Past Events

Poetic Portraits of Older Women in the Great Black Swamp 

Dr. Sandra Faulkner, Professor in the School of Media and Communication 

Women have shaped the landscape and contour of the Bowling Green area, yet we do not have many records of their contributions. Collecting oral histories is one way to preserve and celebrate the contributions of older women in our community. Oral history provides an opportunity for women to tell their story in their own words, deciding what is important to share, what stories they wish to emphasize, and how they present themselves.

Dr. Sandra Faulkner, Professor of Media and Communication at BGSU, will share Portraits of Older Women in the Great Black Swamp, a collaborative project with The Wood County Committee on Aging, the BGSU archives, and local women, which focuses on how women have contributed to Bowling Green and the surrounding community. Faulkner interviewed prominent older women in the Bowling Green area about their experiences across the life course and their contributions to our community. She will discuss the importance of oral histories and listening to older women by presenting poetic portraits of older women in the Bowling Green area that she cocreated from oral histories. A poetic portrait is a representation of a person’s life in verse that focuses on embodied aspects of their life story. The poetic portraits celebrate women’s contributions to our community. The poetic portraits and oral histories will be archived at the BGSU libraries for all of us to share.

Community Health Workers, Stress Reduction, and Racial Equity in Infant Vitality

Dr. Justin Rex, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science 

How can communities help mothers reduce stress during pregnancy and provide the social supports that contribute to infant vitality? This talk presents findings from an evaluation of the Northwest Ohio Pathways HUB program, a nationally recognized best practice program model that pairs at-risk mothers with community health workers (CHWs) who connect mothers to services that reduce pregnancy risks. The talk includes stories from mothers and CHWs about the challenges and stresses they face as well as data from interviews and surveys that quantify the impact CHWs have for reducing mothers' stress and providing supports that help mothers and their children thrive.

Justin Rex is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bowling Green State University and a Research Fellow at the BGSU Center for Regional Development. He researches regulatory policy, with a focus on regulatory capture, the bureaucratic politics of financial regulation, and the regulation of white-collar financial crime. He has applied research expertise in program evaluation and has written grants and technical reports in a variety of policy areas, including health, transportation, special education, housing, and economic development. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Public Policy & Administration on topics including poverty, urban and rural policy issues, and public administration theory.

https://www.bgsu.edu/arts-and-sciences/political-science/faculty-and-staff-directory/Justin-Rex.html

Everything I learned I learned in a Chinese Restaurant: An Afternoon with Filmmaker and Author Curtis Chin

Co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City, Curtis Chin served as the non-profits’ first Executive Director. Chin has screened his films at over 600 venues in sixteen countries and has written for CNN, Bon Appetit, the Detroit Free Press, and the Emancipator/Boston Globe. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Chin has received awards from ABC/Disney Television, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and more. His memoir, "Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant" will be published by Little, Brown in Fall 2023 and dicusses his life growing up queer in Detroit's Chinatown.

ICS is continuously working to collaborate with multiple department and organizations to encourage campus-and community-wide conversations about issues of vital national importance.  

Interested in any of these subjects? Learn more about them by clicking the link below!

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Navigating Crisis Across Borders: Experiences of a Mexican Indigenous Community in Times of Covid

Dr. Michaela Walsh, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies

Fall 2022

Public Lecture: Wednesday, November 9th, from 11:30 a.m to 12:30 p.m in Room 208 at the Bowen-Thompson Student Union on BGSU's campus, 1001 Wooster St, Bowling Green

School of Cultural and Critical Studies

In Mexico and in the United States subaltern voices and experiences of Indigenous peoples have, for centuries, been muted from an international and national narrative. While much has been written about the social and economic effects of the pandemic in Latin America and in the US, little has been written about its impact on Indigenous communities, particularly transnational ones. My project explores the impacts of Covid-19 on the Hñähñu, an Indigenous community split between Central Mexico and the Southwestern United States. This investigation explores how the pandemic has created new “push factors” of immigration from their pueblo, how obstacles to travel have disrupted connections to citizenship, and how the Hñähñu’s practice of Pentecostal faith has been a conduit of courage as well as crisis within a community whose fear of being harmed by the government has manifested in their decision not to vaccinate.

AI and Everyday Life: Finding Our Footing in Contemporary Digital Society

Dr. John Dowd, Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication

Fall 2022

Public Lecture: Thursday, November 3rd, from 7 to 8 p.m at Way Public Library, 101 E Indiana Ave, Perrysburg

More than merely the antagonist and fear in science fiction, artificial intelligence has woven its way into the very fabric of our everyday lives. From credit reporting, access to public benefits, employment seeking, navigating public space, predictive policing and more, much of our lives are governed by digital algorithms. Even the everyday acts of web browsing and engagement with common digital devices puts us into intimate contact with algorithms, which can shape our views of reality and impact our mental health in detrimental ways. While the public’s awareness of this is increasing, the degree of governance and the ubiquity of these practices still lack sufficient oversight and transparency. Thus, it is not simply that we don’t know but rather, that when behaviors by technology and data firms become so intertwined with everyday life, they desensitize us to the processes and perils of risk assessment, prediction, and surveillance. Moreover, we need a non-specialized (i.e. more accessible) set of concepts for thinking and talking about these issues. The work undertaken during my ICS Fellowship is devoted to developing such a framework.

ICS is continuously working to collaborate with multiple department and organizations to encourage campus-and community-wide conversations about issues of vital national importance.  

Interested in any of these subjects? Learn more about them by clicking the link below!

Find Additional Materials

Roundtable Talk: The Politics of Teaching U.S. History

This ICS event was held on April 13th, 2021 at 7pm. It was a virtual roundtable discussion about "The Politics of Teaching U.S History!" This interactive event explored the difficulty and necessity of teaching U.S. history honestly, sensitively, and culturally responsively.

It featured the following speakers: Dr. Nicole Jackson (Associate Professor of History at BGSU), Dr. Timothy Messer-Kruse (Professor of Ethnic Studies at BGSU), and Gloria Wu (a K-12 social studies teacher in Toledo Public Schools).

Watch a recording of the roundtable on YouTube!

Read the BG Independent news article! 

The Bicycle & The Ballot Box: How American Suffragists Pedaled Their Way to Power

[Image Description: Dr. Liggett is wearing glasses and smiling in front of a full bookshelf.]

Dr. Lori Liggett's project, The Bicycle & The Ballot Box: How American Suffragists Pedaled Their Way to Power, marks the 100 year anniversary of women's suffrage in the United States.  Dr. Liggett will explore the history of the bicycle, and more specifically, its impact on the women’s suffrage movement. The “bicycle craze” that swept America in the late 19^th century created opportunities for women like never before, representing individualized, unchaperoned transportation and the necessity for much-needed rational attire. In the process, ladies-on-bicycles threatened notions of traditional womanhood and challenged societal gender norms. As women demanded justice in domestic, economic, legal issues, and the right to vote in national elections, the bicycle became a means, both symbolically and practically, to achieve equality. For women, it was a revolutionary mode of independence and free expression on the path toward progress. Dr. Liggett will discuss how the bicycle became a significant symbol of transformation in the lives of American women, intersecting with their political aspirations.This event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Lori Liggett is a teaching professor, faculty mentor, and internship coordinator in the School of Media & Communication. Her teaching and interdisciplinary research focus on gender issues within cultural history and visual culture. She recently taught a course entitled “Documenting Women’s Suffrage” resulting in a digital humanities gallery of primary source materials related to the suffrage movement and the 19th Amendment. She is a family genealogist and that informs her deep, personal interest in women’s lives and experiences in American history. Currently, she is working on a series of projects central to the women’s suffrage movement and its depictions within popular culture and media.

Challenges of Collaborative Governance in the Opioid Crisis

[Image Description: Dr. Dzur is standing in front of a brick wall with his head turned slightly away from the camera.]

Dr. Albert Dzur's project, entitled Challenges of Collaborative Governance in the Opioid Crisis, explores the benefits, limits, and difficulties of collaborative governance between those working on the front lines of the opioid crisis in innovative health care, public administration, social work, and community organizations. He is particularly interested in how public administrators, judges, and social workers incorporate former drug users as collaborative partners in the fight against opiate addiction. His public talk will consider the under-analyzed and critical role played by individuals from marginalized social groups in efforts to combat the opioid crisis.This event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Dr. Albert W. Dzur, Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science, studies citizen participation and power-sharing in criminal justice, health care, public administration, and education. His work on democratic professionalism focuses on innovators who welcome citizen agency in these domains, the barriers they face, and the resources available to link small-scale efforts to broad democratic renewal.

Dr. Dzur's research has been recognized by the McCourtney Institute of Democracy at Penn State University, which awarded it the 2017 Brown Democracy Medal for contributions to democratic theory, by the Ohio House of Representatives, which issued a special research commendation in 2018, and by the BGSU Board of Trustees, which designated him a Distinguished Research Professor in 2019.

He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Canberra, the University of Edinburgh, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the Kettering Foundation, the University of Oslo, and the University of Tromsø. He writes regularly for the Boston Review and the National Civic Review, where he is a contributing editor. He is on the editorial board of the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice and on the editorial team of the International Journal of Restorative Justice.

Disability, Race, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline

[Image Description: A headshot of Dr. Keyes. They are wearing glasses and have dark purple hair.]

Dr. Starr Keyes’s project, Disability, Race, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline, considers how implicit and explicit forms of racism, ableism, and gender stereotyping contribute to deep inequities in disciplinary practices and help perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline. In this public talk, Dr. Keyes will share regional, state, and national disciplinary exclusion data and discuss a variety of strategies to combat this issue and improve student behavior and academic performance.

Over the last 12 years, Dr. Keyes has taught elementary school, middle school, and postsecondary students. She was a licensed Intervention Specialist for students with mild-moderate disabilities in K-12. Currently, she teaches a reading and writing assessment methods course with a specific emphasis on Response to Intervention (RTI) and curriculum-based measurement. She also teaches a consultation and collaboration class with a specific focus on partnering with parents. Dr. Keyes has attended numerous professional development trainings covering a broad range of topics in education, special education, and technology. She has co-authored manuscripts and presented research at state and national conferences. Dr. Keyes is currently working with a school in Toledo training teachers to implement computer-assisted instruction as part of the school’s RTI process.

Thursday, November 14, 2019 | 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. | Bowling Green Center for the Performing Arts

Women Writing Black to the British Empire

Dr. Nicole Jackson's project, Women Writing Black to the British Empire, has developed from her new work on the the British Caribbean Arts Movement of the late 1960s-1970s. This period produced an array of artists exploring the legacies of slavery, empire and postcolonial identity. A new generation of Black women writers explored what it meant to be Black, British, and a woman in the UK. In this public talk, Dr. Jackson considers Black women’s writing as productive of an alternative canon of British literature, in which the colonized observed, judged and redefined “home.”

Dr. Jackson is an historian of the modern African Diaspora, Black social movements, and community activism, with a current focus on contemporary Black Britain. She is interested in everyday Black people’s work to expand the boundaries of social and political citizenship. She is also interested in the intersection between historical reality and representation in popular culture. Beginning in September 2017, Dr. Jackson became a regular contributor to Black Perspectives, the blog of the African American Intellectual History Society.

Thursday, October 24, 2019 | 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. | Grounds For Thought

Cultures in Conversation: Environments, Landscapes, and Ecologies

This interdisciplinary symposium, Environments, Landscapes, and Ecologies will explore the multilayered meanings of the term “environment” using the broadest definition of the term as a common ground for meeting and commingling. Scholars will meet and explore the myriad ways in which multitudinous actors and interactions conspire to make meanings, spaces, places, and landscapes. All panel presentations and keynote addresses are open to the public.

The keynote speaker will be Dr. Andrew Herscher. Dr. Herscher will be speaking about his experience as an academic and activist collaborating with communities fighting for environmental justice. Dr. Herscher is a trained architect and historian of architecture. He works on the spatial politics of violence, humanitarian and human rights issues, exile and migration, and contemporary art and architecture. His research, writing, and teaching is informed by his long-term participant observation in Kosovo’s post-conflict environment, including work with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, and the Kosovo Cultural Heritage Project, a nongovernmental organization he co-founded and co-directed.

ICS is proudly co-sponsoring this symposium with Culture Club, a School of Cultural and Critical Studies graduate student-run organization.

Saturday, February 15, 2020| 316 Bowen-Thompson Student Union|Bowling Green State University