Griot Newsletter: February 11, 2025

GREETINGS FROM THE DIRECTOR

February 11, 2025

Dear Griot Friends and Family,

Happy second week of Black History month from the Griot Institute.

The semester has begun with important conversations for us all to think through Decolonial Education and Liberatory Learning and begin to build actions toward the kinds of liberatory learning we want to be able to engage. We all were able to pause and think through MLK in his own words to understand the kinds of thinking he deployed to disrupt oppressive structure. Ms. Judy Richardson of SNCC took us through a retrospective to understand strategies that allowed young people to challenge practices and people used to oppress large segments of society. Ms. Richardson left Bucknell to attend the SNCC Legacy Project board meeting. At that meeting, a statement was developed and issued on Feb. 1, the 2nd day of the board meeting and the 65th anniversary of the 1960 Greensboro sit-in. Ms. Richardson provided a link to the recorded statement and a written copy of the statement, linked here.

To kick off the Spring speaker series and Black History month, Dr. Stephanie Jones, an education professor at Grinnell College, engaged a large gathering of current students along with some faculty on critical questions related to students’ experiences of racialized trauma and anti-blackness in their education. This powerful gathering had a tremendous impact on all of us who were in the room.

Throughout the semester, there are additional opportunities for us to gather in community together to discuss questions and ideas you are curious about as well as research you are developing around decoloniality in education and learning. We invite you to come out and join us for the three remaining Griot Institute Spring Speaker Series guests. They are certain to foster thought provoking conversations about Decolonial Education and Liberatory Learning from their unique perspectives. The speakers will be with us February 26, March 5 and March 19. Our next speaker is Engineering Professor Monica Cox of The Ohio State University. Dr. Cox focuses on Engineering Education and the need to radically rethink its approaches and structures. Dr. Cox has generously committed to doing three campus events in distinct spaces across campus in order to engage a varied set of audiences. 

Following the February and March talks, The Griot Institute will be hosting a conference with panels and four important keynote speakers who will engage participants in interactive lectures/presentations.

We hope that some of our newsletter readers will participate in the conference not only as audience, but also as presenters. The CFP for the conference can be found on the conference website. The deadline for abstracts is February 15. Please reach out to griot@bucknell.edu if you have questions about the conference.

In the meantime, please enjoy reading the intern blogs and hearing their fresh and unique analyses of the many lectures and events they participated in or listened to during the first three weeks of classes.

Be safe in the expected upcoming storms,

Cymone Fourshey

Professor of History and International Relations Director of The Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures