Center for the Humanities Events

Conversations in the Humanities

Dr. Kyle Whyte, George Willis Pack Professor of Environment and Sustainability

University of Michigan
Friday, April 26, 2024
HSSC A2231, 4:30 – 6 PM

“Climate change. Indigenous knowledge. The liberal arts.”

To probe what the scientific facts of climate change might hold us to in terms of the ethics of membership in our communities and to being a citizen of the world.

Come join us for and interactive, 90-minute virtual conversation with Dr. Kyle Whyte, George Willis Pack Professor of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan. A dinner discussion will follow.

Kyle Whyte is George Willis Pack Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Kyle’s research addresses moral and political issues concerning climate policy and indigenous peoples, the ethics of cooperative relationships between Indigenous peoples and science organizations, and problems of Indigenous justice in public and academic discussions of food sovereignty, environmental justice, and the anthropocene. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

Kyle currently serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. He has served as an author for the U.S. Global Change Research Program and is a former member of the Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science in the U.S. Department of Interior and of two environmental justice work groups convened by past state governors of Michigan.

Kyle is involved with a number of organizations that advance Indigenous research and education methodologies and environmental justice, including the Climate and Traditional Knowledges Workgroup, the Sustainable Development Institute of the College of Menominee Nation, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, Pesticide Action Network, and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence.

Kyle’s work has received the Bunyan Bryant Award for Academic Excellence from Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, Michigan State University’s Distinguished Partnership and Engaged Scholarship awards, and grants from the National Science Foundation.

Alumna Stephanie BadSoldier Snow ’03, Meskwaki Nation, will provide Dr. Whyte’s introduction and the event will be moderated by Steve Andrews, director for the Center for the Humanities and Andrew Graham, associate professor of Chemistry. This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and Environmental Studies.

Everyone is welcome. Accommodations are available for persons with disabilities as guests of the College. If you need an accommodation to attend an event that is open to the public, contact either the department sponsoring the event or the Office of Safety and Security (641-269-4600), and they will assist you with the accommodation that you need. Minors under the age 18 need to be accompanied by an adult. Grinnell College is not responsible for supervision of minors on campus.

Just Talk: A Trans Related Conversation on Legislation and the Law

Monday, April 8, 2024
Humanities and Social Studies Center (HSSC), Room A2231, 4:15 p.m.

Join us for a panel discussion about the areas of concern in the legal and legislative landscape regarding trans rights. Panelists include President Harris, Charlie O’Meara ’17, adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, and Kat Rohn ’08, executive director of OutFront Minnesota.

“Just talk” is just that — an opportunity to have informal conversation around a shared topic that changes from session to session. But it is also an imperative, a prompt to get going, less toward solutions than to recognizing and building a community, so that we can come to understand that we — you and I — are not alone. In that sense, “just talk” can also be an opportunity to share concerns about the social justice issues that impact our loved ones as they negotiate a world that is explicitly hostile to their becoming.

Charlie O'Meara ’17 (he/him) practices civil rights and impact litigation at a law firm in Minneapolis. He represents incarcerated people, tenants, students, employees, and consumers. In addition to practicing law, O'Meara is an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. He also previously served as co-chair of the Minnesota Lavender Bar Association and has presented on and moderated several panels regarding trans rights. O'Meara received his BA in sociology from Grinnell College in 2017, and his JD from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2021.  

Kat Rohn ’08 (they/she) is executive director for OutFront Minnesota — Minnesota’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. Rohn joined the organization in 2022. Rohn also serves on the state council for LGBTQIA2S+ Minnesotans. Rohn has long been passionate about LGBTQ+ issues and engaged in making change from the workplace to local communities. Rohn lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with their partner and two kids.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, Grinnell College Museum of Art, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, QERG (Queer Employee Resource Group), and the Rainbow Alumni.

Scholars’ Convocation:
Tammy Nyden

Thursday, April 4, 2024
Rosenfield Center (JRC) 101, 11 a.m.
 

Motherblame-stigma, Epistemic Injustice, and the Government’s Failure to Care

Nyden will examine the history of motherblame and how it operates to obscure government failures to provide a full continuum of non-carceral mental health care for children. Using the framework of epistemic injustice (how people are harmed as knowers), she examines motherblame-stigma as a social prejudice fueling various forms of epistemic oppressions, which scapegoat, gaslight, and exploit mothers, contributing to both the Children’s Mental Health Crisis and the Care Crisis.

Tammy Nyden is a professor of philosophy and affiliate faculty to the gender, women’s, and sexuality studies department at Grinnell College. She is also a co-creator and co-director of Mothers on the Frontline, a children’s mental health justice non-profit organization. Her current scholarship traces how punitive excess, disguised as care, has deep roots in Enlightenment philosophies and expresses itself today in social and epistemic injustices targeting children, their caregivers, and families.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and Scholars’ Convocation Committee.

Everyone is welcome. Accommodations are available for persons with disabilities as guests of the College. If you need an accommodation to attend an event that is open to the public, contact either the department sponsoring the event or the Office of Safety (641-269-4600), and they will assist you. Minors under the age 18 need to be accompanied by an adult. Grinnell College is not responsible for supervision of minors on campus.

Scholars’ Convocation: Gaile Pohlhaus Jr.

Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024
Rosenfield Center, Room 101, 11 a.m.

An Epistemology of the Oppressed: Resisting and Flourishing under Epistemic Oppression

Gaile Pohlhaus Jr., Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy and affiliate faculty to the women’s, gender, and sexuality studies program at Miami University (Ohio).  They are also a senior research associate for the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Pohlhaus is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice and has published extensively on feminist epistemology, epistemic oppression, and feminist philosophy.

They say: “In ‘The Ethics of Uncle Tom’s Children’ Tommie Shelby notes that an ethics of the oppressed needs to attend to at least two aspects of living under conditions of oppression: first, resisting and overturning the unjust conditions that constitute oppression and second, sustaining a livable life despite injustice, so that one might, so to speak, live to fight another day. In this talk I consider whether the same is true for an epistemology of the oppressed. By ‘epistemology of the oppressed’ I mean a philosophical account of epistemic life from the perspective of those who are systematically subject to unjust infringements on their epistemic agency. Despite a growing amount of literature on epistemic injustice, it strikes me that much of this literature does not yet fully contribute to an epistemology of the oppressed (but instead is geared toward an epistemology of ‘how oppressors oppress and how oppressors could do better’). Of the literature that does contribute to an epistemology of the oppressed, most of it seems to contribute to the first aspect identified by Shelby, resisting and overturning unjust conditions. Is there also room for thinking about what it means to flourish, epistemically speaking, when one faces epistemic oppression? Or is all epistemic flourishing under such conditions reducible to epistemic resistance so that the conditions that impede one’s epistemic flourishing begin to be overturned?”

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and Scholars’ Convocation Committee.

Just Talk: A Space for Trans-Related Conversation

Monday, Nov. 27, 2023
Grinnell College Museum of Art, 4:15–6 p.m.
This event is open to all faculty, staff, and friends here at the College

Transitioning With Art: A Starting Point for Conversation

The Center for the Humanities is interested in starting a regular conversation around Trans-related issues in support of faculty, staff, and friends here at the College. Some of us are trans; some of us have kindred who are trans; others of us will wish to be allies; all of us, I hope, will want to know more about how best to understand the complex and often bewildering new relationships to which love binds us. “Just talk” is just that — an opportunity to have informal conversation around a shared topic that changes from session to session. But it is also an imperative, a prompt to get going, less toward solutions than to recognizing and building a community, so that we can come to understand that we — you and I — are not alone. In that sense, then, “just talk” can also be an opportunity to share concerns about the social justice issues that impact our loved ones as they negotiate a world that is explicitly hostile to their becoming.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, Grinnell College Museum of Art, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and QERG (Queer Employee Resource Group).

Scholars’ Convocation: Jarvis Givens

Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023
Rosenfield Center, Room 101, 11 a.m.

Black Reconstructions: Archival Assembly and the History of African American Education

Professor Givens will explore why the violence of the archive is a pressing matter for the field of education research. He will also discuss his work on reconstructing the life-worlds of African American teachers and students during the 19th and 20th centuries, while focusing particularly on what he calls “archival assembly,” a methodological approach he employs to disrupt racialized gaps and silences in the historical record. This mode of black (historical) study is essential for achieving a more expansive vision of the educational past and futures.

Jarvis Givens is a professor of education and African and African American studies at Harvard University. He is the author of School Clothes: A Collective Memoir of Black Student Witness and Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, and he is also the co-founding director of the Black Teacher Archive. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Mellon Humanities in Action Grant, the Center for the Humanities, and the Scholars’ Convocation Committee.

Past Events: 2022–23

Scholars’ Convocation: Makeba Lavan

Assistant Professor of English

Thursday, April 6, 2023
Rosenfield Center, Room 101, 11 a.m.

Attendees are requested to wear a mask during the presentation.

Miscegenation Nation: White Supremacy’s New Normal

There has been an increase in interracial relationships in film and television over the last 30 years, creating the appearance of a happily multicultural America. Lavan’s talk will discuss how these contemporary media representations relate to histories of “anti-miscegenation” laws in the United States preventing “interbreeding among the races” as well as contemporary realities of racial terror, racialized cultural appropriation, and the drive for true representation in media. 

Lavan will be presenting with William Donaldson ’23, who has been contributing to research on the project.

Scholars’ Convocation: Eddie Glaude, Jr.

New York Times Bestselling Author and Chair of Princeton’s Department of African American Studies

Thursday, April 13, 2023
Rosenfield Center, Room 101, 7:30 p.m. (Note change in time)

Begin Again: James Baldwin and Our America

Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual, and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His most recent book, the New York Times bestseller, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own, takes a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton. He frequently appears in the media as a columnist for TIME Magazine and as an MSNBC contributor on programs like Morning Joe and Deadline Whitehouse with Nicolle Wallace. In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s complexities, vulnerabilities and hope into full view.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, the Office of the President, the Mellon Humanities in Action grant, and the Convocation Committee.