Rules and Creativity in Social Justice Activism
Poster design by Brandon Monson; watercolor by Eryn Rosenthal.
Rules and Creativity
in Social Justice Activism
Dance and Dialogue Working Group
with Austin McCoy and Eryn Rosenthal
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Bios:
Austin McCoy is a Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow in Egalitarianism and the Metropolis at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the development of left-wing politics in the Midwest during the 1970s and 1980s. His broader research and teaching interests include African American history, political economy, labor, social movements and protest, and hip hop culture. Austin is also an organizer. He has participated in campus and community politics in Ann Arbor. He helped organize a campus-wide overnight racial justice teach-in in 2014. He also helped organize protests against police killings in Ann Arbor. Now, he focuses on supporting student activism by facilitating organizing trainings. Austin also writes about history, race, gender, politics, campus diversity, and hip hop culture. He is a regular contributor for the blog, Nursing Clio.
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Choreographer Eryn Rosenthal examines the democratic underpinnings of Contact Improvisation, and the role of the body in transgressing previously legislated boundaries. Eryn’s ongoing series, The Doors Project, investigates transitions–political, social, intimate–through site-based performance in different doorways around the world. Her related dance theater performance, Freedom Suite: Transaction Being Processed, is based on ongoing oral history research with anti-Apartheid activists from New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Eryn is an alumna of the MFA program in Dance at U-M, where she also studied in the Ford School for Public Policy. She has taught throughout South Africa, Europe and the US, and is delighted to be back at U-M as a King-Chávez-Parks Visiting Professor and Artist in Residence for Dialogue-Building, Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives. www.erynrosenthal.com
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Funding:
This event is sponsored by the Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI); the King-Chávez-Parks Visiting Professorship; ArtsEngine; the W.M. Trotter Multicultural Center; the CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund; the African Studies Center; the LSA Democracy in Action Fund; the Center for World Performance Studies; and the School of Music, Theatre and Dance’s DEI Fund.
© Eryn Rosenthal and Austin McCoy, 2017. Please share widely, and cite with link to this page.