This talk is an invitation to think together about what musical details, and all their unassimilatable qualities, make possible for scholarly projects. The presentation will revisit some of the details involved in Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban Music, and will also surface some of the book's submerged studies that made the final copy. Alongside these details, and the critical modes they make possible, the presentation will offer a set of working, non-prohibitive credos about writing and method.

American Promise explores the complex interplay between race, class, gender in educational opportunity. Over the course of 13 years, this 80-minute abridged documentary chronicles the experiences of two middle-class African-American parents in Brooklyn, N.Y., and their sons who are enrolled in Dalton, a prestigious private school. Detailing the boys' divergent paths from kindergarten through high school graduation, this provocative, intimate documentary presents complicated truths about America's struggle to come of age on issues of race, class and opportunity.

What I Am Thinking About Now: Professor Olakunle George (English)

Education is frequently described as the civil rights issue of the 21st century, particularly by politicians calling for policy changes and reform. However, the most important civil rights issue involving education in the 20th century, school segregation, remains largely unresolved, and despite the controversy it once generated, it is rarely mentioned as an important social issue that should be addressed today.

Showtimes
Friday, March 14, 2014: 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 15, 2014:  2:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m.

One man. One mic. 40 characters. Two unbelieveable true stories of wrongful imprisonment. Told through hip hop, theater, spoken word, blues, comedy, calypso and classical music.

Written and performed by Bryonn Bain.

Presented by the Center for the Study of Race + Ethnicity in America (CSREA), in collaboration with Rites and Reason Theatre, the Swearer Center for Public Service, and the Creative Arts Council. 

March 2014 - May 2014

Shawn Michelle Smith studies photographic archives of race, calling attention to their blind spots and absences as well as their spectacles. Working with historical photographs from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries, she manipulates and transforms them in order to explore how we see and understand race in the United States.

Shawn Michelle Smith
Professor, Visual Artist & Scholar, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Lecture, 4 p.m.
The Scene of the Crime: Taryn Simon's The Innocents
Winnick Chapel, Brown RISD Hillel , 80 Brown Street