PSC Eligible Workshops & Events: Fall 2026
Leading Place-Based Community Engagement Initiatives In Higher Education: Campus Compact
Sep 10, 2026 /3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT (Virtual)
Place matters today more than ever. Learn from co-editors and chapter authors about the recent book “Leading Place-Based Community Engagement Initiatives in Higher Education,” which is the follow-up to “Place-Based Community Engagement in Higher Education: A Strategy to Transform Universities and Communities (Yamamura & Koth, 2018)”.
This edited collection spotlights the leadership behind contemporary examples of place-based community engagement in higher education. Through compelling first-person narratives, leaders from diverse institutions provide an insider’s perspective on addressing complex issues such as educational inequity, public health disparities, housing insecurity, gentrification, and cultural preservation.
Each chapter offers both inspiration and practical guidance, presenting promising practices and lessons learned while redefining the concept and development of place-based engagement. The book highlights the transformative power of these efforts, demonstrating how institutions can creatively address societal challenges, build stronger community relationships, and drive institutional change.
Understanding Your Value: Translating Your Ph.D. Beyond the Faculty Job Market
Sept. 10, 2026, 5 p.m.–6:30 p.m. (Virtual)
Your Ph.D. has prepared you for far more than the faculty job market—but how do you communicate that to employers? Hear from humanities Ph.D. alumni who have built meaningful careers across government, higher education, nonprofit, and corporate sectors. Presenters include Mark Barber (XQ), Linda Louie (UC Berkeley), and Daniel Singleton (Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh).
Panelists share how they reframed their doctoral training, presented their skills in application materials and interviews, and found work aligned with their interests and values. Beyond the moderated panel and small group breakout conversations, participants may ask questions and learn from alumni in a conversational setting.
This free session, hosted by the Humanities Beyond the Academy (HF7) working group of the CNY Humanities Corridor, is open to graduate students, postdocs, and alumni from all Corridor member institutions.
Just Ocean and Coastal Futures Conference
September 10–12, 2026
Cornell Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, 430 College Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850
The Just Ocean and Coastal Futures Conference brings together future-oriented scholars at all career stages who integrate reparative frameworks into coastal and ocean studies. The purpose of the conference is to share and produce knowledge while imagining, designing, and supporting strategic action. Over three days of individual presentations, invited keynotes, roundtable discussions, workshop sessions, and communal events, participants will acknowledge, identify, and challenge pernicious ocean and coastal inequities including past and present events and structural processes at local, regional, and global scales. This will be an intimate gathering of professional scholars and graduate students from around the US, working domestically and internationally, committed to catalyzing just futures in coastal and ocean studies via knowledge and practice sharing, networking, and solidarity building to reaffirm our commitments to changing the culture of ocean and coastal research and policy in a time of fear and retrenchment.
The Just Ocean and Coastal Futures Conference is coordinated by Dr. Amelia Moore of the Ashley School of Global Development and Environment and sponsored by the Center for Racial Justice and Equitable Futures and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University.
There are four keynote events that will be open to the public and campus communities. Advanced registration is suggested. Most keynote events will be held at the Cornell Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Click here to learn more about accessibility, directions, and parking at the Schwartz Center.
Conference Events:
- INDIGENOUS OCEAN JUSTICE: OPENING KEYNOTE WITH DR. KELSEY LEONARD
Thursday September 10, 5–7 PM, Location TBA, Cornell University
Dr. Kelsey Leonard is a water scientist, legal scholar, policy expert, writer, and enrolled citizen of the Shinnecock Nation. Dr. Leonard is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo, where her research focuses on Indigenous water justice and its climatic, territorial, and governance underpinnings. Dr. Leonard seeks to establish Indigenous traditions of water conservation as the foundation for international water policymaking. She represents the Shinnecock Indian Nation on the Mid-Atlantic Committee on the Ocean, which is charged with protecting America’s ocean ecosystems and coastlines. She also serves as a member of the Great Lakes Water Quality Board of the International Joint Commission. Her regional ocean policy work in collaboration with Tribes, state, federal and fishery management council entities received a Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Excellence in Solutions.
Friday, September 11, 9–10 AM, Cornell Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
A cultural and environmental anthropologist by training, Dr. Paige West earned her Ph.D. in 2000 and joined the Barnard and Columbia faculty in 2001. Since the late 1990s, her research and teaching have focused on the relationships between Indigenous ecological knowledge, environmental conservation, and socio-political transformation in Oceania, particularly in Papua New Guinea, where she has conducted over 110 months of field-based research since 1997. Dr. West’s scholarship bridges the social and environmental sciences, exploring themes such as the intersections of conservation and development, Indigenous alternatives to externally imposed environmental agendas, the symbolic and material engagements with biodiversity, the commodification of ecological knowledge, and climate change. Her more recent work focuses on how ethnographic and Indigenous epistemologies can be brought into dialogue to shape new forms of socio-environmental understanding and practice. Her current research investigates sea level rise, managed retreat, and how communities adapt and forge futures in the face of climate change. She is the Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology, Barnard College and Columbia University and the co-founder of the PNG Institute of Biological Research and the Roviana Solwara Skul, two conservation-focused NGOs in Papua New Guinea.
Friday, September 11, 5–7 PM, Cornell Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
Kendall Moore is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a professor in the departments of pournalism and film media at the University of Rhode Island. Before joining the faculty at URI in 2003, she worked as a television journalist focusing on medical, health, race, and environmental issues. Moore has produced numerous independent documentaries that have aired on PBS and in various film festivals including: Charm City (1996), Song in the Crisis (2004), Sovereign Nation/Sovereign Neighbor (2006), The Good Radical (2009), Sick Building (2014), Philosophy of the Encounter (fiction, 2016), and Jalen and Joanna: A Lead Paint Story (2017). She is the director of the film, Harm in the Water, winner, Best Documentary Film at the 2025 Essence Film Festival.
About the Film
Harm in the Water is a powerful documentary that examines the devastating impact of industrial water pollution on Black communities along the Mississippi River. Through intimate portraits of community members, environmental activists, and scientific experts, the film reveals how historical patterns of environmental hazards have created a modern crisis. Director Kendall Moore takes viewers on a journey through affected communities, highlighting both the struggles and resilience of residents fighting for clean water and environmental justice. The documentary combines compelling personal stories with rigorous scientific evidence to create an urgent call for change.
Saturday, September 12, 10–11 AM, Cornell Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
Akeia de Barros Gomes, PhD, is the Director of the Edward W. Kane and Martha J. Wallace Center for Black History at the Newport Historical Society. She is a Visiting Scholar & Adjunct Lecturer at The Ruth J. Simmons Center for Slavery and Justice, Brown University. At Mystic Seaport Museum she served as Senior Curator of Maritime Social Histories, Vice President of the American Institute for Maritime Studies, and Director of the Munson Institute. As an anthropologist and archaeologist her research has been extensive on many continents. Her recent exhibition, Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty and the Sea is a multi-year Mellon Foundation-funded project that recovers the history of the founding and development of the Dawnland (New England) through Indigenous, African, and African-descended maritime perspectives. This project is a cooperative effort with individuals in Dawnland Indigenous, African, and African-descended communities.
Who Celebrated Sullivan-Clinton in 1929 and Why? The Lasting Legacy of the 150th Anniversary
Friday, September 11, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
The Skä•noñh – Great Law of Peace Center
The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign of 1779 was a scorched-earth military mission that resulted in the destruction of more than 40 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) settlements. Despite its devastating impact, the campaign was widely celebrated by settlers, leading to the creation of nearly 300 markers and monuments across Pennsylvania and New York. As a result, it may be the most commemorated Revolutionary War expedition in the nation.
In her book Memory Wars, A. Lynn Smith examines this vast commemorative landscape for the first time. During her talk, she will focus on New York’s 1929 celebration of the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign, exploring how the 150th anniversary commemorations reflected the nation’s settler-colonial foundations. She will conclude with a discussion of how we might grapple with this history, and the lasting legacy of its 1929 commemoration, as the campaign’s 250th anniversary approaches in 2029.
This program is part of the Erie Canal Museum’s Sloan Lecture Series and will be hosted at the Skä•noñh Great Law of Peace Center in partnership with the Skä•noñh Great Law of Peace Center, the Onondaga Historical Association, and the Liverpool Public Library.
Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $10. Registration is required.
Register: https://eriecanalmuseum.org/events/#smtx-click
Why Human Rights Research Needs Practitioners and Why Activists Need Academia
September 14, 2026, 12:30 p.m.–2 p.m. EDT
Eggers Hall, 341
The Moynihan Institute’s Central Asia and the Caucasus Initiative welcomes Dana Buralkiyeva (Malikova), human rights and democracy professional, Fullbright fellow from Kazakhstan, and Ph.D. student in political science at Binghamton University SUNY.
This talk explores the value of bridging human rights practice and academic research. Drawing on experience working with civil society organizations and human rights initiatives in Kazakhstan, as well as graduate research in political science in the United States, Dana Buralkiyeva examines how practitioners can strengthen academic knowledge with real-world insights, while research can provide activists with stronger evidence, analytical tools and more effective strategies for advocacy.
The session will reflect on the opportunities and challenges of moving between these two worlds and discuss why closer collaboration between academia and practice is essential for advancing human rights and democratic governance.
Lunch will be provided. This event is co-sponsored by the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC).
Community Geography Event Series: Creating and Sustaining Community Relationships
Thursday, September 17, 2026 | 10- 11:30 AM
Eggers 155
How do we foster and sustain relationships with communities? Prior to her lecture on Friday at 3PM, Professor Katherine Hankins will join us for an informal conversation about creating and sustaining impactful relationships across disciplines and communities. Drawing from her 10-plus years of experience leading the NSF-funded Community-Soil-Air-Water (CSAW) community-learning project in the Dept of Geosciences at Georgia State University, Prof. Hankins will share insights on the importance of centering relationship building in community-partnered research.
RSVPing will help us with a head count but is not required.
Community Geography Event Series: Lecture | Dr. Katherine Hankins
Friday, September 18, 2026 | 3- 4 PM
Strasser Legacy Room (220 Eggers)
Join us for a special guest speaker lecture! Dr. Katherine Hankins’s research examines how practices of urban place-making become ‘political,’ whether through organized collective action or in the ‘quiet politics’ of everyday decision-making and practice, in the arenas of schooling, housing, community development, and environmental justice activism. She is a qualitative researcher with a commitment to facilitating community-engaged scholarship. She is PI on a $7.1 million grant to resource the Community-Soil-Air-Water (CSAW) learning ecosystem in Atlanta.
RSVPing will help us with a head count, but is not required.
Canal as Collaborator - Closing Event
Fri, September 18, 2026, 3:00 PM -8:00 PM
Erie Canal Museum - Syracuse, New York
The public is invited to join the artists and their collaborators for a special closing event for Canal as Collaborator. The afternoon will include the launch of the exhibition catalog; a conversation with artists Kari Varner, Sarah Cameron Sunde, and Jeremy Dennis; a talk with Sinéad Mac Namara (Engineering Faculty at Syracuse University); and a participatory deep-listening walk with Sunde and Joey Latka that explores the traces and sounds of the historic canal where its waters once flowed. Additional program elements will be announced.
Canal as Collaborator Exhibit Information
How do we reconcile our engineered past with an ecological future?
2025 Erie Canal Artists-in-Residence Sarah Cameron Sunde and Kari Varner explore the Canal from an environmental lens.
Kari Varner, a distinguished photographer and educator, explored key ecological sites along the canal, integrating harvested plants into her photographic artworks. Sarah Cameron Sunde, an innovative interdisciplinary artist, engaged with canal communities to create pieces that physically and ecologically connect with the canal. She also developed work in collaboration with Jeremy Dennis, a contemporary fine art photographer and an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY.
Picturing Equality Symposium on LGBTQ Workplace Equality
Friday, September 18, 2026, 5pm and Saturday, September 19, 2026, 9am–5pm
George Eastman Museum, 900 East Avenue, Rochester, NY
Please join us for this free symposium about LGBTQ workplace rights, queer photography, and museum education, in conversation with the Picturing Equality: The Lambda Network at Kodak exhibition in Gallery Obscura. Friday's panel on the history and current status of the LGBTQ workplace equality movement will feature Rochester native, former Kodak and Xerox IT consultant, and trans activist Donna Rose, who worked to get trans health care covered by corporate health insurance plans; and attorney Elizabeth Birch, who gave keynote addresses at Lambda's first and ten-year anniversary education event and served as executive director of the Human Rights Campaign from 1995-2004. Saturday will feature a keynote lecture on queer family portraiture by University of Toronto historian Elspeth Brown and panels on LGBTQ Workplace Activism; Museums and LGBTQ Inclusion; and a performance based on anthropologist Ali Feser's enthnographic study of Kodak workers.
Featured Guests
Attorney Elizabeth Birch, former director of Human Rights Campaign
Donna Rose, transgender rights activist
Dr. Elspeth Brown, Professor of History, University of Toronto
Dr. Alex Ketchum, Associate Professor of History, McGill University
Michael Lesperanc, Founding Principle, Design Minds museum design firm
Dr. Daniel Royles, Associate Professor of History, SUNY Binghamton
Ashley Hopkins-Benton, New York State Museum, curator for LGBTQ collections
Dr. Ali Feser, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, SUNY Binghamton
Public Tour of We Demand: A Legacy of Activism in America
Saturday, September 19, 2026 10:00am to 11:30am EDT
Bird Library, 6th Floor, 222 Waverly Ave, Syracuse, NY 13244
Syracuse University Libraries' Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) is offering public tours of the current exhibition, We Demand: A Legacy of Activism in America. The tours will be led by two of the curators of the exhibition, Jana Rosinski, SCRC Instruction and Education Librarian, and Lindy Smith, SCRC Assistant Director.
Since this country’s founding, the American people have shaped—and continue to shape—a more just and equitable future. For decades, Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) has collected materials related to histories of activism and social reform in America that illustrate how advancements in rights were made possible by those who came before. This tireless pursuit and ongoing work of individuals and collective groups who have come together to push for change—not always seen during their lifetimes—in the face of extraordinary challenges and circumstances are documented within this exhibition. Traces of resistance and perseverance in the form of posters, protest signs, photographs, demands, newsletters, and more represent the critical role of activism in challenging injustice and securing greater freedoms in the United States. We invite you to consider which legacies of activism have shaped your own experiences, what movements and causes resonate with you, and which stories remain to be told.
Tours are free and open to the public. Spots are limited, so registration is required. REGISTER HERE
The exhibition will be on view at the Special Collections Research Center, Bird Library, 6th floor gallery through the end of December 2026. If you require an accommodation, please email Max Wagh, mlwagh@syr.edu.
Saturday, September 19, 2026 6:00–9:00pm EDT
La Casita Cultural Center
109 Otisco St., Syracuse NY 13204
Marking its 15th anniversary in 2026, La Casita Cultural Center presents Quinceañera Dreams, a new exhibition and immersive celebration of one of the most cherished traditions in Latino culture—the quinceañera. Through community-sourced photographs, video, oral histories, family memorabilia, stunning gowns, and multimedia installations, Quinceañera Dreams explores the history, beauty, and cultural significance of this beloved coming-of-age tradition that connects generations. Opening night will include a live quinceañera celebration as a local Latino family shares their daughter's special day in full traditional attire and ceremony, as well as guided tours of the exhibition, music, and authentic Cuban buffet.
Seeds in a Rapid River: Kao Kalia Yang’s Collective Storytelling
Sept. 24, 2026, 6 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Community Folk Art Center, 805 E. Genesee St.
Kao Kalia Yang reads from Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life and the picture book A Home on the Page. Yang’s writing channels the voices and experiences of her family and community into collective memoirs, incorporating sung Hmong poetry and storytelling with written English—and visual art. Her work shows how creative, embodied practices remake home and belonging in the wake of war and displacement and in the face of the discrimination and material hardship that often accompany resettlement.
American literature and Hmong studies scholar and poet Debra Kue will engage Yang in conversation and lead audience Q&A.
SUNY Upstate hosts this event, offering signed book giveaways, thanks to the Upstate Medical University Library. Please RSVP here! Contact Rebecca Garden for more info, or to request an ASL interpreter (by Sept. 15, please).
Community-Engaged Research across Disciplines (PSC Core Workshop)
Oct. 1, 2026, 3:30-4:45 p.m.
Tolley Humanities Bldg. 304 and online
This core workshop for the Public Scholarship Certificate explores the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary collaboration in publicly engaged research, using the Syracuse community-based Data Warriors project as a case study. In Data Warriors, high school students employ math, maps, and storytelling to investigate issues affecting their neighborhoods. Based in a Youth Participatory Action Research framework, the project illustrates how scholars with diverse academic backgrounds can navigate disciplinary traditions and demands while working with community partners.
The panel discussion will consider how researchers bring their disciplinary methods, perspectives and agendas into community-driven work, while likewise communicating the value and significance of their engaged work to colleagues within their home disciplines. We’ll also touch on strategies for translating publicly oriented collaborative projects into tangible research products, including co-authored publications (academic or popular) and joint conference presentations.
Panelists include:
- Lauren Ashby, PhD candidate in sociology
- Nicole Fonger, associate professor of mathematics education
- Jonnell Robinson, associate professor of geography and co-director of Community Geography
Mending, Making, and Reimagining: Transform Your Textiles
October 3, 2026 | 12–4 p.m.
Syracuse University Art Museum
Join the Syracuse University Art Museum, Environmental Storytelling CNY (ESCNY), and professor Rochele Royster (Creative Arts Therapy) for a drop-in textile workshop exploring mending, reuse, and creative transformation. Bring an old, worn, torn, or stained piece of clothing that you want to transform into something new, and use thread and dye to mend or upcycle it. Don’t have your own? We’ll provide textiles that you can use! You’ll also have the opportunity to contribute to a community art project.
Presented as part of Environmental Storytelling CNY’s Fall 2026 series and the SU Art Museum's current Reclaim: The Art of Recology exhibition, the workshop invites participants to think through making: What stories do our clothes and other everyday objects carry? What happens when we treat worn or discarded materials not as waste, but as resources for repair, creativity, and renewal? Through hands-on artistic practice, participants will explore how mending and reuse can help us reimagine our relationships with the materials we consume, keep, discard, and transform.
This workshop is part of the Syracuse University Art Museum’s Community Day and is free and open to all.
The Archive Is a Dream Machine: a Workshop in Speculative Archival Research
October 14, 2026, 4 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Special Collections Research Center, 6th Floor Bird Library
Tamika Galanis leads a workshop in speculative methodologies for archival research, sharing clips from her films. Participants will get hands-on experience producing short films on iPads using archival materials and using them to construct a narrative through a process akin to dream work, one that acknowledges the “latent content’, the indices of violence and unrepresentability pointing to what is missing from the archive and seeks to imaginatively and reparatively elaborate on the “manifest content” that remains. No filmmaking experience required!
Space will be limited. Registration form coming soon!
Dream Deep Enough to Remember: The Films of Tamika Galanis
Oct. 15, 2026, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Watson Theater, 316 Waverly Ave.
All are welcome to a screening of short films by Tamika Galanis, including By the Skin of Her Teeth, an experimental reimagining of Harriet Powell’s escape from enslavement in Syracuse in 1839 through the scant archival evidence available. Commissioned by Urban Video Project, this film will also be on view as an architectural projection on the Everson Museum facade through December 19.
An artist talk follows the screenings, in which Galanis discusses her archival research as “dream work” -- a form of speculative and reparative storytelling. A reception will follow.
Digital Sanctuaries: Where Joy and Healing Intertwine
Oct. 19, 2026, 4 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
114 Bird Library
How can we come together as a community to create an affirming, joyful and more just future in the digital age? Desmond Upton Patton (University of Pennsylvania) discusses how engaging youth as collaborators, storytellers, and agents of change can bring technology into the realm of human connection and co-creation, to foster well-being. Rather than passive consumers of technology, or being “red flagged” as “at risk,” students are positioned as agents of change, crafting new futures using digital tools.
Dr. Patton's presentation is also a feature of the Ganders Lecture Series in the School of Education.
Beyond the Dress: Quinceañera Dreams and Cultural Identity
Oct. 22, 2026, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
La Casita, 109 Otisco Street
Join author Yamile Saied Méndez for an engaging conversation exploring how the quinceañera tradition shapes identity, family, memory, and belonging across generations. Drawing on her acclaimed books Dreaming of a Quinceañera and Twice a Quinceañera, Méndez examines the cultural significance of this coming-of-age ritual, followed by an audience Q&A and an opportunity for participants to share their own stories and reflections. A reception with Latin American refreshments concludes the evening, inviting continued conversation and community connection.
The Work of Being Human Together
Oct. 23, 2026, 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.
114 Bird Library
Kelly Hayes, author of Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis and co-author of Let This Radicalize You, draws on her experience as an organizer, movement educator, and storyteller to explore how people sustain one another, remain human together, and expand their sense of what is possible in times of crisis. Reflecting on recent movements and the relationships, imagination, and collective practices that make resistance possible, Hayes weaves together a talk about the world-changing work activists can dream into existence.
Following the lecture, join the Special Collections Research Center for a light reception on the 6th floor of Bird Library to view the current exhibition, We Demand! A Legacy of Activism in America, which features collections documenting how individuals and groups have fought to expand rights, challenge injustice, and transform American life throughout history.
Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) will be provided. If you require an accessibility accommodation or have dietary needs, please contact Max Wagh by Monday, October 12. Register for this free event!
Storytelling in Protests and Direct Actions
Oct. 24, 2026, 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.
Community Folk Art Center, 805 E. Genesee St.
Kelly Hayes leads a workshop for members of Syracuse community organizations. Hayes has trained thousands of activists and participants in direct actions. They are also a movement photographer who uses that medium to tell stories of activism in action. This session complements a related lecture and meet-and-greet with Hayes, all hosted by SU Libraries' Special Collections Research Center.
Space is limited! Express your interest to Max Wagh by Monday, Oct. 12, and include any accessibility or dietary accommodation requests.
Career Pathways for Engaged Scholars (PSC Core Workshop)
Time: Oct. 26, 2026, 2:15 – 3:30 p.m.
Location: Zoom
What career opportunities are available to scholars whose work extends beyond the university? This core workshop for the Public Scholarship Certificate will explore some of the career options available to advanced degree-holders who can demonstrate experience with and commitment to publicly engaged work. Four recent PhD recipients will discuss their transitions to jobs within the academy, community-based nonprofits, and cultural institutions. They’ll offer tips on building your professional profile as a public scholar, scaffolding opportunities for public engagement while in graduate school, and making your engaged work a legible asset across career domains.
Panelists include:
- Chelsea Bouldin (PhD, Cultural Foundations of Education, SU), assistant professor of ethnic, gender & disability studies, University of Utah
- Tierney Brown (PhD, Anthropology, NYU), Buddhism public scholar, American Museum of Natural History
- Madeline Olley (PhD, English, SU), business development and grants specialist, Pi515.org
- Kirby Sokolow (PhD, Religious Studies, UPenn), engaged humanities postdoctoral fellow, SU
What Objects Carry: Art, Ecology, and Black Experience
Thursday, October 29, 2026 | 5–6:30 p.m.
Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, Bird Library
Join the Syracuse University Art Museum and Environmental Storytelling CNY (ESCNY) for a conversation with Rodney Ewing, a multidisciplinary visual artist featured in the Museum’s exhibition Reclaimed: The Art of Recology. Ewing will speak with professor Delali Kumavie (English) about his work and career, exploring intersections among race, technology, ecology, material culture, and the Black experience. Ewing’s Come the Mean Times was selected as the cover art for Kumavie’s new book, The Black Aerial Imagination: Aviation and Flight in African and Diasporic Literature (Columbia University Press, 2026).
Presented as part of Environmental Storytelling CNY’s Fall 2026 series, the conversation will consider how artists can help us see the environmental and cultural lives of everyday materials differently. Ewing and Kumavie will explore the stories carried by objects and landscapes—including histories of migration, displacement, consumption, and technological change—and consider how artistic practices of reclaiming and reimagining materials can challenge conventional distinctions between waste and value, disposal and renewal.
Free and open to all. RSVP here
The Importance of Native Authorship in All Classrooms (Virtual)
November 3, 2026 | 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST
Native American voices have long been underrepresented in American education, both in the teaching profession and in the curricular materials students encounter. As a result, many students learn Native history primarily through incomplete or outdated narratives that overlook the diversity, resilience, and continued presence of Native nations beyond the nineteenth century.
This webinar examines how education has historically contributed to the erasure of Native perspectives and explores the important role that books by Native authors play in reshaping these narratives. Participants will consider how authentic Native voices deepen students’ understanding of history, culture, and contemporary Native communities. Educators will leave with practical strategies for incorporating works by Native authors into their classrooms and fostering more accurate, inclusive, and meaningful learning experiences.
Instructor: Dezi Lynn, National Indian Education Association
Fighting for Native America: The Southeast American Indian Response to the American Revolution (Virtual)
November 12, 2026 | 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST
The American Revolution was not simply a conflict between Britain and the American colonies. Indigenous nations throughout North America faced difficult decisions about whether to support the British, the Americans, pursue their own diplomatic interests, or defend their sovereignty independent of both powers. These choices reflected distinct political goals, cultural priorities, and strategies for survival.
This webinar explores the varied responses of Southeastern Indigenous nations during the Revolutionary era, highlighting leaders and communities whose experiences are often overlooked in traditional narratives of the Revolution. Through these histories, participants will gain a broader understanding of Native sovereignty, diplomacy, and political decision-making during a transformative period in American history. Educators will leave with approaches for helping students examine the Revolution from multiple perspectives and incorporate Indigenous voices into their study of the nation’s founding.
Instructor: Nancy Chavis, Museum Director and Curator, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Time: Nov. 13, 2026, 8:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Location: times and location T.B.A.
The College of Arts and Sciences hosts a full day of future-facing community-building around the humanities, featuring inspirational keynotes by Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Katina Rogers. Check back for details as they develop!
Polio and Public Memory (Virtual)
November 19, 2026
7:30 pm – 8:30 pm EST
Polio has been around for hundreds of years as an endemic ailment, but by the middle of the twentieth century it was the most feared disease threatening children in the United States. Although widespread vaccination dramatically reduced its impact after 1955, the cultural history of polio—and the ways Americans remembered and later forgot the disease—offers important insights into public health, citizenship, and collective memory.
This webinar introduces educators to the cultural history of epidemic polio by examining the stories, assumptions, and public narratives that shaped Americans’ understanding of the disease. Participants will explore how literature, film, and other cultural texts—including works by James Baldwin and Mary Poppins—can help students investigate questions about disability, race, public health, and epidemic memory. Educators will gain strategies for connecting historical case studies to contemporary conversations about public health and civic responsibility.
Instructor: Claire Seiler (NHC Fellow, 2025–26), Dickinson College