Statement in Solidarity with Anti-Racist Efforts from CRGC
The faculty of the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies join with protesters across the world to denounce police brutality and systemic anti-Black violence.
Contact Us
Critical RGC Studies
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20016-8144
United States
What is the CRGC?
The Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies (CRGC) is a vibrant and inclusive community of faculty and students that explores diverse voices, histories, and experiences through socially engaged scholarship:
Announcements
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Prof. K. Tyler Christensen published That Boy from Idaho, a collection of poems.
- Prof. Donald Earl Collins wrote about the joy of being Black in America in NBC Think; argued that America is a failed state in Al-Jazeera; described the weight of American racism upon BIPOC; and discussed, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, ongoing protests and whether America might be permanently broken on ABC’s The Signal.
- Prof. Tanja Aho won the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to an Inclusive Community for their impassioned commitment to fostering campus-wide discussions about how better to serve our disabled students and faculty.
- Maria Gramajo, double major in American Studies and Women’s Gender, & Sexuality Studies, recently presented at three national conferences. In March 2020 at the Humanities and Education Research Association Conference in Chicago, she presented a paper entitled "This Is Our School Too: Queer and Trans Students of Color’s Narratives at American University.” In January 2020, at the LGBTQ Task Force Creating Change Conference in Dallas TX, she ran a workshop “Love in Color: QTPOC Storytelling.” In November 2019 at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference in San Francisco, she presented her paper “Trans History(ies) and Future(s).”
- WGSS Student Corinne Ahrens' article was published by Ms. Magazine on 13 April 2020. Read her piece Schools Implement “Pink Box Project” to Make Menstrual Products Available Despite Closures. On 28 April 2020 they published her piece Trump Attempted to Move a Reporter to the Back of the Room. Nevertheless, She Resisted.
- Prof. Sybil Roberts Williams, Director of African American & African Diaspora Studies, has won a Mellon Faculty grant for her proposal with Prof. Nancy Jo Snider of the Performing Arts Department: “Art, Politics and Identity: Community Transformations through Creation.”
- Prof. Alison Thomas’ American Studies course, Political Humor in Modern America: What's so Funny?(AMST-296-001) was chosen as one of the 17 most innovative courses taught this year in U.S. universities.
- Prof. Sybil Roberts Williams Director of African American & African Diaspora Studies, took a group of students to Cape Town, South Africa over winter break to research the history of artists’ role in the struggle against apartheid.
- Prof. Jin Y. Park delivered a talk “Derrida, Buddhism, and Ethical Imagination” at the University of Leiden, Leiden, the Netherlands, in December of 2019.
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Prof. Elizabeth Rule has won a CAS Mellon Grant to support her book project Rebuilding the Tribal/First Nation: Mohawk Girls and the Indian Act. She also presented “Indigenous Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning, Decolonizing” at AU’s Ann Ferren Teaching Conference.
- Prof. Nikki Lane published a monograph with Palgrave Macmillan Press in 2019 entitled The Black Queer Work of Ratchet: Race, Gender, Sexuality, & the (Anti)Politics of Respectability. This book takes seriously the way ratchet operates in the everyday lives of middle-class and upwardly mobile Black Queer women in Washington, DC who, because of their sexuality, are situated outside of the norms of Black respectability.
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Prof. Tanja Aho, Prof. Elizabeth Rule, and Prof. Maddox Pennington won a grant from the Center for Diversity and Inclusion to develop an Indigenous DC Field Trip Series which is available to all AU students this semester.
- Prof. Katharina Vester has won the Humboldt Fellowship to support her research on the history of dieting.
- Prof. Morad Elsana participated in a panel at McGill University Law School on February 3 entitled “The Bedouins in the Negev: Legal Pluralism, Indigenous Rights, and Social Justice in Practice.”
- Prof. Mustafa Gurbuz was featured in the Washington Post.
More Announcements
- Prof. Bob Connelly was on the Emmy-Award winning team behind the Nat Geo show "Weird But True!" Bob serves as their head of research. Read more about their Emmy win.
- Prof. Irene Calis was invited by the Afro-Middle East Centre in Pretoria, South Africa, to speak at their October colloquium “A Playground for foreign powers: The MENA region as a target for foreign intervention.”
- Prof. Martyn Oliver, Director of Arab World Studies, wrote and recorded a 12-part lecture series “Introduction to the Quran” for the Great Courses series.
