Critical Intersections: Conversations on History, Race, and Science

REGISTRATION REQUIRED. This event is open to the Caltech community only.

In collaboration with Monique Thomas of the Caltech Center for Inclusion & Diversity, artist, mediator, and social activator Dorit Cypis of PeoplesLab will host an interactive virtual town hall inspired by the HSS event "Sitting Down with Uncomfortable Things in the Caltech Archives." This session will reflect on and assess how history lives in our bodies emotionally, somatically, and how we might individually and collectively process the social and personal implications of social exclusion towards visioning personal and social transformative action. We will ask, how do we individually and collectively process the social and personal implications revealed by the Caltech archival materials on the Human Betterment Foundation? How does this history live in our bodies?

Every photograph is like a "death mask" stilling the moment into perpetuity, freezing the soul of the moment. Participants will be guided through photographs in the archive to scan their experience from outside the image and from within each image – shifting their position between observer and subject. How will this exploration expand what is understood about the history represented and its effect on the viewer?

To register, please click here.

PeoplesLab, transforming conflict into possibility
PeoplesLab weaves reflective strategies that are inner facing and somatic for participants to ground and recognize their experience, habits and bias, better recognize difference and consider options for generative engagement.

For its inaugural year of 2020-2021, the "Critical Intersections: Conversations on Race, History, and Science" seminar series is dedicated to the history leading up to and beyond eugenics. The events are jointly organized by faculty in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences [Maura Dykstra (Assistant Professor of History), Jennifer Jahner (Professor of English), and Hillary Mushkin (Research Professor of Art and Design)] and University Archivist Peter Collopy. Artists have been invited to participate in these events as part of the Caltech-Huntington Program in Visual Culture. Their participation in this series is supported by the James Michelin Distinguished Visitors Program.