Events
Most ISSI events are free and open to the public. (Any fees are noted below).
Events sponsored or co-sponsored by ISSI and its constituent centers are listed below. For more information, please contact us at issi(at)berkeley(dot)edu or (510) 642-0813.
For wheelchair access to the Duster Conference Room (2420 Bowditch Street), please call (510) 642-0813 one day before the scheduled event. If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) in order to fully participate in a virtual event, please contact issi@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.
Many of our events are video-recorded. You can see a list of available videos on our website. If you subscribe to our YouTube channel, you will be notified when new videos are available.
Spring 2021
Thursday, January 21 | 4 - 5pm PT
Book Launch: Critical Epidemiology and the People’s Health by Jaime Breilh
Zoom Webinar | Access here (registration not required)
Local host: César Montaño, PhD. Rector of the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito, Ecuador
Editor: Sarah Humphreville, Oxford University Press
Series Editor: Nancy Krieger, PhD, Professor of Social Epidemiology, T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University
Commentators:
- Charles L. Briggs, PhD, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Berkeley
- Howard Waitzkin, MD, PhD, Emeritus Professor, University of New Mexico
- Luisa N. Borrell, DDS, PhD, Distinguished Professor, City University of New York.
Author: Jaime Breilh, Md. MSc. PhD, Director of the CILAB Health Program of the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar
Join us for the launch of Critical Epidemiology and the People’s Health (Oxford University Press 2021), which invites readers to the next great paradigm in public health by promoting a progressive, transdisciplinary, intercultural, community-building approach radically divergent from the presiding object-based, empiricist mode of thinking. A concise overview of the Latin American Social Medicine movement, this book introduces the work of leading scientist Jaime Breilh to a global English audience, focusing on key questions such as: What are the real challenges facing critical epidemiology during the current time of immense turmoil and inequity? How can we conduct responsible and sensitive public health research? What role does epidemiology play in addressing the societal ills of both the global North and South? And how can we create a more rigorous, updated, and effective epidemiology? In addressing these questions, Critical Epidemiology and the People's Health offers readers a clear-eyed and much-needed perspective on how to overcome Cartesian reductionism with renewed methodological tools to address the rampant growth of injustices harming our global collective health and to subvert the reigning notions of health prevention and promotion.
Sponsored by: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Ecuador
Co-sponsored by: ISSI's Berkeley Center for Social Medicine; The Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies; Ministerio de Saúde, FIOCRUZ, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz
Thursday, January 28 | 4:00 pm PT
Rituals for Grief & Love: a reading with poets Sade LaNay and Sasha Banks
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Sade LaNay
Sasha Banks
Join us in celebrating two new poetry collections, I love you and I'm not dead by Sade LaNay and america, MINE by Sasha Banks. Released at the beginning of COVID-19, both poets' work cannot be any more timely. LaNay and Banks' collections each take the approach of archival resurrection to name and imagine Black life outside conditions of social death. In I love you and I'm not dead, LaNay's investment is not only their spiritual and physical healing, but the healing of Black women across time and space whose claims to freedom were loud and somewhere across the archival narrative, misread as quiet. As LaNay declares, "Disbelief does not undo the validity of an experience." In a similar poetic sensibility, america, MINE demands that readers confront America's history of racial and gender violence because "endings exist" and the end of the nation is soon approaching. In leaning on rituals of radical conjuring, LaNay and Banks draft roadmaps of fugitive escapes that make Black life in the future possible. Join us for a reading and discussion on poetics, grief, love, and celebration.
Sponsored by Center for Race and Gender
Co-sponsored by ISSI's Center for Research on Social Change
Saturday, February 6 | 1:00 - 2:00pm PT
“Generation Rising” Book Launch with Loan Dao and PrYSM
Zoom Event | Register here (free)
Loan Thi Dao, PhD, Associate Professor and Director of Ethnic Studies, St. Mary’s College of California
Providence Youth Student Movement
Generation Rising traces the development of Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), a grassroots, LGBTQ+ youth-led organization of Southeast Asian Americans whose families migrated to Providence, Rhode Island, in the aftermath of the American war in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia. This in-depth ethnography delves into topics that challenge a new generation of community organizers today: collective identity formation, intersectional leadership development, coalitions and political campaign strategies, and enacting a vision for a transformative movement. The book explores how Southeast Asian American organizers in this historic period have navigated the intergenerational demands from both their co-ethnic community elders and social movement elders to forge their own agenda, strategies, and culture, while resisting constraints imposed by funders. Their story captures the struggles and growth of movement-building for youth activists fighting to be free.
Sponsored by Eastwind Books of Berkeley
Co-sponsored by ISSI's Asian American Research Center
Thursday, February 18 | 3:30 - 5:00pm PT
Sponsored by ISSI's Latinx Research Center
Wednesday, February 24 | 4 - 5:30 PM PT
Subordination and Resistance: Policing Morality Past and Present
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Sponsored by: ISSI Graduate Fellows Program
Friday, February 26 | 12 - 1:30pm PT
Revealed in the Wound: Iraqibacter and the Biology of History
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Omar Dewachi, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University
Building on ethnographic research on wounds and the ecologies of war and healthcare in Iraq and across the Middle East, this talk explores the rise of Iraqibacter, a moniker given to Acinetobacter baumannii — a superbug associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Tracing the histories and geographies of this “superbug” across the landscapes of war injury, I show how unravelling ethnographic and microbiological knowledge about antimicrobial resistance reveals deeper entanglements of this killer superbug in the political, biosocial, and environmental manifestations of long-term Western interventions and present-day conflict fallout across the region. Building on the notion of biology of history, the registration of human activity in bacterial life, I suggest that Iraqibacter could be understood as an archive of the changing ecologies and toxicities of war in Iraq and beyond.
Sponsored by ISSI's Berkeley Center for Social Medicine
Co-sponsored by Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Thursday, March 4 | 12 - 1:30 PT
Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States: Criminal Justice Reform
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
The Honorable Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago
Introduction by: Teresa Córdova, Director, Great Cities Institute, and Professor, Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago
Moderator: Cheryl Corley, NPR National Correspondent
Panelists: Nikki Jones, Professor of African American Studies, UC Berkeley
Cid Martinez, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of San Diego
Sponsored by Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, the Department of African American Studies (UCB), and the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Co-sponsored by the Othering & Belonging Institute (for a complete list of co-sponsors, visit the event series website.
This event is part of a series on Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States; for more information on the series, click here.
Thursday, March 4 | 3:30 - 5:00pm PT
Book Release: Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities (2020)
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Arturo Aldama
Frederick L. Aldama
Alberto Ledesma
Jackie T. Cuevas
Gabriel Estrada
Paloma Martínez-Cruz
Jonathan Gómez
Jennie Luna
Sponsored by ISSI's Latinx Research Center
Wednesday, March 10 | 12 - 1:30 PT
Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States: The Wealth Gap
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
The Honorable Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark
Introduction by: Stephen Small, Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, and Professor, Department of African American Studies, UC Berkeley
Panel discussion moderated by Tracy Jan, Reporter, The Washington Post
Panelists:
Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation
Paul Ong, Research Professor and Director, Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Elsie Harper-Anderson, Associate Professor, Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University
Sponsored by Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, the Department of African American Studies (UCB), and the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Co-sponsored by the Othering & Belonging Institute (for a complete list of co-sponsors, visit the event series website.
This event is part of a series on Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States; for more information on the series, click here.
Wednesday, March 10 | 2:00 - 3:00pm PT
Asian Women as Method: A Conversation with Professor Laura Hyun Yi Kang
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Professor, Gender & Sexuality Studies, UC Irvine
Moderated by: Kandice Chuh, Professor, English, American studies, and Critical Social Psychology, CUNY Graduate Center
Introduction by: Elaine Kimis, Professor Emerita, UC Berkeley Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program.
This conversation centers on Professor Laura Hyun Yi Kang’s book Traffic in Asian Women in which she shows how the figure of "Asian women" functions as an analytic to examine the permutation of U.S. power/knowledge at the nexus of capitalism, state power, and global governance.
Co-sponsored by the Asian American & Asian Diaspora Studies Program, ISSI's Asian American Research Center, Asian American & Pacific Islander Standing Committee, Center for Korean Studies, Center for Race & Gender, and the Department of Gender and Women's Studies.
Friday, March 12 | 12- 1pm PT
Trumpism and its Discontents
Livestreamed here: Othering & Belonging Institute page and Facebook
Moderated by: Osagie K. Obasogie, Professor of Bioethics in the School of Public Health
Panelists:
Ann C. Keller, Associate Professor, School of Public Health
Zeus Leonardo, Professor, Graduate School of Education
john a. powell, Director, Othering and Belonging Institute
Please join us for a moderated panel discussion with influential UC Berkeley scholars offering a deep and crucial examination of the political conditions that led to the rise of Donald Trump and the consequences of his presidency on US society and the world.
This timely event follows the recent publication of a new book by the same name, available for download as a PDF (Trumpism and its Discontents book website). Book chapters examine Trumpism in the context of various issues, including speech and race relations, politics of resentment, foreign policy and the existing world order, demographic shifts, and immigration policy.
The panel discussion will take place in the first 45 minutes, followed by 15 minutes for audience Q&A.
Sponsored by the Othering & Belonging Institute, ISSI's Center for Right-Wing Studies, the Center for Race and Gender, and the Institute of Governmental Studies
Tuesday, March 16 | 12 - 1:30 PT
Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States: Diversity and Inclusion
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
The Honorable Sylvester Turner, Mayor of Houston
Introduction by: Ula Y. Taylor, Professor & H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Department Chair, Department of African American Studies & African Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley
Panel discussion moderated by Natasha Korecki, Politico National Correspondent
Panelists:
Pedro Noguera, Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California
Kathleen Yang-Clayton, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, University of Illinois at Chicago
Dr. Gail Christopher, Executive Director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity
Sponsored by Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, the Department of African American Studies (UCB), and the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Co-sponsored by the Othering & Belonging Institute (for a complete list of co-sponsors, visit the event series website.
This event is part of a series on Black Mayors & Leadership in the United States; for more information on the series, click here.
Thursday, March 18 | 4 - 6 pm PT
Panel Discussion on Report: "Misogynist Incels and Male Supremacism"
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Megan Kelly, PhD Student, Center for Gender Studies, University of Basel
Alex DiBranco, Executive Director, Institute for Research on Male Supremacism
Julia R. DeCook, Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Loyola University Chicago
Sian Tomkinson, PhD, Gender and Games, University of Western Australia
Tauel Harper, Lecturer, Media and Communication, UWA
"Misogynist Incels and Male Supremacism," published in collaboration with New America, assesses misogynist incel ideology, critiques common and potentially harmful misconceptions, and offers recommendations to more effectively address male supremacist violence.
On Thursday, March 18th at 4pmPT/7pm ET, report co-authors Megan Kelly, Alex DiBranco, and Julia DeCook will speak on a panel with experts Sian Tomkinson and Tauel Harper, authors of "Confronting Incel: exploring possible policy responses to misogynistic violent extremism."
Co-sponsored by: the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism and ISSI's Center for Right-Wing Studies
Monday, March 29 | 12:45 - 2:00pm PT
"On Place, Policy, and Pain: Key Dimensions of U.S. Monetary Sanction Punishment Regimes"
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Karin Martin, Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy & Governance, University of Washington
Sponsored by Center for the Study of Law and Society
Co-sponsored by ISSI
Wednesday, March 31 | 12 - 1:30pm PT
Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Eugene Richardson, Assistant Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Troy Duster, Chancellor's Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Bonnie Duran, Professor, Schools of Social Work and Public Health, University of Washington
Please join us for a talk by Eugene Richardson on his new book, Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health, in conversation with renowned scholars Troy Duster and Bonnie Duran as they explore the impact of colonial thought, racism and patriarchy on the development of public health science and practices.
Sponsored by ISSI's Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, the Othering & Belonging Institute, and the School of Public Health
Thursday, April 1 | 12 - 1pm PT
Coming of Age in Iran: Poverty and the Struggle for Dignity
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Manata Hashemi, Farzaneh Family Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies, University of Oklahoma
Coming of Age in Iran: Poverty and the Struggle for Dignity considers how one of Iran’s largest and most vulnerable groups–poor urban youth–cope in an environment marked by prolonged insecurity. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among a group of marginalized young men and women, the book elucidates how some are able to strategically leverage community judgements for material rewards while others fall further behind. Broadly, Coming of Age in Iran considers the possibilities for social change embedded in these young people's silent, performative accommodations to claim status and belonging.
The introduction to the book is available to read here.
Sponsored by ISSI's Center for Ethnographic Research
Co-sponsored by Sociology, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Monday, April 5 | 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm PT
Decolonizing Indigenous Migration: Violence, Settler Capitalism, Gender and Law
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Shannon Speed (Chickasaw), Professor of Gender Studies & Anthropology, and Director of the American Indian Studies Center, UCLA
Kristen Carpenter, Council Tree Professor of Law, and Director of the American Indian Law Program at University of Colorado Law School
Angela Riley (Potawatomi), Professor of Law, and Director of Native Nations Law and Policy Center, UCLA School of Law.
How is the violence to which indigenous women migrants are subjected related to “neoliberal multicriminalism” and settler structures of indigenous dispossession and elimination? And how might migration law consider the colonial origins and impacts that undergird state policies on territorial sovereignty and border regulation?
Sponsored by Center for Race and Gender’s Native/Immigrant/Refugee – Crossings Research Initiative
Co-sponsored by the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, Native American Studies, ISSI's Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues at UC Berkeley; American Indian Studies Center, and Native Nations Law and Policy Center at UCLA; and the University of Colorado American Indian Law Program
Tuesday, April 6 | 4 - 5:30 PM PT
Social Regulation and Exclusion through Interactions and Institutions
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Sponsored by: ISSI Graduate Fellows Program
Thursday, April 8 | 4 - 5:00 PM PDT
Epidemic of Anti-Asian Violence: Connections and Resistance
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Helen Zia in conversation with Leti Volpp
Almost 40 years ago activist, author, and journalist Helen Zia became the spokesperson for the campaign seeking justice for Vincent Chin, whose racist murder galvanized the Asian American movement. Join CRG's Director and Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice, Leti Volpp, for a conversation with Helen Zia about the current epidemic of anti-Asian violence, the intersection of white supremacy and misogyny, and how we may resist.
Presented by the Center for Race & Gender, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, Asian American & Pacific Islander Standing Committee (AAPISC), ISSI's Asian American Research Center, Asian Pacific American Student Development (APASD), Asian Pacific American System-wide Alliance (APASA), Berkeley's Division of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, Berkeley Law's Asian Pacific American Law Student Association (APALSA), Berkeley Law's Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, Center for Chinese Studies, Center for Korean Studies, Ethnic Studies Department, Gender and Women's Studies Department, Othering & Belonging Institute (OBI), and OBI's Diversity and Health Disparities Cluster.
Thursday, April 8 | 5:00 - 7:00pm PT
Archives of Conjure (2020): Healing Materialities and Race
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Solimar Otero, Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University
In this presentation based on her book Archives of Conjure, Solimar Otero, Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, explores how Afrolatino spirits guide collaborative spiritual-scholarly activist work through rituals and the creation of material culture. By examining spirit mediumship through a Caribbean cross-cultural poetics, she shows how divinities and ancestors serve as active agents in shaping the experiences of gender, sexuality, and race.
Sponsored by UC Berkeley Folklore
Co-sponsored by ISSI's Latinx Research Center
Tuesday, April 13 | 5:30 - 6:30pm PT
The Future of California: People, Place, and Power
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
California State Senator Steven Bradford, Senate District 35
California State Senator Anna Caballero, Senate District 12
Assemblymember David Chiu, Assembly District 17
Assemblymember James C. Ramos, Assembly District 40
California State Senator Nancy Skinner, Senate District 9
Moderator: Marisa Lagos, correspondent for KQED’s California Politics and Government Desk and co-host of “Political Breakdown”
Welcome: Michael Drake, M.D, President of the University of California
As California and the world are changing, this symposium brings together California state legislators to share their visions of the future of California and the policies to achieve that future. California's large and diverse population needs education, health, housing, and secure jobs in a changing economy. California is a leader in protecting this beautiful planet that we call home, but we still have work to do in protecting the environment and planning our housing and transportation to meet the local, state, national, and global needs. While California exerts power in the national and global arenas, power is unevenly distributed, and we have to work for a more equitable future.
Bios for the event are available here
Sponsored by: Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
Co-sponsored by: African American and African Diaspora Studies, ISSI's Asian American Research Center, California Immigrant Policy Center, California Initiative for Health Equity & Action, California Nurses Association, California Reinvestment Coalition, East Bay Community, Goldman School of Public Policy, Institute of Governmental Studies, Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, Latinx Research Center, Northern California Grantmakers, Othering & Belonging Institute, San Francisco Foundation, Southern California Grantmakers, The California Endowment, TURN — The Utility Reform Network
Thursday, April 15 | 11 AM - 12:30 PM PT
Contesting the Racial Terrain of Power: The Political Economy of Entrepreneurialism and Institutional Change
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Caleb Dawson, PhD Candidate in Education and ISSI Graduate Fellow
Alicia Sheares, PhD Candidate in Sociology and ISSI Graduate Fellow
with Victor Ray, Assistant Professor of Sociology & Criminology and of African American Studies, University of Iowa, as respondent
Sponsored by: ISSI Graduate Fellows Program
Tuesday, April 20 | 11am - 1pm PT
Racial Geographies of Safety and Danger: Excavating the Historical and Contemporary Bay Area
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Eduardo Bautista Duran, PhD Student in Jurisprudence and Social Policy and ISSI Graduate Fellow
David Philoxene, PhD Candidate in Education and ISSI Graduate Fellow
reelaviolette botts-ward, PhD Candidate in African Diaspora Studies and ISSI Graduate Fellow
with Savannah Shange, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz, as respondent
Sponsored by: ISSI Graduate Fellows Program
Wednesday, April 21 | 2 - 3pm PT
The Politics of Racial Reparations: Japanese American and Black American Intersections
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Presenters:
John Tateishi, author of Redress: The Inside Story of Japanese American Reparations
Charles Henry, Professor Emeritus of African American Studies, UC Berkeley and author of Long Overdue: The Politics of Racial Reparations
Moderator: Michael Omi, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley
In a political moment when historical and contemporary forms of structural racism are increasingly acknowledged, renewed attention is given to both addressing and compensating for the harm and long-term damage caused by racist policies and practices. What constitutes an appropriate response and remedy to this damage, and what are effective political strategies to make substantive reparations a reality? Join us for a conversation with John Tateishi and Charles P. Henry who will reflect on both the Japanese American and Black American efforts to secure reparations, contextualize the politics behind such efforts, and consider what may be possible going forward.
Sponsored by Asian American Research Center
Co-sponsored by Center for Research on Social Change
Thursday, April 22 | 4:00 - 6:00pm PT
Beyond La Bamba: Afro-Mexico, Culture, & the History of Blackness in Mexico
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Marco Villalobos, Producer/Director
Moderated by Tianna Paschel
Additional Speaker(s) TBA
Sponsored by ISSI' Latinx Research Center
Monday, April 26, 12:45 - 2:00pm PT
“Branches of Legal Mobilization: How Gender and Religiosity Matter for Educator Responses to Rights-based Complaints and Accusations”
Zoom Webinar | Register here (free)
Lauren Edelman (UCB)
Allen Micheal Wright (UCB)
Calvin Morrill (UCB)
Karolyn Tyson (UNC Chapel Hill)
Richard Arum (UCI)
Sponsored by Center for the Study of Law and Society
Co-sponsored by ISSI's Center for Research on Social Change
Monday-Friday, May 10-14
2021 Joint Conference on Right-Wing Studies and Research on Male Supremacism
This virtual conference brings together researchers focused on the right-wing and male supremacism for five days of panels, networking events, training sessions, and keynote speakers. Over the course of five days, 60 presenters from the Americas, Europe, and Australia will present on their ongoing research into various aspects of right-wing and supremacist ideologies and movements. Topics under the category of right-wing studies include online mobilization, intellectuals and ideology, violence and terrorism, identity and emotion, pop culture and gaming, branding and marketing, white supremacism and its intersections, youth and campuses, funding, and more.
The conference will also include digital security training, discussion of the emotional toll of this work, social hours, and keynote panels on significant contemporary topics and threats.
For more information and registration link to purchase tickets, click here (sliding scale - $40-75 early bird rate)
Sponsored by ISSI's Center for Right-Wing Studies and the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism
