Aziz Rana’s research and teaching centers on American constitutional law and political development, with a particular focus on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since America’s founding. Professor Rana’s book “The Two Faces of American Freedom” situates the American experience within the global history of colonialism, examining the intertwined relationship in American constitutional practice between internal accounts of freedom and external projects of power and expansion.
Racism in America ep.3
Event Overview
https://app.sli.do/event/5odmvtyz
As the call to address racism reverberates around the world, Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences has launched the year-long webinar series “Racism in America.” The series features Cornell faculty examining the latest research on the impact of racism on important aspects of American life, including government, society, health, and the economy.
In the next session of the series, our focus will be on how protest movements and civil disobedience have sought to both end and uphold racial discrimination. Moderated by Kat Stafford, national investigative reporter for the Associated Press, five faculty experts will address the past and present of the civil disobedience and protest movements that have brought us to this fraught moment in the U.S.
The discussion will explore how different communities, groups, and movements have defined protest and engaged in it, seeking to sway public opinion. Our experts will help us understand the ways protest has worked to effect real, sustainable change.
What You'll Learn
- The history and context for how protest and civil disobedience became tools for political and social change.
- How governments and society respond to protest movements
- The many ways that art and artists contribute to the social justice movement
- Whether protest and civil disobedience are effective tools for change
Speakers
Christine Balance’s research interests include transnational Asian-American and critical Filipino/Filipino-American studies, as well as performance and popular music. She is the author of “Tropical Renditions: Making Musical Scenes in Filipino America,” which examines how the performance and reception of post-World War II Filipino/Filipino-American popular music compose Filipino identities, publics, and politics. Her current book project, “Making Sense of Martial Law,” analyzes the sensational politics of the Marcos dictatorship and its cultural afterlives. Her courses include “Fictions of Dictatorship” and “Race, Performance, and Sound Studies.”
Ella Maria Diaz is an associate professor of English and Latina/o Studies at Cornell University. Her book “Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History” explores the art, poetry, performance, and political activism of a vanguard Chicano/a art collective founded in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. civil rights era. For this work, Professor Diaz won the 2019 Book Award from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. Her second book, published in 2020, is a primer on Chicano artist José Montoya and Volume 12 of the UCLA and Chicano Studies Research Center’s A Ver series. Professor Diaz has published in several anthologies as well as articles in English Language Notes (ELN), ASAP/Journal, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and Chicana-Latina Studies Journal.
Katrease “Kat” Stafford is a national investigative writer at The Associated Press focused on race and inequity. She examines how structural racism has fueled inequity in America through lenses like politics, government, health, and environmental justice. Previously an investigative journalist at the Detroit Free Press, Ms. Stafford’s work uncovering equity and environmental issues led to congressional inquiries, city legislation proposals, and a federal audit. She was part of a two-person reporting team that won Michigan’s Associated Press Media Editors 2019 First Amendment Award for the Free Press’s “Make Your Date” investigative project. Ms. Stafford was named a 2019 Ida B. Wells Investigative Fellow and is a board member of the Investigative Reporters and Editors, the industry’s leading nonprofit organization focused on investigative journalism.
Margaret Washington’s research focuses on African-American culture, religion and thought; gender; and the American South. She is the author of the award-winning book “‘A Peculiar People’: Slave Religion and Community Culture Among the Gullahs”and the biography “Sojourner Truth’s America.” Professor Washington has been featured in several PBS documentaries, including “‘Tell Them We Are Rising’: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities” and “God in America.”
The work of Noliwe Rooks, W.E.B. Du Bois Professor in Africana Studies and Director of the American Studies Program at Cornell University, explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history, and political life in the United States. Specifically, Professor Rooks addresses the cultural and racial implications of beauty, fashion, and adornment. In addition, her work examines race, capitalism, and education, as well as Black women and material culture. The author of four books and numerous articles, essays, and op-eds, Professor Rooks has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Center to aid in her research. She lectures often at colleges and universities around the country and is a frequent contributor to popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Time Magazine, and NPR.
Russell Rickford specializes in African-American political culture after World War II, the Black Radical Tradition, and transnational social movements. His most recent book, “We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination,” received the 2016 Hooks Institute National Book Award and the 2017 OAH Liberty Legacy Foundation Award. Professor Rickford is currently working on a book about Guyana and African-American radical politics in the 1970s.

Aziz Rana’s research and teaching centers on American constitutional law and political development, with a particular focus on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since America’s founding. Professor Rana’s book “The Two Faces of American Freedom” situates the American experience within the global history of colonialism, examining the intertwined relationship in American constitutional practice between internal accounts of freedom and external projects of power and expansion.

Christine Balance’s research interests include transnational Asian-American and critical Filipino/Filipino-American studies, as well as performance and popular music. She is the author of “Tropical Renditions: Making Musical Scenes in Filipino America,” which examines how the performance and reception of post-World War II Filipino/Filipino-American popular music compose Filipino identities, publics, and politics. Her current book project, “Making Sense of Martial Law,” analyzes the sensational politics of the Marcos dictatorship and its cultural afterlives. Her courses include “Fictions of Dictatorship” and “Race, Performance, and Sound Studies.”

Ella Maria Diaz is an associate professor of English and Latina/o Studies at Cornell University. Her book “Flying Under the Radar with the Royal Chicano Air Force: Mapping a Chicano/a Art History” explores the art, poetry, performance, and political activism of a vanguard Chicano/a art collective founded in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. civil rights era. For this work, Professor Diaz won the 2019 Book Award from the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. Her second book, published in 2020, is a primer on Chicano artist José Montoya and Volume 12 of the UCLA and Chicano Studies Research Center’s A Ver series. Professor Diaz has published in several anthologies as well as articles in English Language Notes (ELN), ASAP/Journal, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and Chicana-Latina Studies Journal.

Katrease “Kat” Stafford is a national investigative writer at The Associated Press focused on race and inequity. She examines how structural racism has fueled inequity in America through lenses like politics, government, health, and environmental justice. Previously an investigative journalist at the Detroit Free Press, Ms. Stafford’s work uncovering equity and environmental issues led to congressional inquiries, city legislation proposals, and a federal audit. She was part of a two-person reporting team that won Michigan’s Associated Press Media Editors 2019 First Amendment Award for the Free Press’s “Make Your Date” investigative project. Ms. Stafford was named a 2019 Ida B. Wells Investigative Fellow and is a board member of the Investigative Reporters and Editors, the industry’s leading nonprofit organization focused on investigative journalism.

Margaret Washington’s research focuses on African-American culture, religion and thought; gender; and the American South. She is the author of the award-winning book “‘A Peculiar People’: Slave Religion and Community Culture Among the Gullahs”and the biography “Sojourner Truth’s America.” Professor Washington has been featured in several PBS documentaries, including “‘Tell Them We Are Rising’: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities” and “God in America.”

The work of Noliwe Rooks, W.E.B. Du Bois Professor in Africana Studies and Director of the American Studies Program at Cornell University, explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history, and political life in the United States. Specifically, Professor Rooks addresses the cultural and racial implications of beauty, fashion, and adornment. In addition, her work examines race, capitalism, and education, as well as Black women and material culture. The author of four books and numerous articles, essays, and op-eds, Professor Rooks has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Center to aid in her research. She lectures often at colleges and universities around the country and is a frequent contributor to popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Time Magazine, and NPR.

Russell Rickford specializes in African-American political culture after World War II, the Black Radical Tradition, and transnational social movements. His most recent book, “We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination,” received the 2016 Hooks Institute National Book Award and the 2017 OAH Liberty Legacy Foundation Award. Professor Rickford is currently working on a book about Guyana and African-American radical politics in the 1970s.
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https://app.sli.do/event/5odmvtyz
As the call to address racism reverberates around the world, Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences has launched the year-long webinar series “Racism in America.” The series features Cornell faculty examining the latest research on the impact of racism on important aspects of American life, including government, society, health, and the economy.
In the next session of the series, our focus will be on how protest movements and civil disobedience have sought to both end and uphold racial discrimination. Moderated by Kat Stafford, national investigative reporter for the Associated Press, five faculty experts will address the past and present of the civil disobedience and protest movements that have brought us to this fraught moment in the U.S.
The discussion will explore how different communities, groups, and movements have defined protest and engaged in it, seeking to sway public opinion. Our experts will help us understand the ways protest has worked to effect real, sustainable change.https://ecornell.cornell.edu/keynotes/view/K022421a/primaryAmerica/New_YorkeCornell