Macarena Gómez-Barris and CA Conrad to headline Graduate Symposium on Climate Justice

Mark your calendar for the 2019 Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies Symposium: Art + Environmental Justice November 22 and 23, 2019. This interdisciplinary two-day symposium is open to the public, free, and registration is not required.

Here is a link to the schedule with details about the symposium sessions.

Environmental justice is the single most pressing and complex issue of our time. The 4 million activists who recently participated in the Global Climate Strike have brought into focus more than ever the intense urgency around climate justice.

Our groundbreaking keynote speakers Macarena Gómez-Barris and CA Conrad lay the foundation for this interdisciplinary symposium that considers the roles of art, design, and education in environmentalism, activism, and social justice.

Keynote speaker Macarena Gómez-Barris works to find alternatives to the impasses produced by racial and extractive capitalism as Professor and Chairperson of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute and Director of the Global South Center. She is the author of The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives.

Award-winning poet CA Conrad will give a workshop on “(Soma)tic rituals,” what Conrad calls “a practice of unorthodox steps aimed at breaking us out of the quotidian and into a more political and physical spiritual consciousness of The New Wilderness.”

Scholars, activists, educators, designers and artists working on environmental justice issues will explore the politics surrounding systemic biases and the ways that environmental degradation and climate change intersect with race, gender, and class to create disproportionate outcomes on both a local and global scale. The symposium’s agenda places art and design at the center of these conversations, investigating how creative practices contribute to community and global struggles for environmental justice.

It is core to PNCA’s identity that our students are not bystanders in culture, but active participants in the critical dialogues of our times. PNCA’s Core Themes, which guide the school’s curriculum and the implementation of its mission support critical inquiry, giving students the tools to examine existing and emerging cultural, social and political conditions and to make informed judgments. PNCA supports a global understanding of the world, encouraging an understanding of diverse cultures and teaching students to recognize the interconnectedness of both natural and human systems.

Find out more about the 2019 Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies Symposium: Art + Environmental Justice.