Black Mobility and Safety Seminar, Poetic Justice group at the MIT Media Lab
Poetic Justice group at the MIT Media Lab via Zoom
This seminar took place during the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters at MIT (September 8, 2020-April 13, 2021)
As a writer and researcher for the Poetic Justice group at the MIT Media Lab, I worked with lab director Ekene Ijeoma on conceptualizing and organizing the speaker series for his course Black Mobility and Safety, framing the syllabus and selecting material. Speakers included artists, researchers, chefs, policymakers, environmentalists, professors, journalists, etc., such as John Akomfrah, Garrett Bradley, Hank Willis Thomas, Hugh Hayden, Anthony Abraham Jack, Stefan Lallinger, Darryl Pinckney, Nsé Ufot, Frank Baumgartner, Gretchen Sorin, Tanya Wallace-Gobern, Thomas Shapiro, Dianne M. Stewart, Joyce McMillan, Professor Arline T. Geronimus, Professor Cooper Owens, Marcus Franklin, Linda Villarosa, Tricia Hersey, Dr. Danielle L. Beatty Moody, Dr. Ashanté M. Reese, Omar Tate, Topher Sanders, and Professor Elijah Anderson.
Prompt: Professor Ekene Ijeoma’s two-part Black Mobility and Safety course included a seminar co-presented with ACT around living while Black in the US. The first semester's topics included birthing, breathing, sleeping, eating, and walking while Black; the second semester will included learning, voting, driving, working, and loving while Black.
Black Mobility and Safety in the US I & II Course: In this seminar and studio, students listened, learned, reflected and responded to issues around mobility (physical, mental, socio-economical, political, etc) and safety for Black Americans through words, images, and sounds that reference social science and anti-racist research. This two-semester course was organized into two-week topics around living while Black. The first semester included: birthing, breathing, sleeping, eating, and walking; the second: learning, voting, driving, working, and loving.
By the end of each semester, students had the resources and tools to actively listen and respond critically to issues of Black mobility in the context of their own fields and their purposes. Weekly meetings were organized around private group discussions on assigned materials, public lectures from guests ranging from designers and urban planners to activists and social scientists, and private individual presentations for the group.
Image credit: Garrett Bradley, America, 2019