WakandaCon was a manifesto that ideas could truly come to life. The event provided a space for students to come together as a community to view Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and discuss themes such as coloniality, grief/anger, and gender.
There has been so much work in our college lately addressing anti-racist pedagogy and culturally sustaining pedagogy that I thought it would be fruitful to go to the mother of the movement. But I also didn’t want to read her by myself. I know my colleagues and wanted to read with all of you. So along with the library, CETLS and the Race, Equity and Inclusion Coordinating Committee, we started the bell hooks Book Club.
This semester, many of us will be returning to teaching in person for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. We’re excited to see our students and colleagues in person, and at the same time nervous and unsure of what to expect. For this blog post, we asked BMCC colleagues who have already been teaching in person to share their experiences.
Patrizia Comello Perry and Berenice Darwich, both professors in the Modern Languages Department, discuss how they adapted their department’s annual colloquium to the circumstances of the pandemic, giving voice to BMCC student experiences.
Since the success of our departments depends on the crucial work of part-time faculty, we need to create a space where their concerns about their careers are heard and validated. Our hope is that other departments develop initiatives similar to the English department's Graduate Student and Early-Career Support committee, which supports graduate students and early-career adjuncts.
You know what I miss most about being on campus? I miss bumping into a colleague in the hallway, walking and talking on the way to class… There is no perfect substitute for in-person conversation, but CETLS is offering an informal, alternative that we hope can help as we move forward with our off-campus lives. Introducing our “BMCC Faculty” workspace, via SLACK.
In a moment when we are all relying on digital images and virtual connections, the need to experience art in a tangible way feels incredibly essential for many of us. We at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center are excited to safely “open” the exhibition ID: Formations of the Self, which can be experienced exclusively through the gallery windows.
I’m always looking for chances to talk about teaching and how our students learn. Two BMCC programs - Open Teaching Week and Peer Teaching Consultations - offer opportunities for us to have more of these conversations.
Land acknowledgments are an invitation to engage in the hard, uncomfortable work of decolonization by making the invisible visible. While a land acknowledgment makes visible settler colonialism and indigenous erasure, decolonization will only happen in partnership with indigenous peoples.
We have been teaching a BLA learning community focused on the embodied nature of learning a new language and public speaking. The BMCC community is invited to join our learning community for a Dance Day event on November 7!
