNY) for Transgender and Non Binary Contingent Faculty Experience at CUNY

• Van Anh Tran (Department of Curriculum & Teaching, the Hunter School of Education, CUNY; and a PhD Candidate in Social Studies Education at Teachers College, Columbia) for Im/migration, Belonging, and Disrupting Cycles of State Violence: A Southeast Asian

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Watch: Ellen Reid SOUNDWALK.

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The Center is committed to making the research offerings of the Graduate Center, CUNY, including the many creative and innovative projects that we foster, open and accessible to the widest of publics. The Center for the Humanities comprises a significant part of the public face of the Graduate Center and looks to amplify its identity as the home of doctoral research across the arts and sciences at CUNY with vibrant and innovative public programming. We encourage the public to join us in study, integrating art, creativity, and alternative ways of thinking into our myriad forms of discursive sharing.

53 CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES Mindscapes Rebecca Jacobs, Wellcome Mental Health Curatorial Research Fellow Over the past year and a half, Rebecca Jacobs, the Wellcome Trust Mental Health Curatorial Research Fellow at The Graduate Center, CUNY has been supporting the development of the New York component of Mindscapes, a new international cultural program about mental health, developed by Wellcome. The program is predominantly taking place in four cities—Bengaluru, Berlin, New York and Tokyo—culminating in a series of co-produced public outcomes, including exhibitions in collaboration with art- ists-in-residence, events, and public programming in the spring and summer of 2022. By supporting local conversations and inter- disciplinary collaborations around a shared topic, Mindscapes aims to transform how we understand, address and talk about mental health by inspiring relevant and meaningful conversations that seek out a diversity of experience and place.

Soundwalk App, Film, and Ensemble. Ellen Reid’s SOUNDWALK is part Panel Discussion of Mindscapes, Wellcome’s international cultural program about mental health. SOUNDWALK Ellen Reid’s , a work of free As part of her role developing the New York public sound art that uses music to illumi- City component of Wellcome’s Mindscapes, nate the urban landscape, has launched Jacobs served as curatorial advisor for the in Central Park. Created by Pulitzer Prize– Central Park SOUNDWALK. She advised the winning composer Ellen Reid, the immersive team as they conducted research on the audio experience has been created for history and contemporary cultural meanings people visiting Central Park, which features of Central Park and supported the develop- musicians of the New York Philharmonic, ment of original poetry by members of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, Young People’s Chorus of New York City, Poole and the Gang, and the SOUNDWALK which is included in the experience.

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Rebecca Jacobs interviewing Commissioner Mitchell Silver for a video about SOUNDWALK for Mindscapes.

She also worked with local filmmakers November 12, 2020, as part of the Hamwe Meerkat Media Collective and UK producer Festival, a virtual event on social justice Barry Gibb to create a new short film about and mental health, hosted by the University SOUNDWALK produced for Wellcome’s of Global Health Equity (UGHE) in Kigali, Mindscapes, featuring Ellen Reid and New Rwanda. The group discussed mental health York City Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver, in New York’s parks, a subject currently being which addresses how music and parks con- studied through a collaboration between the tribute to mental health and well-being. NYC Parks Department and researchers at The Graduate Center. Jacobs also organized and moderated a panel discussion, “Resonant Spaces: Finding Well-Being through Parks and Music,” between Ellen Reid, Adedayo Perkovich of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, and Mitchell Silver. The panel was held on

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Mindscapes NYC December • Centering lived experience

2020 Convening • Mental health beyond healthcare

• Developing inclusive projects At the end of 2020, Jacobs gathered a group of 45 people for Mindscapes. • Thoughtful support strategies

Jacobs worked with facilitator Nayantara Sen, Ahead of the convening, the organizers Wellcome’s International Cultural Programmes wrote a series of questions for the breakout (ICP) team, and the Center’s Cara Jordan to sessions and asked participants to prioritize develop plans for the convening. Participants them and offer other suggestions. With the included cultural institutions, artists, designers, limited time available, the group collectively policy stakeholders, researchers, foundations settled on five. Broadly: and Wellcome’s ICP and Mental Health Priority • How to develop a shared mental health area teams. The virtual meetings consisted of language three different two-hour Zoom meetings held on consecutive Friday mornings in December • Mental health policies and re-evaluating 2020. “access to care”

The sessions were intended to be informal, • How different disciplines can elevate engaging, and provide an opportunity for lived experience as a valid form of people to meet, share, and think about ways knowledge they could collaborate for Mindscapes in New • How to work toward repair and joy at York. The group heard from the Tenement community, personal and societal levels Museum, Laundromat Project, Center for Urban while being mindful of toxic positivity Pedagogy, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Brooklyn Museum with short presentations on their • How Wellcome might commission or research and development for Mindscapes. generate inclusive collective research through Mindscapes that has a use and The key topics and themes that emerged tangible impact specific to mental health and wellbeing in New Following on from this convening and the York were: themes that emerged, the Mindscapes NYC • The power of words and narratives project partners are moving into the devel- opment and production phases of cultural • Reforming science by “bridging worlds” programming, culminating in a Mindscapes • Cultural projects and policy change public programming in spring and summer 2022. Major projects underway include plans • Community, trust, and repairing for an exhibition by Guadalupe Maravilla at institutions the Brooklyn Museum, along with an adjacent

56 PUBLIC MISSION interactive gallery space that addresses themes from local Mindscapes projects, inspired by Wellcome’s Reading Room. Working Group

Report prepared by Rebecca Jacobs The Center for the Humanities, CUNY is hosting a working group for local Mindscapes partners to workshop projects and collab- orate over the next year. Jacobs held the first of these local working group meetings virtually on April 23, 2021, and will continue to organize them through the 2021–22 academic year, with an aim for in-person meetings in the months ahead. International Partners

Taking lessons from her experience design-

Guadalupe Maravilla, Disease Thrower #7, Institute of Contemporary Art VCU, 2020, ing the Mindscapes convening for New York, Image courtesy of the artist. Jacobs is meeting regularly with each of the Download the full Mindscapes NYC Convening other curatorial research fellows in Berlin, report here. Bengaluru, and Tokyo to support them as they plan local Mindscapes convenings in their respective cities over the next year. The group is also meeting regularly with an aim to build an international network across the Mindscapes projects.

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Nikki Columbus, Remote Solidarity, 2020. Courtesy of Nikki Columbus. James Gallery: group Museum as Form’s extensive public research on labor inequalities in museum Art Work Place structures and writer Nikki Columbus’s col- Publication laborative research preparation for a summit on these issues. This past year, the incredibly dynamic Art The gallery worked with Michelle Millar Fisher Work Place massive group Zoom room of the PhD Program in Art History and curator discussions were transcribed to create a Nikki Columbus to create the event series publication to historically document how Art • Work • Place, conducting research the James Gallery worked with partners to and creating a Zoom platform for sharing respond, in the moment thoughtfully and resources and ideas on precarious economic with agility, to the unfolding COVID-19 crisis. and labor issues facing cultural workers and Brainstorming to shape the publication and students and the mutual aid efforts that have editing have been ongoing. Three emergency been devised to address them, in the wake of public Zoom sessions in April, May, and June the pandemic. By reinventing how we gather, 2020 were mobilized at lightning pace with the interactive sessions were filled with technical alacrity following the gallery working

58 PUBLIC MISSION brainstorming and resource-sharing. As part large project. It is an important undertaking, of the partnership network of mutual aid, we as this will become a historical document distributed small participation funds to over of the moments when COVID-19 hit the arts 100 artists and educators who are precarious with devastating effects on artists, museum cultural workers. educators, and gig workers because of the structural inequality of the ecosystem of art. All three AWP links:

Art Work Place I

Art Work Place II

Art Work Place III

Capturing the layers of conversation that were recorded, with at times over 800 people in a room in moderated conversation and chat, and at other times small intensive working groups in breakout rooms, in a book is a

Watch: Art Work Place Emergency Session I Webinar.

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From left to right: Harmony Holiday, Fred Moten. Images courtesy of the artists. James Gallery Together, we all gathered in an imagined living room, across time zones, as we carried and Lost & Found forward the conversation and spirit of their Collaborative Art & November 2019 reading in the James Gallery to celebrate their new books A Jazz Poetry Sessions: Funeral for Uncle Tom (winner of a 2020 California Book Award) and All that Beauty. Ensemble Time: An Improvised Harmony’s review of Fred’s book was pub- Listening and Reading Session lished this past year by the Poetry Project. with Harmony Holiday and Fred The shared experience of the evening Moten extends forward in time in video documen- tation, the musical playlist “Ensemble Time,” curated by Harmony for the event, and in a This past year, there has been so much more list of resources from this session. to talk about and listen to. We acknowledged this shift and recognized that our community Fred Moten teaches black studies, critical of artists and poets needed nurturing and theory and poetics in the Department of were nurturing each other. Poets Harmony Performance Studies at New York University. Holiday and Fred Moten continued their His latest book, written with Stefano Harney, ongoing exchange in an improvised session is All Incomplete (Minor Compositions/ of listening and reading from their new work. Autonomedia, 2020).

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Harmony Holiday is a writer, dancer, archivist, music? In their wide-ranging conversation, director, and the author of four collections of poets, writers, and cultural critics Harmony poetry, A Jazz Funeral for Uncle Tom (Birds, Holiday and Hanif Abdurraqib looked at their LLC, 2019), Hollywood Forever (Fence Books, own work and that of poets whose work they 2017), Go Find Your Father/ A Famous Blues admire, as well as music they love that helps (Ricochet Editions, 2014) and Negro League answer and refine these questions. They Baseball (Fence Books, 2011). shared some of their own work as well, and created a relaxed generative atmosphere Haunting Refrains: Sampling with playlists, in the Zoom room packed with Practice in Black Poetry and hundreds of active participants that can be Music with Harmony Holiday watched here. and Hanif Abdurraqib Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic whose poetry has been pub- How is the technique of sampling, pervasive lished in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, in Black music, used in poetry and literature and various other journals. In 2021, he will at large? Does poetry sample music, does release the book A Little Devil In America with it sample other poetry, does it do either well Random House. or effectively, or do poets need to catch up to music in this regard? And what is the relationship between sampling practice and free improvisation in both poetry and

Watch: Hanif Abdurraqib and Harmony Holiday.

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Image from Library of America. Lift Every Voice: response to the personal experiences of Black Americans over three centuries. These Why African events were also in celebration of the recent American Poetry publication of African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, edited by Kevin Matters / Celebrating Young, a literary landmark: the biggest, most African American ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the Poetry: 250 Years of colonial period to the present.

Struggle & Song This event was sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, Lost & Found: The CUNY Lift Every Voice was a yearlong national Poetics Document Initiative, and the James public humanities initiative sponsored by Gallery at The Graduate Center, CUNY in col- the Library of America and the Schomburg laboration with One Book One Bronx, Literary Center for Research in Black Culture that Freedom Project, and Leonard Lief Library at sought to engage participants in a multifac- Lehman College, CUNY, who hosted a series eted exploration of African American poetry, of eclectic programs and reading groups as the perspectives it offers on American part of a nationwide initiative, Lift Every Voice: history and the ongoing struggle for racial Why African American Poetry Matters. justice, and the universality of its imaginative

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Cover of African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song anthology. Edited by Kevin Young.

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With intensifying systemic inequalities around James Gallery: the world in the context of a global pandemic, Claudia Rankine and accelerating climate change, an escalating refugee crisis and rising race-based violence, the Racial Imaginary the idea of any singular, national “we” has Institute in Residence never been more contested. Toxic concep- tions of “us vs. them,” a doubling down of On Nationalism: The Fragility “me and mine,” underlie a global ethos of and the Possibility of “We” racialized nationalism. At the same time, we are in a generative, yet tenuous time of community organizing, protest movements, In 2020–21, Claudia Rankine and the Racial mutual support, and intersectionality. Both Imaginary Institute were in residence at the responses stem from the language and James Gallery for the second of their three- feeling of injury and longing. When the notion year collaboration investigating nationalism. of home is unstable, what are our options? The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII) is a col- As Paul Chan said, “Is there a direction home lective of poets, writers, curators, and artists that doesn’t point backward?” dedicated to creating spaces for the critical discussion of race and identity. There is the possibility of “we.” How much should we invest in ideas of the “we”? How Building upon successful collaborative work can we re-imagine nation, tribe, community? by James Gallery Presidential Fellow James What practices of listening, sharing, and Sevitt (Environmental Psychology), two making could be enacted across varying new James Gallery Fellowships have been visions of community, decolonization and created and awarded to Graduate Center self-determination? How does our complicity students Jennifer Jones (Art History) and become constitutive of community as we Busra Unluonen (Cultural Anthropology) for imagine it? How do national identities shape the 2021–22 year. The collaborative TRII– our everyday lives? Which borders are per- James Gallery curatorial team, including meable and which are sustainable? Which LeRonn Brooks, alumnus of the PhD Program injuries are bearable and which are not? To in Art History, met weekly over the spring quote Homi Bhabha, “When is a risk to life 2021 semester to brainstorm and plan a also a risk to living?” This collaboration of faculty-student seminar for the 2021–22 the Racial Imaginary Institute and the James academic year that will generate new Gallery builds an international network of research and culminate in a range of inter- programs, exhibitions, seminars, and creative disciplinary programs, including an exhibition acts in response to these questions, with the and publication in spring 2022. aim of scrutinizing nationalisms and consid- ering the fragility and possibility of “we.”

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San Diego Solidarity Brigade & OLBSD Projections for Racial Justice, Dismantle White Supremacy, Backbone Campaign, October 15, 2017. Creative Commons.

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Asian American Reckonings visual art, and more, Park Hong experiments with the Racial Imaginary with form to create new articulations of the Institute’s Cathy Park Hong genres of memoir and cultural criticism. Simon Wu introduced the evening and facili- and Monica Youn tated the active and meaningful question and answer interaction with public participants. Cathy Park Hong’s recent book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning has Park Hong is a poet, essayist and author of become required reading in spring 2021 as poetry collections including Dance Dance our voices have called for a stop to anti–Asian Revolution, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the American hate. The author’s conversation Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Engine with poet Monica Youn was full of personal Empire. and lively reflections, including on how it feels Blackacre when American optimism contradicts your Monica Youn is the author of own reality and when you believe the lies (Graywolf Press, 2016), which won the William you’re told about your own racial identity. Park Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society Hong dove into the shame, suspicion, and of America. melancholy that she felt growing up as the daughter of Korean immigrants and found in these dissonant feelings the key to questions that haunt her. Engaging stand-up comedy,

Minor Feelings, An Asian American Reckoning book cover. Image courtesy of Cathy Park Hong.

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Dina Weiss, Building Frame (2), 2021. Gouache, mono print, paper 12 x 9 inches. Study for “Agents of Curiosity: Concerning Infrastructures, Facing Empire Window Project.” Image courtesy of the artist. James Gallery: outcome of research and dialogue between artists and scholars. Underlying this mission “Agents of Curiosity”: is the shared fundamental importance of Concerning curiosity and experimentation—in education and in art making. At the Graduate Center, Infrastructures, we are part of the city, and we contribute Facing Empire to building its culture and civic life. The city flows through The Graduate Center with the Window Projects energetic curiosity and experimentation of the students, faculty and staff—like a breath of The windows of the Graduate Center provide fresh air in Midtown. an opportunity to communicate with people traversing Fifth Avenue. The James Gallery During the spring 2021 semester, the James creates and presents art as both catalyst and Gallery has been working with artists, faculty,

67 CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES and students to envision a series of projects city during the pandemic, will make the most in the gallery windows to launch in summer of previously overlooked spaces, relations, 2021 and extend through winter 2022 while and small pockets of time and space. The we gradually transition back into the building. projects also gesture toward the upcoming The gallery has partnered with PublicsLab Racial Imaginary project that will be in the to offer a Mellon Fellowship next year to PhD gallery physically next spring, which responds student Jessica Applebaum (Theatre) to to artist Paul Chan’s question “Is there a way consider the dramaturgy of this liminal space to go home that does not point backwards?” and the ways in which movement and perfor- How will we acknowledge the fragility and mance create the setting of a gallery space. build on the possibility of “we” in this city that is our transforming home?

Dina Weiss, Study for Agents of Curiosity: Concerning Infrastructures, Facing Empire Window Project, Mail Art City Collage Print series, 2020. Gouache, silkscreen print, collage, 5 x 7 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

As we come back to Midtown and think about what nurturing practices we want to build in our institution, the artists’ imagery, taking inspiration from networks of relations and quiet nurturing patterns of everyday life in the

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Installation view of ‘Wayfinding,” Chloë Bass, 2020.

Mellon Seminar: 10 Years of Social Practice Queens. Bass gave a virtual walk-through of the exhibition Here and Not There this semester. In addition to the exhibition itself, they organized a virtual catalogue and Led by Seminar Faculty Lead Chloë Bass a series of public programs, including All Things Must Pass, a roundtable discussion Artist Chloë Bass’s project combines art and with SPQ MFA candidate Cristina Ferrigno lived experience as research tools to inspire about art, grief, and communal mourning. private and public dialogue about questions This conversation is also related to Bass’s of intimacy and how socially constructed Grief Museum Studies Syllabus. notions of “family” inform the way city dwellers understand their place in changing In spring and summer 2021, Bass is present- urban environments. ing an exhibition and series of programs with the Brooklyn Public Library entitled The Parts, This year, Bass partnered with Social which invites audiences “to reflect on how Practice Queens, a unique degree program personal and public histories intersect and based at Queens College, focused on art provide language and feeling through which as an instrument of social justice. They to process the crises and positive develop- collaborated with the Queens Museum to ments around us.” present the exhibition Art as Social Action:

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The hands of a workshop participant brewing tea from self-made teabags in a clay cup. Photo by Cinthya Santos-Briones for Brewing Memories workshop, October 3, 2020.

Mellon Seminar: workshops, and gardens) devised in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and to think col- Archives in Common lectively about how to build an archive of the commons during a crisis. Led by Seminar Faculty Lead Ángeles Donoso Macaya This year, Donoso Macaya and her collabora- tors have developed a website that documents Professor Ángeles Donoso Macaya and her the project’s collective work, presented collaborative partners are not creating “new” numerous workshops and public events, and knowledge; they are sustaining and dissem- published writing on both Distributaries and inating Indigenous knowledge practices elsewhere, including: concerning food growth, access, sustainability, and preparation. Archives in Common brings • The Archives in Common website, which together community organizers with members hosts a growing archive of the commons, of immigrant and university communities to documenting the project’s ongoing work assist in the support and expansion of undocu- across events, workshops, public syllabi, mented immigrant–led initiatives (cooperatives, and mutual aid work.

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• A public conversation between core presence of Indigenous knowledges, but project collaborators Carolina Saavedra, also a form of mutual aid—and another Marco Saavedra, and Yajaira Saavedra instance of resistance to gentrification about the extraordinary community that continues to displace and push com- space they have created at La Morada, munities out of the South Bronx.” which not only functions as a restau- • The Undocumented-Led Struggle for rant but also a hub for mutual aid and a Freedom, a conversation between four of refuge and sanctuary for communities in the six co-authors of the book Eclipse of the South Bronx. Dreams, Marco Saavedra, Claudia Muñoz, • Brewing Memories, a series of workshops Mariela Nuñez-Janes, and Stephen that teach decolonial gardening practices, Pavey, to discuss and explore how, in the led by Carolina Saavedra. This workshop search for alternative ways of struggle series began at Brooke Park, a community for real liberation, justice, and dignity, garden located near La Morada. These undocumented youth activists began to workshops taught participants not only organize differently and to devise several the medicinal uses and historical lineages forms of direct action. of various herbs and plants but also how • Socializing Toxic Clouds, a conversa- to grow them. They invited participants to tion between Samaneh Moafi, Imani “draw” a memory using the herbs before Jacqueline Brown, and Robert Trafford making them into a tea shared by everyone from the collective Forensic Architecture present. and Anna Feigenbaum about the use of • A beautiful reflection on the first of toxic clouds to police and disperse col- these workshops by Donoso Macaya lective dissent, inspired by a recent video on Distributaries, in which she writes, project on which Donoso Macaya collabo- “In Brewing Memories, participants not rated that investigates the use of tear gas only collectively learn (or remember) against protests at the 2020 Plaza de la Indigenous practices and knowledges Dignidad protests in Chile. centered in the use of medicinal plants • An interview between Donoso Macaya as a way to care for oneself, to care and Marco Saavedra about their collab- for others, and to care for the environ- orative syllabus that proposes reading ment. They also share experiences and together as an “act of love.” memories, and create something from these memories. As Yajaira emphasized in the closing of the second workshop, the practice of sharing knowledges, experi- ences, and memories around a fire is not only a testament to the perseverance and

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A Brewing Memories workshop participant drawing a flag using honey and dry herbs––three long, green dried pieces of lemongrass serve to make three stripes with criss-crossed marigold leaves in the shape of a star, set on a triangle of lavender. Photo by Cinthya Santos-Briones, October 24, 2020.

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Mellon Seminar: • Digital Puerto Rican Studies: Social Scholarship, Mapping, and Archives, The Puerto Rico an event in which the PR Syllabus pre- Syllabus sented alongside three other digital scholarship projects centered on PR: Led by Seminar Faculty Lead Yarimar The Proyecto historias orales cayeyanas: Bonilla Vivencias y resistencias; Visualizando El Apoyo Mutuo: Solidaridad en Acción; The Puerto Rico Syllabus is a digital resource and the Digital Library of the Caribbean- that was originally devised as a means of Archivo Histórico de Vieques. thinking and teaching about the Puerto Rican • Sancocho LIVE: Catastrophe, debt crisis. Over the course of the last year, Resistance, & Joy: A Virtual Stew of Professor Yarimar Bonilla has been working “Non-Essential” Thinkers and Makers to build and extend the work of this public / Un guiso virtual de pensadores y syllabus through a series of courses, initia- hacedores “no-esenciales,” a three- tives, and public events that not only continue part virtual event series that brought to take up questions of the unfolding crises together scholars, writers, artists, and in Puerto Rico (PR) in the wake of a 15-year activists to think about how “non- recession, cuts to basic services, and devas- essential” communities, workers, and tating storms and earthquakes but also how institutions are responding to the inter- they relate to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, secting catastrophes of the present. including: Drawing inspiration from Pedro Pietri’s

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concept of the “aesthetic sancocho,” Fund) and Julio López-Varona (Center each event consisted of short video for Popular Democracy) centered on presentations followed by a moderated climate change, the current economic dialogue with Puerto Rican cultural and political challenges facing PR, and a workers in the island and the diaspora, vision of a just recovery. and ended with a virtual jangueo where • A course developed by Curricular Fellow DJs set the mood and participants Ashley Coleman Taylor that activates could continue building together. the PR Syllabus and explores how the • Sancocho LIVE 2 — La Brega: Stories of relationship between Black women’s the Puerto Rican Experience / La Brega: bodies and geography in PR may help historias de la experiencia boricua, a us understand the ways in which race, four-part virtual event series featuring gender, and agency inform notions of reporters, sources, musicians, and debt, lack, ownership, and sovereignty. artists from the new podcast La Brega, • A project by Curricular Fellow Ricardo using narrative storytelling, investi- Gabriel, which focuses on climate gative journalism, and first-person justice, the energy system’s relationship reflections to reveal how “la brega” has to PR’s colonial debt crisis, and its role defined so many aspects of life in PR in shaping the country’s future, by pro- during its 120-year history as a colony viding an overview of the current energy of the United States. A term that has system as well as multimedia resources no translation from Spanish to English on environmental justice and climate but for Puerto Ricans is a “way of life,” justice struggles in the Puerto Rican through struggle or hustle, these events archipelago. sought to ask, alongside the podcast, what does it say about life in Puerto • A project by Research Assistant Rico that “la brega” is such a defining Daniel Vázquez Sanabria that seeks to experience? maximize the accessibility of the PR Syllabus website. • LANDFALL: a commemoration of the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria, its survivors and their stories, through a film screening of Cecilia Aldarondo’s film LANDFALL, live per- formances from Puerto Rican artists, including music by Danny Rivera and poetry by Raquel Salas Rivera, and an audience Q&A with top experts, including Xiomara Caro Diaz (Maria

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to launch Light Relief, a new mixed-media L&F Light poetry journal, as well as texts by Audre Lorde Relief and June Jordan from our publication series.

During the pandemic, Lost & Found (L&F) centered its energies on keeping creativ- ity and connection alive in our extended scholarly community. In the early weeks of lockdown in spring 2020, L&F sent out a call for Lost & Found: Light Relief, a WPA-inspired initiative to distribute resources to our com- munity. CUNY and L&F-affiliated poets/ writers, archivists/scholars, and students/ artists shared short-form, mixed media work from their own personal archives to publish digitally. Poets, artists, and scholars sent provisional texts, fragments of research, and finished pieces. A dynamic poetic archive of the present emerged in real time. L&F teamed up with CUNY’s open-source, anno- table scholarly publishing platform Manifold

75 STATISTICS

Representing the first full academic year where the Center for the Humanities has found itself operating entirely remotely, the data presented here are offered as a snapshot of a new landscape that we are only beginning to understand as we adjust to what has become a “new normal.” None of us knows exactly how to interpret such numbers, although we have received plenty of anecdotal evidence that our ongoing capacity—through our relocated and extended programming—to convene communities new and old has served to establish and strengthen ties between participants and audience members alike.

New opportunities for engagement have arisen as we have been able to connect thousands of audience members and participants for whom attendance in person would have been impos- sible at any time. We have been able to proceed with much of our scheduled programming virtually and have been able to reimagine many of the other aspects of research-community gathering, taking the lead with innovative forms of remote operation that will find no numer- ical recognition below. Some critical parts of our work also had to be postponed and, as the opportunities to engage in person slowly return, we look forward to better articulating the many valuable aspects of the shared work we do so that, once the real world is again available alongside the virtual, we keep the best of both.

76 Events Mailing List /

115 public events! Newsletter 26,551 total viewers of our events • Total: 76,342 • Center: 47,531 Zoom attendees/viewers • Lost & Found: 14,826 20,600 viewers

Translating the Future series 9,058 viewers from 85 countries

Facebook live 4,243 viewers

YouTube 1,708 viewers Social Media

Facebook • Center: 5,199 followers • Lost & Found: 1,786 followers

Twitter • Center: 3,551 followers • James: 723 followers • Lost and Found: 1,630 followers

Instagram • Center: 1,211 followers • James: 671 followers

77 ABOUT THE CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES

The Center for the Humanities encourages collaborative and creative work in the humanities at CUNY and across the city through seminars, conferences, publications, and exhibitions.

Our focus is connecting the interdisciplinary research and teaching at the Graduate Center with stakeholders across the city with the goal of fostering new ideas in the arts, philosophy, politics, and the humanities.

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The current Seminar projects are grounded in Andrew W. Mellon creativity, democratic knowledge practices, Seminar on Public and the reciprocal exchange of resources and ideas with wider communities. They Engagement and cover topics ranging from Afro-Carribean Collaborative Sound Ecologies to Archives in Common to Voices of the Gig Economy to Ethnographies Research of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. While planning these individual projects, the Kendra Sullivan, Director of The Andrew group is also working collectively and syn- W. Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement ergistically with each other and the Seminar and Collaborative Research team to establish a network of urban gardens Having long-identified engagement as key to and community kitchens where the bodies its institutional character, the CUNY system and minds of diverse CUNY communities are is ideally placed to develop structures that nurtured through engaged public program- revitalize democratic knowledge practices on ming, facilitated discussion around polarizing and off campus, solidifying CUNY’s legacy issues, and the distribution of fresh, healthy as a leader in 21st-century higher public food. In the film below, edited by fellow Pedro education. Cabello del Moral (LAILAC), some of the activist-scholars affiliated with the Seminar Every two years, a new cohort of approxi- whose study and activism is adjacent to, mately 20 faculty, students, and community and sometimes grounded in, urban garden- partners come together through the Seminar ing speak candidly about how food justice to plan and implement creative, activist, became central to their public humanities and scholarly collaborations that result projects during the pandemic. in research, teaching, and activities that serve greater public good. Over its history, the Seminar has funded nearly 60 collab- orative projects, including playwriting and performance, publications, websites, new media and technology, oral histories, and artworks that offer new ways of understand- ing and solving pressing social issues. Taken together, the portfolio of individual and collective projects stewards profound con- Watch: Food justice, activism and the nectivity, possibility, and progressive change public university: a conversation across CUNY, New York City, and the world.

80 ABOUT Pub Hum Mapping Project

This year, Seminar leadership has also been working with our collaborators to enhance sustainable infrastructure for public human- ities at CUNY. As part of those efforts, we developed a suite of interrelated projects, including the Public Humanities Mapping Project. Urban designer Aurash Khawarzad (Geography, Earth and Environmental Science) has assisted in the development of techniques for cartographic research and mapmaking in the humanities as a tool for deepening public engagement and impact. Here is the first map project, co-created by Aurash Khawarzad and myself as a pilot and proof of concept. CUNY Pub Hum Database

A open-access database of public humanists, departments, groups, centers, and insti- tutes at CUNY is in formation. GC sociology The CUNY Public Humanities Map shows a map of students Kristi Kiley and Nga Than will work NYC, in which Brooklyn and Queens appear in the center and all 4 outer boroughs appear with me to update, seek peer assessment larger than Manhattan, with CUNY campuses marked by their geographic location such as and review, and share this resource with col- Brooklyn College, Queens College, and Bronx Community College. Around these are colorful leagues to facilitate greater conversation and lists color-coded according to a key organized collaboration across disciplines, institutes, by Neighborhood, CUNY Campus, Department, CUNY Partner, Civic Partner, Community Partner, and campuses as we plan engaged scholarly Social Justice, Landscape, Method, and Area of Study. research and programming. Please be in touch if you’d like to contribute to our efforts to centralize communication amongst public practitioners, administrators, faculty, and students at CUNY!

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Countermapping the We’re also working to enhance visibility and Humanities support for ongoing and new public human- ities work at CUNY through Distributaries, our online and in-print publishing platform. “Countermapping the Humanities” is the Queenie Sukhadia, our Distributaries writ- core of the Seminar’s collaboration with the er-in-residence, has spent the last year Computational Democracy Project and Polis, conducting an ongoing series of interviews a civic engagement technology, with whom that highlight public humanities talent we’re exploring the role of machine learning in across CUNY. And, more recently, Sukhadia humanistic discourses by launching a series has joined the Distributaries editorial team of surveys about the stakes and aims of public to strategize content development for a humanities practices at public universities. relaunch of Distributaries this fall! Here are We’ve also collaborated on two other cam- some highlights from Distributaries this year: paigns: one led by Wendy Luttrell and Urban Ed graduate students on the twin crisis of Marco Saavedra and Ángeles Donoso COVID and racism in NYC public schools, Macaya, “love is the most subversive praxis: called NYC Parents Speak Out; and one reading together as a working of love” designed to support a food access campaign at Brooklyn College, which has resulted in Queenie Sukhadia, “Why the Humanities curriculum and infrastructural development Need to Go Public, and the Ways in Which around urbanism, gardening, and food justice. They Already Are,” More context can be found here. Michelle May-Curry: “The Uses of Blue-Sky Expanding our media output through public Thinking in the Imperfect World (of Graduate writing, filmmaking, and podcasts has Education).” become a significant focus during the last year. For example, our friends and allies at Humanities for All have profiled Seminar project leaders and collaborators’s projects on their site:

Humanities for All Seminar on Public Engagement

Archives in Common

Countermapping the Humanities An image from the project #sky #nofilter, Chloë Bass, photography, text, and video, 2016-2017.

82 ABOUT

I’ll close with praise and thanks to our full Current Seminar Fellows 2020–21 cohort: Pedro Cabello del Moral, Department of Current Seminar Faculty Leads Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures/ LAILAC, The Graduate Center, CUNY Chloë Bass, Queens College, Department of Art and Art History Courtney Frantz, Department of Sociology, The Graduate Center, CUNY Yarimar Bonilla, The Graduate Center, Department of Anthropology; Hunter College, Nga Than, Department of Sociology, The Department of Africana, Puerto Rican and Graduate Center, CUNY Latino Studies Jadele McPherson, Department of Cultural Ángeles Donoso Macaya, Borough of Anthropology, The Graduate Center, CUNY Manhattan Community College, Department of Modern Languages Fernanda Blanco Vidal, Department of Environmental Psychology, The Graduate Ryan Mann-Hamilton, LaGuardia Community Center, CUNY College, Department of Anthropology, and Department of Latin American Studies Rosa Squillacote, Department of Political Science, The Graduate Center, CUNY Michael Menser, Brooklyn College, Departments of Philosophy, Urban Eric Dean Wilson, Department of English, The Sustainability Studies, and Caribbean Graduate Center, CUNY Studies; The Graduate Center, Earth and Kristine Riley, Department of Sociology, The Environmental Science, and Environmental Graduate Center, CUNY Psychology

Naomi Schiller, Brooklyn College & The Graduate Center, Department of Anthropology

Terri N. Watson, The City College of New York, School of Education, Department of Leadership and Human Development

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of Americans based on the story of the early The James Gallery, years of MoMA. The innovative practice of Art and the gallery’s curatorial method enacts inves- tigative questions from advanced research Interdisciplinary in anthropology, history, political science, Research philosophy, computation, library science, music, theatre, economics, literature, psy- Katherine Carl, Curator of the James Gallery chology, geography, and much more through the creative production and dialogic interac- Since 2010, the Amie and Tony James Gallery tion with artists and their work. The gallery is has been creating new methods and struc- known internationally for its strong support of tures for collaborative work between artists, artists’ expression in all forms and its import- scholars, and the public as it catalyzes and ant contributions to advanced research on produces advanced research, artistic creation, modern and contemporary international art. and interdisciplinary dialogue on topics of Recognized for its outstanding long-term mutual concern. The James Gallery provides advanced research in modernism across support for creative processes that may lie many fields and geographies, the gallery has outside usual disciplinary boundaries through always created projects that reorient this multiple formats. Long-term art and interdisci- discourse through presentation of views and plinary research collaborations with scholars voices that see modernism from vantage at CUNY and public partners manifest in art points of excluded and hybrid perspectives. exhibitions, yearlong seminars with CUNY This work is enacted in the public gallery and faculty and students, performances, work- in the classroom. In-depth exchange with shops, symposia, roundtable discussions, and artists to cultivate new projects and support screenings. The gallery addresses issues of experimental approaches is a hallmark of global importance with innovative collabora- the gallery’s curatorial practice. Israeli cho- tive research and artistic creation. Located reographer Arkadi Zaides’s 2016 exhibition in midtown Manhattan at the nexus of the Capture Practice was such a project showing academy, contemporary international art, and that a committed, calm, measured tone in the city, the gallery is central to The Graduate working method can open deep conversation Center’s and CUNY’s contribution to the on difficult topics in public. cultural life of New York City. The James Gallery continuously provides The gallery launched public programming support, direct mentoring, resources, and in winter 2011 with Fred Moten’s inaugural creative research collaborations for students lecture and the major international con- across disciplines to practice new methods ference Now Museum in partnership with of work with artists and the public in com- Independent Curators International and the bination with approaches from their own The Making New Museum, and the exhibition disciplines. Students conceptualize their

84 ABOUT multifaceted projects through dialogue Curatorial Practice. In addition, nine first-year with curators and fellow scholars, journal- art history students received financial aid to ists, artists, and public non-governmental work with the gallery, learning and contrib- organizations on the local, national, and uting to the inner workings of a nonprofit art international levels. This foregrounds aspects space, exploring new approaches to public of doctoral research that grow out of public programs this year. Making use of the tools discussion and might otherwise be left out for digital gathering, a robust collaboration of the traditional disciplines of graduate between two fellows produced a deeply study and usual modes of presentation. reflective and impactful nationwide convening Their projects dig deeply into the questions of graduate art history students to address that motivate public discourse and artistic Ethics and Labor in Art History in their rela- and academic practice in many fields. In tionship to the professional field and their addition to scholarly writing and organizing teaching. Through these diverse in-depth col- seminars, students may also explore how laborations with the James Gallery, students to spatialize their arguments in the gallery are supported to actively create new schol- and invent other formats that foster artistic arship in their fields, engaging professionally communities and create connections across before completing their degrees. disciplines. Truly exemplary recent stu- dent-initiated projects were Debra Lennard’s (Art History) Tricontinentalism and James Sevitt’s (Environmental Psychology) collabo- rative Pressing Public Issues with the gallery, community colleges and the Teaching and Learning Center. These multiyear primary research projects contribute unique knowl- edge that furthers the development of scholarly fields through methods that involve deep exchange with people inside and outside the academy. The Racial Imaginary Institute is a collective of artists and scholars including writer Claudia Rankine, artist and writer Simon Wu, Art This year the James Gallery provided direct Historian and GC alum LeRonn Brooks, Curator at the Getty. Viet Nguyen along with Homi Bhabha sustained support for 13 Graduate Center and many more are frequent collaborators. students. We offered two student fellowships For the last 10 years, the James Gallery has this year with the support of the President’s initiated and led new academic and artistic and Provost’s Offices, and also two student research at the Center for the Humanities fellowships supported through the Andrew W. in close collaboration with faculty at the GC Mellon Foundation Curatorial Practicum, for and throughout CUNY in formats includ- exhibition and public programs in Decolonial ing seminars, public conversation series,

85 CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES exhibitions, conferences, and performances. and exchange with Harmony Holiday and The gallery provides the vision, motivation, Fred Moten and another with Holiday and and creative network and expertise to collab- Hanif Abduraqquib, in appreciative collab- oratively conceive and organize new methods oration with Lost & Found. Through a series for faculty seminars that have included of writing-intensive sessions with the Racial Mediating the Archive, Narrating Change, Imaginary Institute, we collaborated to and Social Choreography; this year gallery conceptualize the responsive project “On student fellows and the Racial Imaginary Nationalism: The Fragility and Possibilities of Institute artists began planning for an inter- We” and built opportunities for more students disciplinary CUNY seminar “On Nationalism: and faculty support to co-create the project. The Fragility and Possibilities of We.” Through The public conversation “Asian American such ongoing projects, the gallery convenes Reckonings” with poets Cathy Park Hong, key creative voices in many fields to conduct Monica Youn and moderated by Simon Wu, research in art, culture, and society and elab- all of the Racial Imaginary Institute, provided orates new perspectives on faculty research a space to come together to discuss the in the public realm. recent attacks on Asian Americans framed in the larger cultural context of Hong’s recent This year, the gallery published a collection book Minor Feelings: An Asian American of annotated bibliographies by PhD students Reckoning. on decolonization writings, including ground- breaking artistic and curatorial methodologies The James Gallery has developed catalyzing from all corners of the globe. This project and sustainable creative opportunities and is an outcome of the bi-annual collabora- support for scholars, artists and publics for tively taught seminar on Curatorial Practice long-term collaboration and dialogue through offered by the Gallery and the PhD Program interdisciplinary research and creative pro- in Art History with generous funding from the duction in myriad formats. The thousands of Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for curatorial programs—always free of charge and open practice at the Graduate Center. The gallery to the public—we create in our space on the has offered collaboratively taught courses ground floor of The Graduate Center and with previously with Social Practice Queens and public partners internationally, represent the next year’s curatorial practice class will include tip of the iceberg of the gallery’s long-term Social Practice CUNY students. collaborative research and cultural practice. In spring 2020, we quickly reinvented how Even as the physical space of the gallery we gather with three interactive Art Work remained closed, this year the gallery worked Place sessions filled with brainstorming and with major public intellectuals Fred Moten resource sharing to immediately address and Claudia Rankine, both MacArthur Award the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on arts recipients. The gallery produced a sequence and culture workers and students, and the of public evenings of conversation, listening,

86 ABOUT particularly disproportionate toll on people Public Library, as well as myriad universities, of color. With nearly 40 speakers and 2,000 contemporary art centers, and museums participants in three sessions, these events worldwide. Major projects have been sup- imagined new approaches to large questions ported by the Carnegie Corporation and the of equity, diversity and accessibility for the art Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, among others. field and demonstrated the power of mobi- Our exhibitions are regularly reviewed by lizing our platform and resources to gather Artforum, Bomb, New York Times, Brooklyn wider communities around issues of public Rail, Hyperallergic, and New Yorker. With a concern. For our public Zoom convenings core staff of one to two people over the years, this year, we built on the lessons learned we have worked very efficiently. Most impor- and developed and continue to hone new tantly, we value our public’s in-depth ongoing methods for increasing access and in-depth engagement with our programs and the exchange on digital platforms whether in real strong rapport with our community of artists time or through extensive documentation and and scholars. resources on our website. James Gallery Presidential Fellows In the last decade, the gallery has expanded Lauren Rosenblum its capacity many fold by maximizing its James Sevitt resources with agility. Producing 52 exhibitions and thousands of programs, the international James Gallery Andrew W. Mellon audience of the gallery is well in the six figures Curatorial Fellow as in-person and online visitors access Anna Orton-Hatzis our creative visual and textual and video resources. Having worked directly to support James Gallery Andrew W. Mellon Global upward of 2,000 local and international artists, Art Fellow the gallery’s impact on their careers has a Maria Beatriz Haro Carrion magnificent ripple effect that we are especially James Gallery Exhibition and Programs proud of. The gallery has directly mentored Fellows and financially supported 55 students through Kiki Barnes multiyear interdisciplinary fellowships and 73 Courtney Berg one-year art history appointments, providing Flora Brandl hands-on skills in the gallery and access to Kerry Doran professional networks. This is in addition to Naiomy Guerrero dozens of students each year that the gallery Cathryn Jijon works with on public events. The list of our Emily Mangione project partners continues to grow, with well Victoria Nerey over 100 organizations ranging from CUNY Jin Wang colleagues to institutions, including Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, and New York

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Staff and Board Keith Wilson Director, The Center for the Humanities Center for the Humanities Staff Center for the Humanities Board Alisa Besher Advisory Board Programs Manager Edith Everett, Founding Trustee Katherine Carl Sue Lonoff DeCuevas, Founding Trustee Curator, The James Gallery Joanna S. Rose, Founding Trustee Deputy Director, The Center for the Margo Viscusi, Founding Trustee Humanities The Graduate Center, CUNY Faculty Board Whitney Evanson Gallery Coordinator, The James Gallery Herman Bennett—History, The Graduate Center, CUNY Rebecca Hayes Jacobs Claire Bishop—Art History, The Graduate Wellcome Postdoctoral Curatorial Research Center, CUNY Fellow Emily Braun—Art History, The Graduate Cara Jordan Center and Hunter College, CUNY Assistant to the Director & Provost’s Fellow in Joshua Brown—History, The Graduate Center, the Arts CUNY Mary Ann Caws—English, French, Stephon Lawrence Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, Managing Editor, Lost & Found: The CUNY CUNY Poetics Document Initiative Vincent Crapanzano—Comparative Literature, Anthropology, The Graduate Center, CUNY Jordan Lord Dagmar Herzog—History, The Graduate Distributaries Administrator & Editor Center, CUNY Wayne Koestenbaum—English, The Graduate Sampson Starkweather Center, CUNY Publicity Coordinator Nancy K. Miller—English, The Graduate Kendra Sullivan Center, CUNY Director, Andrew W. Mellon Seminar on Public David Nasaw—History, The Graduate Center, Engagement & Collaborative Research CUNY Publisher, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Helena Rosenblatt—History, The Graduate Document Initiative Center, CUNY Associate Director, The Center for the Gary Wilder—Anthropology, The Graduate Humanities Center, CUNY

88 ABOUT

Lost & Found Board André Spears Stacy Szymasek National Advisory Board Fred Wah Anne Waldman David Abel Melissa Watterworth-Batt Neil Baldwin Michael Basinski James Gallery Faculty Advisory Jennifer Benka Committee George Bowering Sandra Braman Claire Bishop—Art History, The Graduate Steve Brier Center, CUNY Steve Clay Susan Buck-Morss—Political Science, the Blanche Wiesen Cook Graduate Center, CUNY Steve Dickison Jean Graham-Jones—Theater, The Graduate Brent Edwards Center, CUNY Henry Ferrini Leslie Craigo, Early Childhood Education, Sesshu Foster Borough of Manhattan Community College Isaac Gewirtz Amy Herzog—Film, Queens College, CUNY Kimiko Hahn Cindi Katz—Environmental Psychology, The Jan Heller-Levi Graduate Center, CUNY Juan Felipe Herrera Rachel Kousser—Art History, The Graduate Bob Holman Center, CUNY Erica Hunt Susan Opotow—Psychology, The Graduate Elaine Katzenberger Center, CUNY Nancy Kuhl Paul Ramirez Jonas—Studio Art, Hunter, Megan Mangum CUNY James Maynard Gregory Sholette—Social Practice CUNY, Thurston Moore Queens College, CUNY Bill Morgan Jane Sugarman—Music, The Graduate Kate Tarlow Morgan Center, CUNY Aldon Lynn Nielsen Valerie Tevere—New Media, CSI, CUNY Polly Thistlethwaite Peter Quartermain Alice Quinn Archie Rand Eugene Redmond Joan Richardson Amy Scholder Jill Schoolman

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The Center for the Humanities The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 5th Ave., Room 5103 New York, NY 10016

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