Eve Dunbar, associate professor of English and Africana studies and acting dean of the college, Vassar,

launches “Critical Diversities and/in the Academy: Thought and Practice,” a colloquium/speaker series this spring at the CUNY Graduate Center, on Thursday, 3/13. At 4p she’ll meet with students to discuss her

work as a scholar, teacher, and administrator, and at 5:30p she’ll present on her research at a public talk (title forthcoming). Both events will happen in room 8301. (Flyer attached.)

“Critical Diversities and/in the Academy: Thought and Practice,” sponsored by the Diversity Projects Development Fund, University Advisory Council on Diversity, CUNY, and the Doctoral Students Council, CUNY Graduate Center, is directly inspired by various collectives at the Graduate Center and across CUNY working on issues of critical diversity, among them the Mentoring Future Faculty of Color project, the Ad

Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY, the Revolutionary Students Coordinating Committee, and the organizers and supporters of “The War Here and Abroad: CUNY and U.S. Empire” panel discussion.

The series also responds to the notable recent upswing in scholarly attention to issues of critical diversity in higher education, such as last fall’s Critical Ethnic Studies Association conference “Decolonizing Future

Intellectual Legacies and Activist Practices,” last summer’s Georgetown report “Separate and Unequal: How Higher Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of White Racial Privilege,” and Sara Ahmed’s 2012 book ‘On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life.’ The guiding questions are two-fold: How can we meet the critical need for diversities in higher education, and how does this need impact the work we do as scholars and practitioners/activists?

 

Dunbar, author of the 2012 book ‘Black Regions of the Imagination: African American Writers Between the Nation and the World’ (Temple University Press), is Vassar’s associate dean of the faculty, currently serving as acting dean of the college. She is also the author of “Dispatches From Academia: Equity in the Archives” (http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/06/dispatch_from_academia_affirmative_

action_and_me.html).

Her appearance is co-sponsored by the PhD program in English, the Africana Studies Group, and the Women of Color Network, CUNY Graduate Center.

For more information on “Critical Diversities and/in the Academy: Thought and Practice,” including

details on the next three speakers, please visit opencuny.org/criticaldiversities.

For questions, co-sponsorships, or to RSVP for the colloquium portion of the Dunbar event, please email skennedy@gc.cuny.edu.