Directed by Ava DuVernay, English, 100 minutes, USA, 2016

Please RSVP

Zoom ID: 93509899378

Live captioning will be provided.

Panelists: 
Jenn Jackson, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University

Jenn M. Jackson (they/them) is a queer genderflux androgynous Black woman, an abolitionist, a lover of all Black people, and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Political Science. Jackson’s primary research is in Black Politics with a focus on group threat, gender and sexuality, political behavior, and social movements. Jackson also holds affiliate positions in African American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and LGBT Studies. They are a Senior Research Associate at The Campbell Public Affairs Institute at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, as well.

Jackson is the author of the forthcoming book BLACK WOMEN TAUGHT US (Random House Press, 2022).  The book is an intellectual and political history of Black women’s activism, movement organizing, and philosophical work that explores how women from Harriet Jacobs to Audre Lorde to the members of the Combahee River Collective, among others, have for centuries taught us how to fight for justice and radically reimagine a more just world for us all.

Jackson’s first academic book project POLICING BLACKNESS investigates the role of group threat in influencing Black Americans’ political behavior. Methodologically, they utilize quantitative analyses of survey data and experiments as well as qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with young Black Americans ages 18 to 35 to investigate both intergroup and intragroup differences in responses to and ideas about group threat.

Michael Cox, Black and Pink (United States prison abolitionist organization supporting LGBTQ+ and HIV-positive prisoners)

Michael Cox (he/him) is a butch queen on a two-fold mission to dismantle the prison system and to find alternatives to the ways society governs through crime.  His work is informed by his lived experience in the prison system, his scholarship, and the endless stream of letters from our inside members. You can often find him in policy spaces or building community with other people who have been directly impacted with the criminal legal system. 

Michael was appointed by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office to serve on the Special Commission on the Health and Safety of LGTBQI Prisoners, tasked with investigating the correctional system. At the federal level, he co-chairs the National LGBT / HIV Criminal Justice Working Group’s formerly incarcerated subgroup. He is a board member for MassEquality and was a 2020 Fellow of JustLeadershipUSA’s Leading with Conviction leadership training program. He has worked with Black and Pink in a variety of roles since 2014.

Carla Shedd, Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Education, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Shedd’s research and teaching focuses on: education; criminalization and criminal justice; race and ethnicity; law; social inequality; and urban policy. Shedd’s first book, Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice (October 2015, Russell Sage), has won multiple academic awards, including the prestigious C. Wright Mills Award, which is given to the top social-science book in the field of social inequality.  Unequal City examines Chicago public school students' perceptions of injustice and contact with police within and across various schools and neighborhoods, and deeply probes the intersections of race, place, education, and the expansion of the American carceral state. Shedd’s second book project, When Protection and Punishment Collide: America’s Juvenile Court System and the Carceral Continuum, draws on her one-of-a-kind empirical data to interrogate the deftly intertwined contexts of NYC schools, neighborhoods, and juvenile justice courts, in this dynamic moment of NYC public policy shifts (e.g., school (re-)segregation, “Raise the Age,” and “Close Rikers.”).

Dr. Shedd received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University, and graduated from Smith College with a double major in Economics and African American Studies. Fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, Columbia University, and Northwestern University have supported Shedd's research and writing. Shedd has been featured on MSNBC, C-SPAN's Washington Journal, PBS NewsHour, and WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show; and her work has been written about in several major publication outlets.

Moderator Janhavi Madabushi, Executive Director, Mass Bail Fund

janhavi madabushi (they/them) is a community organizer and creative whose work whittles away at carceral cultures to create thriving, healing futures. As an abolitionist and Queer anarchist they approach their work in limitlessly imaginative ways. In practice, that means committing to shifting the material conditions of oppressed people while militantly practicing joy making, pleasure & expression. They are the incoming director of the Massachusetts Bail Fund.

You can watch the film 13th on your own time before the panel, or join the screening

Directed by Radha Blank, English, 129 minutes, USA, 2020

Please RSVP

Zoom ID: 94104436406

Live captioning will be provided.

Panelists: 
Dawn Simmons (Artistic Director, Front Porch Arts Collective; Executive Director, Stage Source)

Dawn Simmons is the co-founder and artistic director of the Front Porch Arts Collective, a black theater company committed to advancing racial equity in Boston through theatre. She also founded New Exhibition Room in 2008 to produce provocative, political, and affordable theater events. She is also the Executive Director of StageSource, an arts service organization focusing on work force development and sector improvement in theatre across New England. Dawn is originally from Buffalo, NY, where she received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Buffalo. She went on to study playwrighting at Boston University and directs for regional theatres such as The Front Porch Arts Collective, WAM Theatre, The Nora Theatre, Greater Boston Stage Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Bad Habit Productions, Fresh Ink Theatre and Lyric Stage Company. More recently, she served as the Director of Performing Arts at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Lyndsay Allyn Cox (Senior Director, Programs & Experiences, Boston Center for the Arts)

Lyndsay Allyn Cox (she/her/hers) is a freelance actor and director and the Senior Director of Programs and Experiences at the Boston Center for the Arts. She holds a BA in Theatre Performance from Appalachian State University. In 2019 Lyndsay was selected by WBUR’s The ARTery as one of the 25 millennials of color impacting Boston’s arts and culture scene. As an actor, Lyndsay is committed to the development of new work. She has had the opportunity to work with playwrights at all levels of their careers. Most recently she has the opportunity to work with Kirsten Greenidge on her new play Our Daughters, Like Pillars. Lyndsay has worked with several regional theatre companies including: The Huntington Theatre, Geva Theatre, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, SpeakEasy Stage, The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Greater Boston Stage Company, Company One, and the Front Porch Arts Collective. Lyndsay is currently working on a directing project for the Women & Science Theater Festival at Central Square Theater. Lyndsay is a proud member of the Actors’ Equity Association, the American Montessori Society and is a certified yoga instructor. LyndsayAllynCox.com

Kirsten Greenidge (Andrew W. Mellon/Howlround Playwriting Fellow, Company One Theatre; Acting Chair, Theatre Arts, Boston University)

Kirsten Greenidge’s plays are best described as works that place hyper realism on stage as they examine the nexus of race, class, gender, and the African American experience. Recently recognized as playwright laureate of Boston, she is the author of BEACON, LITTLE ROW BOAT, FEEDING BEATRICE, OUR DAUGHTERS, LIKE PILLARS, GREATER GOOD, BALTIMORE, BUD NOT BUDDY (an adaptation of the children’s novel by Christopher Paul Curtis, with music by Terence Blanchard) THE LUCK OF THE IRISH, and MILK LIKE SUGAR, which was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award and received an Independent Reviewers of New England Award, a San Diego Critics Award, and a Village Voice Obie Award, among others. She’s enjoyed development experiences at the Family Residency at the Space at Ryder Farm, the Huntington’s Summer Play Festival, Cleveland Playhouse as the 2016 Roe Green New Play Award recipient, The Goodman, Denver Center, Sundance, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, Sundance at Ucross, and the O’Neill. Kirsten is currently working on commissions from the Huntington (COMMON GROUND with Melia Bensussen), La Jolla Playhouse (TO THE QUICK), and Oregon Shakespeare American Revolutions Project (ROLL, BELINDA, ROLL). A recent PEN/Laura Pels Playwrighting Award recipient and current Andrew W. Mellon/Howlround Fellow in residence at Company One Theatre, she is an alum of New Dramatists, a member of the Honor Roll, and has proudly graced the Kilroys list of New Plays by women and women identified playwrights several years running. She attended the Playwright’s Workshop at the University of Iowa and Wesleyan University and oversees the BFA playwrighting track at Boston University’s School of Theatre where she is currently acting co-chair of Performance and acting chair of Theatre Arts.

Moderator: Dani Snyder-Young (Assistant Professor of Theatre, Northeastern University)

Dani Snyder-Young, Assistant Professor of Theatre at Northeastern University, is a scholar/artist whose work focuses on theatre and social change, applied theatre, and contemporary US activist performance. Her most recent book, Privileged Spectatorship: Theatrical Interventions in White Supremacy (Northwestern University Press) examines white spectatorship of mainstream anti-racist theatrical events. Her first book, Theatre Of Good Intentions: Challenges and Hopes for Theatre and Social Change (2013, Palgrave Macmillan), examines the limits of theatre in making social change in order to engage in a productive discussion of theatre’s strengths -and weaknesses- and theatre artists’ opportunities to make change in an unjust world.  She has published essays in Theatre Survey, Theatre Topics, Theatre Research International, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre Research, Qualitative Inquiry, Youth Theatre Journal, and the International Journal of Learning. Dani’s artistic work as a director and dramaturg focuses on political theatre, community based performance, new play development, and adaptations of classical texts for diverse audiences. At Northeastern, she directs plays centering the voices and experiences of women. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association. Prior to joining the Northeastern faculty in 2017, Dani previously taught at Illinois Wesleyan University, New York University, and Pace University.  She holds a BA from Wesleyan  University and an MA and PhD from New York University.

You can watch the film The Forty-Year-Old Version on your own time before the panel, or join the screening.

Directed by Ava DuVernay, English, 100 minutes, USA, 2016

Saturday March 20th, 7:00 PM

Zoom ID: 96775784646

The film, 13th, explores the "intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States;"[3] it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the United States and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction of a crime.

You can watch on your own time on Netflix, or join this screening prior to the panel!

Directed by Radha Blank, English, 129 minutes, USA, 2020

Friday March 19, 2021 at 7:00PM

Zoom ID: 96249216669

The Forty-Year-Old Version is written, directed, and produced by Radha Blank, in her feature directorial debut.

Radha is a down-on-her-luck NY playwright, who is desperate for a breakthrough before 40. Reinventing herself as rapper RadhaMUSPrime, she vacillates between the worlds of Hip Hop and theater in order to find her true voice.

You can watch on your own time on Netflix, or join this screening prior to the panel!