As a Black feminist collective of doctoral students, we critically engage theoretical frameworks and qualitative analytics in order to conceptualize our framework of the Black/Girlhood Imaginary. In order to continue to investigate this imaginary—this rupture birthed out of Black feminism (Collins, 1990)—we will use this working group as an opportunity to work through our framework and to hear from others about our points of intersection.
As a working group, we seek to wrestle with our understanding of Black girlhood and open a conversation between the fields of education,...
The “Intersectional Ecologies” working group aims to investigate the intersections between race, gender, and alternative ecological futures. Positioned at the crossroad between academic research and spatial practice, the group studies the role of Western technical rationality in producing and maintaining racist, heteropatriarchal, and ecocidal forms of oppression. Within “sustainable” development, narratives of “resilience,” and growth paradigms, practices of hygienism, eco-modernism, and green neocolonialism have offered technological fixes to environmental destruction while...
The Language Revitalization Working Group (LRWG), co-hosted by the Linguistics and Ethnic Studies departments, focuses on discussing theories, methodologies, and applications of language revitalization (LR) in a variety of world contexts. This working group was originally initiated by the members of the Spring 2019 LING251 class on Indigenous Language Revitalization which was listed in Linguistics, core to the Designated Emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization, co-taught by faculty from Linguistics, Ethnic Studies, and Education, and attended by students from Linguistics;...
In traditional Ethnic Studies categories, mixed race has been marginalized, misappropriated, tokenized or simply left out. In order to allow for a collaborative environment given the use of essentialized racial categories and lack of scholarship on the experiences of mixed race people, the purposes of the working group are as follows: to create an interdisciplinary space for mixed race studies dialogue and to provide a safe space for scholars to discuss issues of mixed race identity. This working group will also serve as a space for scholars doing work on this topic...
This working group brings together faculty and students from U.C. Berkeley and a local high school to research the impact of school disciplinary practices on racial/ethnic minority students. We explore whether alternative forms of discipline, founded on restorative justice principles, are a viable and healthy alternative to traditional paradigms. In the Fall of 2009, 13 students from a local high school participated in a seminar designed and facilitated by members of the working group. Students in the seminar became familiar with the history of discipline within...
The Decolonial Feminisms Working Group is working on a series of research questions and praxical projects related to decoloniality and feminisms through reading discussion, collective research projects, and the organizing of conferences and convenings. We were formed in the fall of 2008 in response to an invitation by Prof. Maria Lugones, Center for Philosophy and Interpretation of Culture (CPIC), Binghamton University, to work collaboratively on questions of decolonial feminisms. We began a dialogue with CPIC, participated in a transnational video conference with...
This working group seeks to think through specific techniques of knowledge production at work around US military bases/facilities, especially those that enable "spaces of containment" and "spaces of exception" to be maintained and sustained through the discourse of liberalism. The members of this group will read a list of texts and articles (see below) influenced by the works of Giorgio Agamben (1998) and those who have expanded on his concept of the "the camp" in order to extrapolate a better feminist model which addresses the inextricable links between race and...
Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and cultural workers, we engage the topic of Afro Asian alliance from a variety of perspectives, including: Afro Asian/Third World political history; theories of joint racialization; Buddhism and the African American community; Black/Asian portrayals in popular culture; musical and artistic exchanges; Black and Asian/American community interaction; interracial adoption; martial arts; and mixed raced identity. By including members already involved with Afro Asian projects in San Francisco and Oakland, we seek to bring...
Sex & the State is a CRG research working group that brings together a range of inquiries that examine the relationships of gender and sexuality to regimes of state regulation and control, with particular attention to the role of racial formation in these processes. Both key terms—“sex” and “state”—are multivalenced. “Sex” serves as a foundational category while retaining its distinctness from gender and queer studies. The “State” refers not only to national bodies, but also to state powers within a federal-state system such as exists in the...
The Criminal Justice Working Group, sponsored by the Center for Race and Gender, is a community of graduate students across academic disciplines interested in or actively engaged in researching issues related to the criminal justice system in California and in the United States. We serve as a networking site, connecting our members and others to criminal justice resources on campus and within our community, and as a research sounding board, hosting workshops for members’ research in which they present working ideas or papers and get feedback.