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SU’s Chandra Mohanty to earn honorary doctorate from College of Wooster

Chandra Talpade Mohanty—an internationally recognized scholar of post-colonial and transnational feminist theory and a celebrated professor in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences—will receive an honorary doctorate from the College of Wooster (Ohio) at its 142nd commencement ceremony on Monday, May 14. Mohanty will be awarded a doctor of humanities, along with actor/writer Tom Alter, who will be given a doctor of humane letters. Both recipients will address the graduating class of nearly 400 seniors.

Read the full article in SU News.

Mountains That Take Wing Q&A: Film Screening & Discussion

Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama: A Conversation on Life, Struggles, and Liberation

Co-directed by C.A. Griffith & H.L.T. Quan, MOUNTAINS THAT TAKE WING features conversations that span 13 years between two formidable women whose lives and political work remain at the epicenter of the most important civil rights struggles in the US. Through the intimacy and depth of conversations, we learn about Davis, an internationally renowned scholar-activist and 88-year-old Kochiyama, a revered grassroots community activist and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee’s shared experiences as political prisoners and their profound passion for justice. On subjects ranging from the vital but largely erased role of women in social movements of the 20th century, community empowerment, to the prison industrial complex, war and the cultural arts, Davis’ and Kochiyama’s comments offer critical lessons for understanding our nation’s most important social movements and tremendous hope for its youth and the future.

This video features some highlights from the Q&A session with filmmakers.

8 Conversations on Race

“We’re beyond race. Racial diversity is killing us. Everyone’s a little bit racist. It’s just identity politics. Variety is the spice of life. It’s a Black thing – you wouldn’t understand. I’m ____ and I’m proud. Race is in our DNA.”

Markus and Moya, co-editors of Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, consider eight common conversations that people in the United States have with one another as they make sense of daily events in which race and ethnicity figure prominently.

Six to be honored with Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence April 15

Six Syracuse University faculty and staff members will receive The Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence at a campus ceremony and reception in their honor Thursday, April 15. The Chancellor’s Citation awards were first presented in 1979 in recognition of outstanding achievement in teaching, scholarship and creative work. 

Carty, a sociologist who focuses on the political economies of gender, race and class inequality in national and international spheres, came to SU in 2000 to become chairperson of the Department of African American Studies (AAS) within The College of Arts and Sciences. Her writing, teaching and community involvement are undergirded by black feminist analysis that is principled, path breaking and visionary.  Read SU News for the full citation.

“Decolonizing Knowledge: Embracing an Insurgent Intellectual Tradition in the Spirit of Ella Baker”

Barbara Ransby, Professor of African American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of the award-winning biography Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (University of North Carolina Press, 2003). Ransby writes widely for numerous popular and scholarly publications, including Progressive Media Project, which distributes her columns nationally. In addition to the program Eight Forty-Eight on Chicago Public Radio, she has contributed to over a dozen audio and film documentaries. A feminist activist committed to fostering university-community collaborations, Professor Ransby was one of the coordinators of African American Women in Defense of Themselves in 1991, Ella’s Daughters in 2006, and A movement Re-imagining Change (ARC) in 2009.