John L. Jackson Jr. is an associate professor of communication and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School. His books include Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008), Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (2005), and Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (2001). He will be speaking about racial politics, religion, and contemporary popular culture.

Free and open to the public! Sponsored by the Multicultural Center-Lecture Series, Africana Studies, the Oakley Center and Claiming Williams.

John L. Jackson Jr. Named to PIK Professorship at Penn
Chronicle of Higher Education essay
From the Annals of Anthroman

Hosts: Johannes Wilson ‘11, co-chair of the Queer Student Union, Justin Adkins, Queer Life Coordinator-MCC, Katie Kent, Associate Professor of English, and Brian Martin, Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature

This will be an opportunity for students, staff, and faculty to really engage with several aspects about queer life at Williams.

How do we feel gender/sexual norms operate here, and how have they affected us?

Are there any aspects of the college that have a negative impact on queer students, staff, and faculty?

What about those resources specifically designed for the queer community- the Queer Student Union, Dively Committee, Queer Life Coordinator, etc?

Why don’t some queer students take advantage of these resources?

What do we feel these resources have done for the queer community here, and how might they be improved?

This is not intended just as a time for us to really pinpoint the issues that concern us, but to make plans for further action. How can we make Williams a better community for queer students, whether or not they are out, and their allies alike?

Director Lisa Corrin leads a discussion about the landmark exhibition “Mining the Museum” in which artist Fred Wilson challenged notions of privilege in the museum context. We then invite you to go through the galleries in an activity where you “mine” the museum — casting a critical eye on issues of class, race, and gender and letting us know what you think.
(No background in art necessary.)

An ongoing archive of audio files that narrate experiences, events, memories at various locations around campus. Once at the site, click on the arrows to navigate the campus map and roll-over the map with your cursor to locate specific narratives. Please contact any of the hosts if you are interested in adding to this collection of personal claims about Williams.

Audio file stories recorded around campus

Host: Laini Sporbert, Substance Abuse Counselor, Kate Merrigan (tentative) North Adams resident, Jim Kolesar, Assistant to the President for Public Affairs and Williamstown resident, Liz Shiner, Williamstown resident

A chance to learn what Williams looks like outside of the Purple Bubble. A panel of local residents, some connected and others not connected to Williams, will share their perspective of what Williams looks like from the outside.

Hosts: Kim Dacres ‘08, Joyce Foster, Director of Academic Resources, Morgan Goodwin ‘08, Robyn Marasco, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Stéphane Robolin, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies, Vince Schleitwiler, Assistant Professor of English, Claire Schwartz ‘10, Shayla Williams ‘09, Alex Willingham, Professor of Political Science

Host: Office of Career Counselling, Ron Gallagher
Respect and Responsibility in the Workplace_A Diversified Career Resource Gallery and Panel

This program from the Office of Career Counseling will provide participants with a chance to listen to the work place experiences of four minority faculty/staff members at Williams; plus a visual overview of career information targeted for persons of color, GLBT individuals, and those with disabilities, as well as resources for feminists and persons from countries outside of the U.S.

The Williams OCC and its staff celebrate and support all Williams students and alumni. We provide resources and services to meet the career development and job search needs of Williams diverse student and alumni populations.

To take full advantage of our services please make an appointment to meet with Ron Gallagher, OCC Assistant Director and liaison to the Williams Multicultural Center. The following resources have been developed to enhance your internship and job search efforts.

* General Resources
* International Students
* Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Students and Alumni
* Students and Alumni with Disabilities
* Feminist Resources

Williams Office of Career Counseling

Steven Spencer is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Social Psychology Division at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He received his doctorate from the University of Michigan and has held faculty positions at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Hope College. He maintains an active research program that investigates self-image maintenance processes, motivated social perception, and stereotyping. He has served his discipline as an associate editor at the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and as a consulting editor at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Self and Identity.

“I do research on motivation and the self, particularly on how these factors affect stereotyping and prejudice. In examining motivation and the self I have begun to examine how implicit processes that are outside of people’s awareness affect people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In examining stereotyping and prejudice I look at how threats to the self-concept can lead to stereotyping and prejudice, and how this stereotyping and prejudice affects subsequent feelings about the self. In the other research I also examine how being a member of a stereotyped group affects people’s self-concept and academic performance.”

Professor Fein introduces:

“Dr. Spencer worked with Claude Steele on the very first studies of stereotype threat in the mid-90s and has been working closely with Steele ever since. Together they designed the first attempt to apply some of the original ideas from the theory to a real-world university setting, at the University of Michigan, and he has been a part of or reviewed many other more recent applications and extensions of this work. He also is aware of the limitations of the theory and research, in a way that many others are not. Dr. Spencer knows the literature on this important, and somewhat controversial, phenomenon about as well as anyone in the world, and he will be more than happy to field questions or have discussions with anyone interested in talking with him after the talk.

“A Washington Post article published just a couple of days ago includes discussion of what I assume will be some of the work he’ll be presenting tomorrow – here’s the link to the article:”

Washington Post Article

Host: Lili Rodriguez ‘01, Associate Director of Admissions/Director of Diversity Recruitment

Lenelle Moïse is an award-winning poet, playwright, screenwriter and performance artist. She creates intimate, fiery, politicized texts about the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, culture and resistance. She regularly presents interactive performances and workshops that addresses Feminism, the Spoken Word Movement, LGBTQ issues, Activist Art, Hip-Hop Theatre Aesthetics and Haitian-American culture at colleges and conferences across the United States.

In July 2008, Women Center Stage at the Culture Project launched the off-Broadway production of Moïse’s EXPATRIATE. The New York Times calls the play “inspiring… invigorating…compelling,” anchored by “a searching, intelligent script.” She currently tours her acclaimed 90-minute solo show Womb-Words, Thirsting which fuses spoken word, storytelling and song for a high-energy event about growing up bi-cultural, immigrant and queer.

She has been a guest artist at Brown University, Carleton College, Colby College, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Evergreen State College, MIT, the Ohio State University, Skidmore, Wesleyan and Yale, among many others.

Moïse is a regular blogger for OurChart.com. Her writing is also featured in a number of anthologies, including: Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution and We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists. She has been commissioned to write plays for the Drama Studio, the Kitchen Theatre Company and Serious Play Theatre Ensemble. At age 20, she co-wrote the screenplay Sexual Dependency with Bolivian feature-film director Rodrigo Bellot. Her debut spoken word CD, Madivinez, won the 2007 Patchwork Majority Radio Award for best solo album. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Claire Schwartz ‘10 introduces…

“This summer, I met a professor coffee in a bustling shop in New York City’s
West Village. On the way out, he swiped a pamphlet from a table and handed it to me. ‘I’ve heard good things about this play,’ he said casually. So, when a friend and I found ourselves outside of the noted theatre a couple of weeks, we wandered into ‘Expatriate’, Lenelle Moise’s two-woman show. By the next day, I was jamming in the subway to her spoken-word CD ‘Madivinez,’ feeling delightfully subversive crushed between business suits as Moise’s smooth voice sang, ‘A girl like a white light converted me faithful to the good church of queers…’”

“But Moise’s work is so much more than a good beat. From recounting a childhood fight to meditating on the aftermath of Hurricain Katrina, Moise refuses to dissociate her personal experience from the broadly political.”

“Nor will she break herself down in digestible chunks, and her work sits in the fraught and productive territory of the intersection of a number of categories of identity including race, class, gender, family history, and sexual orientation. Lenelle Moise presents her mission as ‘queering the divine, one word at a time.’ I love the idea of changing—through art—our paradigm.”

“Who/what do we exalt as our archetype, and how does proximity to that model dictate privilege?  What does Williams ‘look’ like? And how can we make it ‘look’ more like us—all of us?”

Lenelle Moïse’s website

The New York Times: Ah Paris, Beacon of Freedom, City of Jazz

Time Out New York: The word is out

The Williams Record: Controversial spoken word poetry engages

MySpace: Lenelle Moïse

YouTube: Meet Lenelle Moïse