Events

In this CDCS Colloquium talk, Dejmanee presents on the ways that Asian Australians perform and generate dialogue around their everyday practices of negotiating racial, ethnic and national identities. Dejmanee presents the findings of quantitative and qualitative analysis of TikTok content tagged as #AsianAustralian to explore the actors and accounts participating in this content creation, and the emergent themes and discourses that arise through these videos and their accompanying comments. 

Broaden your understanding of LGBT+ presence throughout history with scholars from across the Penn Museum and University, joined by our friends at the Penn LGBT Center. A panel of experts, including Dr. C. Brian Rose, Curator of the Mediterranean Section, William Wierzbowski, Keeper of the American Section, and Dr. Jonathan Katz, Associate Professor of Practice in History of Art and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Penn, illuminate how diverse cultures have recognized and revered more than two genders.

This full-day festival offers fun for the whole family, including an arts activity, altar competition, artisan market, dance and music performances, and an enormous traditional ofrenda (altar) installation by the Mexican Cultural Center.

Octavian Robinson

Associate Professor, Deaf Studies, Gallaudet University

Presented in collaboration with Penn’s ASL Program

In 1988, the Gallaudet University community protested the hiring of a hearing person as the newly-appointed president of the prestigious institution, which had always been dedicated to providing a fully accessible linguistic environment for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Gallaudet hadn’t had a deaf president in its 124 year history and the politics of the protest and disability rights reverberated across the globe with front-page headlines and primetime news interviews. In the three and half decades since the Deaf President Now movement, deaf people continue to occupy a liminal space between the margins and the center of popular imagination as sign languages became vogue.

The possibilities and perils of leftist organizing and media scholarship assume greater urgency in the face of “backsliding democracy.” ‘Undone’ reflects numerous senses: as a temporary disunity; as an important task unfinished; as a representation of disarray; but all senses of the word hold hope for its reversal. The UDC has always stood as a site of collaboration between activists, scholars, and practitioners—an organization rooted in critical scholarship and practice about the structures of communication themselves, not just in the US, but worldwide. The 2023 conference will see us look back at the first 40 years of the UDC, but we will also look ahead to consider the role of critical communication scholarship and activism in organizing, engaging, and energizing leftist alternatives to authoritarian politics.

Scholars share their ongoing projects on Korea/Koreans and Korean diaspora and develop academic networks, covering topics of family, health & population, gender & sexualities, (im)migration, race & ethnicity, stratification & inequality, and political sociology/economic sociology; 6-8 p.m.; suite 310, 3600 Market Street; info and to register: https://web.sas.upenn. edu/korea-conference/ (Korean Studies). Also October 13 and 14, 8 a.m.-6 p.m.

Join Penn Professor Kathleen M. Brown in a discussion about her new book, Undoing Slavery: Bodies, Race and Rights in the Age of Abolition. The book takes a fresh look at the campaign to end slavery and highlights how abolitionists, Black as well as white, put embodied forms of liberty at the center of the struggle.

The CDCS Colloquium talk draws on the narratives and practices of live streaming to understand how it becomes a form of cultural and economic production in which gender and sexuality become central to digitally-mediated and scale-making communications. It also discusses the intersecting politics of technology, labor, and gender that live streaming’s prevalence in contemporary China and its global expansion informs us about.

Racial Segregation and the January 6th Insurrection; Jacob Rugh, Brigham Young University;

Black Boys: The Social Aesthetics of British Urban Film; Clive Chijioke Nwonka, University College London; 12:15 p.m.; room 108, Annenberg School; register: https://tinyurl. com/nwonka-reading-oct-6 (Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication)