the young people's professor

I’m back from Los Angeles. On Friday I had the pleasure of attending the University of Southern California’s Faculty-Graduate Seminar on "Violence, Race, and Gender," organized by the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity.

The seminar was an intensive all-day workshop in which six doctoral students (of which I was included) received extensive feedback on their dissertation chapters. The seminar was led by two incredible feminist scholars of color: Joy James, author of Shadow Boxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics and Andrea Smith, co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Macarena Gomez-Barris, a brilliant sociologist and author of Where Memory Dwells Culture and State Violence in Chile , served as moderator.

It was an absolutely fabulous opportunity, one that has definitely put the fire under my ass to keep moving onward and upward with my dissertation research. Shout-out to graduate student Terrion Williamson for putting together this wonderful event.

Now it’s back to work.