The UMKC Trustees and School of Humanities and Social Sciences are proud to introduce the Marilyn T. and Byron C. Shutz Lecture Series. This annual series will host lectures, seminars, and workshops in fields such as creative writing, literature, and art history. Stay tuned for information on the 2023-24 series.

Upcoming Events:

Our 2023-24 series will start in the fall. Join our mailing list to stay informed.

 

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For its inaugural year, the Marilyn T. and Byron C. Shutz Lecture Series was entitled "SPEAK UP! Building Racial Justice through Art, Pedagogy, and Writing."

See Past Events

SPEAK UP: Building Racial Justice through Art, Writing, and Pedagogy

Events from this year's series:

Designing for Care: Inclusive Digital Pedagogies

Thursday, September 29, 2022
4:00-5:30 pm (CDT)

This presentation brings to light the reductive ways in which the technologies and bureaucracies of schooling attempt to flatten our differences. Dr. Stommel critiques the notion that students are interchangeable—that whether they are food insecure, queer, or homeless is of no real consequence to a system (of grades, tests, and credentials) that attempts to rank them tidily against one another. He advocates for identifying more ways to involve students in the design of their own learning. In view of this, Dr. Stommel encourages educators to design for the least privileged, most marginalized students, the ones more likely to have felt isolated even before the pandemic. He advocates for writing new policies and imagining new ways forward for students already facing exclusion.

Dr. Jesse Stommel is a faculty member in the Writing Program at the University of Denver. He is co-founder of Digital Pedagogy Lab and Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy. Dr. Stommel earned his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Stommel is co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: The Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy, as well as co-editor of Disrupting the Digital Humanities and Critical Digital Pedagogy: a Collection. He is also a documentary filmmaker and teaches courses about pedagogy, film, and new media.

Watch recorded panel

View slide presentation

portrait of Jesse Stommel

Divided Cities: The Effects of Redlining and Residential Segregation on American Communities

Thursday, October 20, 2022
4:00-5:30 pm (CDT)

The pandemic and the social justice movements of 2020 revealed continuing racial disparities in communities across the United States. Dr. Sheryll D. Cashin invites attendees to engage in a conversation about redlining and residential segregation in hopes of a more integrated and equitable future that leads to community healing in times of strife. By exploring the local history of redlining and its legacies with creative writers, lawyers, historians, and urban designers, she provides participants with a moment for reflection on this important history. Dr. Cashin suggests that we can envision and plan for a better future together by accounting for multiple perspectives and recognizing the ongoing inequities in our communities.

Sheryll Cashin is Professor of Law, Civil Rights, and Social Justice at Georgetown University. She is an acclaimed author who writes about the U.S. struggle with racism and inequality. Her most recent book, White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality, addresses the role of segregation and redlining in reproducing inequality. Her books have been nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction (2015), Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction (2005, 2009, and 2018), and an Editors’ Choice in the New York Times Book Review (2004). Cashin is contributing editor for Politico Magazine. She has also written commentaries for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Salon, The Root, and other media.

Watch recorded panel

image of Sheryll Cashin

Educate-Organize-Advocate Conference

In collaboration with the Educate-Organize-Advocate (EOA) Conference, Shutz presented the following two events as part of the inaugural UMKC Social Justice Month in October 2022.

The EOA Conference encouraged participants to familiarize themselves with the Emergent Strategy philosophy and embrace the real power of change. It called for deepening relationships, building trust, and consolidating political partnerships. Attendees learned about the principles of Emergent Strategy, including adaptation, interdependence, collaborative ideation, fractal thinking, transformative justice, and resilience. Speakers used science fiction as a tool for strengthening imagination and invite participants to think beyond binaries and linear, short-term outcomes. The goal was to foster connection by considering how cultural practices such as song circles, altars/community power tables, and spaces for play and dance help us meet essential spiritual and emotional needs.

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Emergent Strategy Keynote by Mia Herndon

Thursday, October 6, 2022
4:00-5:30 pm (CDT)

During this session, we will learn all about the Emergent Strategy philosophy. We will learn how to acknowledge the real power of change and be in the right relationship to it. The desire to deepen relationships, build trust, and political alignment are key objectives in this work. This is what we will strive to awaken in people’s longing, imagination, and work.

Mia Herndon (she/her/they/them) is a fellow at Harriet's Apothecary and serves on the advisory council of Black Feminist Future. Previously, she/they fulfilled the role of Executive Director of the Third Wave Foundation. Herndon is a queer-identified Black mother from the South, who dances and bikes for joy and mental health. She/they support(s) the healing and well-being of people, working as a network facilitator, licensed acupuncturist, somatic coach, and therapeutic bodyworker based in Brooklyn, NY.

portrait of Mia Herndon

Emergent Strategy Workshops

with Kawanza Billy

Thursday, October 13, 2022
4:00-5:30 pm (CDT)

Kawanza Billy (she/her) is Founder and Social Impact Strategist at K.Billy Push, a consulting company dedicated to creating community-centered social impact initiatives. Billy received her BA from The City University of New York at John Jay College where she majored in Political Science, focusing on Urban and Community Affairs. Currently, she manages youth advocacy and community service campaigns, leading educational, environmental justice, and public health programs. Billy also serves as National Advocacy Chair for the National Urban League Young Professionals.

portrait of Kawanza Billy

with chelsea cleveland

Thursday, October 27, 2022
4:00-5:30 pm (CDT)

chelsea cleveland (they/them) helped co-found Hearing Youth Voices, an intergenerational Black community organizing group focused on youth where they wore many hats such as organizer, facilitator, and Program Director. They are a multi-racial Black non-binary person who are also queer, fat, and disabled. cleveland are a Black feminist and a sci-fi/weirdo thinker from New London, CT. They are currently an Emergent Strategy Facilitator with Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute. They have led trainings on abolition, white supremacy, anti-blackness, racial monopoly capitalism, Black queer feminism, gender & sexuality, and many other topics.

portrait of chelsea cleveland

Narrative Mapping: Our Stories as Visual Dialogues

Thursday, February 2, 2023
4:00-5:30 pm (CST)

In this workshop, Marie Thompson explored the importance of storytelling in communicating the human experience.

Marie Thompson is Associate Professor of Communication in the School of Social Science and International Studies at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. She studies how it is that stories take up space in bodies over and through time. Guided by feminist modes of inquiry, Thompson has pioneered narrative mapping, a method which deepens the understanding of the personal/political nature of health and healing. She has offered narrative mapping workshops for professionals in different fields and published in Health Communication, Communication Teacher, Encyclopedia of Health Communication, Review of Communication, and others.

Watch recorded workshop

portrait of Marie Thompson

Storytelling and Humor as Strategy of “Survivance”

Thursday, February 16, 2023
4:00-5:30 pm (CST)

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Book list

Panelists Sandi L. Wisenberg and Monica Prince engaged attendees in a conversation about how laughter eases tension, delivers a new perspective, changes power dynamics, and provides a respite.

S. L. Wisenberg is the author of a collection of short stories, The Sweetheart Is In (Northwestern), an essay collection, Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions (Nebraska), a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch (Iowa), and the recent book of essays The Wandering Womb, winner of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize in nonfiction. Her essays and stories are published widely in literary magazines and anthologies. She has spoken at Brown, Northwestern, Iowa, and many other universities.
portrait of S.L. Wisenberg
Monica Prince teaches activism and performance writing at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. She is the author of How to Exterminate the Black Woman, Instructions for Temporary Survival, Letters from the Other Woman, and the forthcoming choreopoem, Roadmap. She serves as the managing editor of the Santa Fe Writers Project, the Diversity Advocate in Residence of the Sigmund Weis School of Business, and the 2023 Playwright in Residence for the Paterson Performing Arts Development Council. She writes, directs, and teaches choreopoems.
portrait of Monica Prince

Planetary Consciousness: Art, Embodied Presence, and Ecology

Thursday, March 2, 2023
4:00-5:30 pm (CST)

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Panelists Janine Antoni, Victoria Vesna, and Kate Mondloch engaged in a conversation concerning inquiries into open-ended practices of art making and encouraged audience members to reflect on the role of aesthetics, bodily awareness, interpersonal consciousness in healing practices.

Janine Antoni was born in Freeport, Bahamas. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in New York and earned her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Antoni is known for her unusual processes, using her body as both a tool and a source of meaning. She carefully articulates her relationship to the world, giving rise to emotional states that are felt in and through the senses. In each piece, no matter the medium or image, a conveyed physicality is meant to speak directly to the viewer’s body.
portrait of Janine Antoni
Victoria Vesna is a media artist and Professor at the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts. She is the Director of the UCLA Art|Sci Center. Through her installations, she investigates how communication technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity. Her work involves long-term collaborations with composers, nano-scientists, neuroscientists, and evolutionary biologists. Vesna is a co-editor of Database Aesthetics (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and Context Providers: Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts (Intellect Ltd, 2011).
portrait of Victoria Vesna
Kate Mondloch is Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on theories of art spectatorship and methods of inquiry that connect the sciences and the humanities. Mondloch is the author of Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) and A Capsule Aesthetic: Feminist Materialisms in New Media Art (University of Minnesota Press, 2018). She is currently working on a book concerning body-mind awareness and contemporary art.
portrait of Kate Mondloch

Community Trauma, Community Healing, Community Resilience

Thursday, April 20, 2023
4:00-5:30 pm (CDT)

Watch recorded panel

Traumatic events can impact multiple members of a community. While community resilience efforts have often focused on preventing trauma from occurring, prevention is only one aspect of resilience. We must consider how we navigate and heal from trauma, building safe and trustworthy relationships that prioritize equity and justice in our communities. Come prepared to consider how you can connect with various communities to respond to trauma in innovative and strengths-based ways.

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After graduating from the UMKC Conservatory with a Master of Arts degree in Music Therapy, Andrea Dalton worked for nearly 12 years as a board-certified music therapist, primarily in inpatient mental health units serving some of the most vulnerable adults and children in the Kansas City area. Early in her career, she became interested in the powerful possibilities of transformation through the paradigm of trauma-informed care.  Andrea currently works at University Health in the Center for Trauma-Informed Innovation, partnering with leaders and organizations in developing trauma-informed, culturally-responsive programs, practices, and policies.
portrait of Andrea Dalton
Dr. Marvia Jones has worked in public health for 15 years with a special interest in violence prevention and health policy, both of which were honed during her time at the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  In 2010, she completed her Master of Public Health and started evaluating violence prevention programs and strategies for supporting local public health departments in KC. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Kansas. Currently, she is the Director of Health for Kansas City, MO. Her interests are in building resilience, protective factors, youth development and access, young families, and reducing trauma through practical services.
portrait of Dr. Marvia Jones