Agenda

Explore the powerful poetry of rising poets Makai Brown, Yanina Chicas, Jaxsyn Claymore, Wahpe Clifford, Maia Sanaa Eaton, Mikayla Johnson, Belise Nishimwe, Pte San Win Little Whiteman, and Autumn White Eyes

Eugenics and Human and Comparative Hereditary keynote session – Adam Pearson explores the ethical complications around genetic advancements, when seen through a eugenic lens. Moderated by David King

Preview exclusive clips of a work-in-progress film about a new experimental treatment for dwarfism that may erase the community it aims to serve, as part of a conversation about the film with director Julie Wymann and film curator and disability rights activist Lawrence Carter-Long.

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By us, about us! New, immersive documentary films from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities made by filmmakers from within the community, presented in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival.

The American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival features documentary films, shorts, and other media that increase our understanding of the complexity and diversity of peoples and cultures around the world. In the spirit of the Mead Festival and in conjunction with the Dismantling Eugenics conference, the Museum engaged preeminent film curators from the Black, Indigenous, and Disability communities to create a series of film screenings and round-table conversations that “pass the mic” and provide a platform for voices from within marginalized communities to tell their own stories. Jason Ryle (ImagineNative Film Festival), Mahen Bonetti (African Film Festival), and Lawrence Carter-Long (Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund/Cinema Shift).

Join Keith Jones for a hip hop exploration of the black, disabled experience.

In this episode of Black Disabled Men Talk (4/2020),  Leroy Moore,  Keith Jones, Ottis Smith, and Lateef McLeod, four Black Disabled Activists/Artists, discuss what is Black Ableism, what is the difference of being disabled versus politically disabled, but we start out with our thoughts of Chuck D firing Flavor Flav from Public Enemy.  Video is captioned by Cheryl Green.

The host will open and close the day by weaving a synthesis of themes from the presentations, artistic performances, cultural work and dialogues to take place on the convening days theme of Legacies of Eugenics. 

A live sharing of new project.

In the Name Of: The Mother Tree

Imagine our world as a sanctuary—a brilliant, bioluminescent, biome for Black thriving. In this world, water is an infinite source of prismatic liberation.  Fueled by concepts of “generative apocalypse,” and Black feminist metaphysics, “In The Name Of: The Mother Tree” is a theatrical ceremony composed of procession, ritual, dance, music, and story.  The ceremony centers a congregation of “watercarriers,” who, after a catastrophic rupture, activate a polyphonic practice of prismatic world-making and communal repair in the wake of a new day.

This conversation will seek to reimagine the constructs of beauty beyond the binary, while challenging an archaic and dangerous narrative of beauty, rooted in eugenics, that has been used to pathologize and criminalize communities—especially queer & trans, intersex, sex workers, migrants and refugees, and people with disabilities. Featuring movement organizers and culture changemakers Patty Berne of Sins Invalid, Alok V. Menon author of Beyond the Gender Binary, and Sean Saifa Wall of the Intersex Justice Project—with Kareem Khubchandani, author of “Ishtyle; Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife,” as the moderator.