2024 Teach-In: February 7 and 8

A “New Normal” Just Won’t Do: Intersectionality in the Arts and Communication

Intersectionality, as a concept, was conceptualized and introduced to us by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), a scholar of law, critical race theory, and Black feminist thought. Crenshaw sought to “explain the experiences of Black women who, because of the intersection of race and gender, are exposed to exponential forms of marginalization and oppression.” 

This year’s Teach-in on Race aims to dive deep into questions about structural and systemic racism, white supremacy, and oppression. While some of us experience the intersection of systemic oppression just as Crenshaw describes it, we all have a responsibility to name, notice, and dismantle any system or structure that is inherently biased and oppressive—starting here in the residence halls, classrooms, stages, sets, and learning laboratories of Emerson College.  

As we embark upon our 8th Annual Teach-In on Race, we will examine how a precise understanding and utilization of intersectionality in the arts and communication can deepen our understanding of white supremacy and racism; give us opportunities for reflection on our role in dismantling racial oppression; and inspire us to act in the service of creating a teaching and learning environment that is anti-racist, equitable, accessible, and socially just.

This year’s keynote speaker is Grace Talusan.

Detailed Events Schedule

To see all panel topics, locations, and speakers, please visit our Detailed Events Schedule for more information.

Grace Talusan

Keynote Speaker

Grace Talusan is the author of The Body Papers, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, the Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection. In 2022, she was awarded fellowships from United States Artists, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Brother Thomas Fund. She has received support for her writing as a US Fulbright Scholar to the Philippines and as an Artist Fellow from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

In both her nonfiction and fiction, Talusan returns to lifelong obsessions with family stories, silences and erasures, trauma, and the rupture of immigration. She has published fiction, essays, book reviews, and journalism in publications such as Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, New York Times, Boston, and Boston Globe, and in the anthologies Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora; Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings; and Nonwhite and Woman.

Before joining the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University, Talusan was the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University.

View our previous Teach-In sessions held at Emerson College.