Events
All ISSI events are free and open to the public. (There is a fee for some workshops as noted 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) or Wildavsky Conference Room (2538 Channing Way), please call (510) 642-0813 one day before the scheduled 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 2019
January
Monday, January 28 I 4 - 7pm
The Feminist Resistance to the Radical Right in Brazil
Talíria Petrone, Brazilian Federal Congresswoman from Rio de Janeiro State;
Sâmia Bomfim, Brazilian Federal Congresswoman from São Paulo State;
Fernanda Melchionna, Brazilian Federal Congresswoman from Rio Grande do Sul State;
Jô Cavalcanti, Brazilian Co-State Representative from Pernambuco State
On the eve of entering office, four female politicians are an emboldened, new generation of feminist officials at the forefront of defending and redefining democracy in Brazil. Building their trajectories out of local grassroots struggles, each has developed distinct approaches in their respective states. Ten months following the assassination of city councilwoman Marielle Franco, their collective work demonstrates that Marielle is still present. They will discuss feminism, formal politics, and innovative modes of resistance to the radical right turn in government. We will consider ways we can take action in solidarity.
Booth Auditorium (Room 175), UC Berkeley School of Law
Co-sponsored by: Departments of Anthropology, Gender & Women's Studies, Graduate School of Education, African American & African Diaspora Studies, Comparative Literature, Spanish & Portuguese; Tianna Paschel (research funds); Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS); Institute of International Studies (IIS); David and Natasha Dolby Fund; Global Metropolitan Studies; Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI); Center for Race & Gender (CRG); Center for Right Wing Studies; Townsend Center for the Humanities and Social Science Matrix.
RSVP: If you’d like to reserve a seat, please register on Eventbrite so we get a sense of numbers. Space may be limited. Information on further events during their visit will be sent in January. You can also visit the Forum facebook page. The event will be largely in Portuguese but simultaneous interpretation will be provided.
Join us in this unprecedented opportunity to hear from and dialogue with four newly elected Brazilian politicians as they begin historic terms in office
February
Friday, February 1 | 12 - 2pm
Brian Porter-Szucs, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History, University of Michigan
There are obvious similarities between Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Recep Erdoğan, Jair Bolsonaro, Jarosław Kaczyński, Rodrigo Duterte, Donald Trump, and all the other politicians we have come to call ‘populists.’ Not only is that label misleading, but analyzing them as part of a single ideological movement can lead to confusion. This presentation will use the example of Poland to illustrate the necessity of local expertise in understanding seemingly global trends.
Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
Co-sponsored by the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies
Wednesday, February 6 | 4 - 6pm
Intersectional Histories, Overdetermined Fortunes: Understanding Mexican and US Domestic Worker Movements
Chris Tilly, Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA
What determines whether movements of informal workers succeed or fail? Using cases of domestic-worker movements in Mexico and the United States, Tilly seeks to build upon the literature on social movements and intersectionality by adding historical analysis of the movements’ evolution through a cross-national analysis of movement differences. Historically, these two movements have been propelled by multiple streams of activism corresponding to shifting salient intersectional identities and frames, always including gender but incorporating other elements as well. Comparatively, the US domestic-worker movement recently has had greater success due to superior financial resources and greater political opportunities – advantages due in part precisely to intersectional identities resonant with potential allies. However, this relative advantage was not always present and may not persist. By comparing the historical changes and cross-national contrasts between these two movements, Tilly draws greater conclusions about informal-worker organizing and its potential for social change.
IRLE Director's Room, 2521 Channing Way
Sponsored by: Institute for the Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE)
Co-sponsored by: Center for Research on Social Change, UC Berkeley Center for Latin American Studies, Center for the Study of Law and Society, and Sociology Department.
Friday, February 8 | 5 - 7pm
The Latinx Research Center presents:
Melanie Cervantes Lecture and Expanded Art
The Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way
Wednesday, February 13 I 4:00-5:30pm
ISSI Colloquia Series:
The Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption
Nikki Jones, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, UC Berkeley, with Clarence Ford, MPP as respondant
This event will feature a discussion between Nikki Jones and Clarence Ford, based on Professor Jones’ new book, The Chosen Ones: Black Men and the Politics of Redemption. In the book Professor Jones shares the compelling story of a group of Black men living in San Francisco’s historically Black neighborhood, the Fillmore. Against all odds, these men work to atone for past crimes by reaching out to other Black men, young and old, with the hope of guiding them toward a better life. Yet despite their genuine efforts, they struggle to find a new place in their old neighborhood. With a poignant yet hopeful voice, Jones illustrates how neighborhood politics, everyday interactions with the police, and conservative Black gender ideologies shape the men’s ability to make good and forgive themselves—and how the double-edged sword of community shapes the work of redemption.
Dwinelle 117, Academic Innovation Studio
Co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Law and Society, Center for Race and Gender, American Cultures Center, Berkeley Underground Scholars
Tuesday, February 19 | 12 - 1:30pm
Citizenship Health Inequalities Across the US: State-level Immigrant Policies and Health Care Access
Maria-Elena Young, PhD, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Merced
In this talk Dr. Young presents findings from two studies that examine how citizenship status and immigrant policies influence inequities in access to health care. Immigrants who lack citizenship are less likely to have health insurance and access to health care compared to citizens. Citizenship status is a form of inequality that is shaped by the policies that determine immigrants’ rights and opportunities and the social environments in which they live.
1102 BWW, 2121 Berkeley Way
Sponsored by the School of Public Health
Co-sponsored by Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, the Department of Demography, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative.
Miércoles, 20 de Febrero (Wednesday, February 20) | 12:00-1:30pm
*Please note, this event will be presented entirely in Spanish*
Las Políticas Culturales en México y Latinoamérica
Dra. Laura Gemma Flores Garcia, Directora de la Unidad Académica de Estudios de las Humanidades, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico
En 1987 fue sacado a la luz un texto cuyo título era: Políticas culturales en América Latina. Lo coordinaban Néstor García Canclini y participaban: Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, José Joaquín Brunner, Jean Franco, Oscar Landi y Sergio Miceli. En los años 80 se planteaba la necesidad de trabajar conjuntamente Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Perú y Uruguay a través del Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO) y FLACSO en México. Esto era necesario pues eran los países que emergían de dictaduras. El grupo desarrollaba una investigación comparativa sobre las relaciones en política cultural y consumo cultural en Argentina, Brasil, Chile, México y Perú. La política cultural en los 80 no solo aparecía como recuento post gobierno, sino comenzaba a aparecer en los Planes de Desarrollo de estos países y descansaba en el análisis de la crisis de los modelos productivistas: keynesianos y marxistas. A treinta años de estas reflexiones es necesario plantear un revisionismo de dichas políticas y remantizar el término de Cultura como el conjunto de procesos donde se elabora la significación de las estructuras sociales, se la reproduce y transforma mediante operaciones simbólicas. Con el reciente cambio político en México y las diásporas en Centroamérica, es pertinente analizar las políticas públicas insertas a través de la Secretaría de Turismo en México y el Plan de Desarrollo del nuevo Gobierno, centrándonos en sus posibles impactos en la población indígena y las culturas populares.
Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
Sponsored by: Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, University of California, Berkeley
Co-sponsored by: Joseph Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues
Wednesday, February 20 - Friday, February 22
Cat Brooks, Anti Police-Terror Project
Ericka Huggins, Black Panther Party
Vilma Reis, Movimento de Mulheres Negras
Alicia Garza, Black Lives Matter
Asha Ransby-Sporn, Black Youth Project 100
Djamila Ribeiro, Movimento de Feministas Negras
Andreia Beatriz & Hamilton Borges dos Santos, Reaja ou Será Mort
Christen Smith, UT Austin
Tina Sacks, Leigh Raiford & john a. powell, UC Berkeley
Camila de Moraes and more.
At a pivotal historical moment, this symposium will bring further attention to anti-black state violence in the Americas. The University of California, Berkeley will host some of the most influential social movement leaders from Brazil and the United States—homes to the two largest Black populations outside the continent of Africa.
As the U.S. enters a contentious new congressional term and Brazil’s far-right presidential leader comes to power, this symposium will facilitate transnational dialogue, learning, and coalitions. Taking place over three days, we will engage with scholars, scholar-activists, and organizers from Brazil’s Black Movement (Movimento Negro), Black Women’s Movement (Movimento de Mulheres Negras), and the U.S. who have made critical interventions in the areas of law, politics, education, health, and cultural production. Through discussions, workshops and presentations, we will engage with the power and challenges of addressing anti-black state violence through political action and scholarship from three vantage points: the historical foundations of Black struggle, today’s socio-cultural and democratic political contexts, and future pathways to contesting racialized forms of violence.
This symposium will generate fruitful pathways for moving toward inter-disciplinary research on ethno-racial inequality, the African Diaspora in the Americas and histories of Black struggle, state violence, law and democracy, social movements, gender politics, education, and public health, among other areas.
RSVP for individuals events and workshops.
Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, Multicultural Center, Room 220
Sponsored by: Departments of African American Studies and Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Co-sponsored by: Center for Research on Social Change, The Latinx Research Center
Friday, February 22 | 9:30am - 5:00pm
Reimagining Health, Empowerment, and Sovereignty in Bangladesh
Blum Hall, B100, UC Berkeley
Please click HERE for conference agenda and speakers.
This all-day event will be preceded by a pre-conference book talk and reception with novelist Arif Anwar, details here, with the opportunity to meet the Summit panelists.
Sponsored by: The Subir & Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies at UC Berkeley and LSE The South Asia Centre
Co-sponsored by Berkeley Center for Social Medicine
Friday, February 22 | 5 - 7pm
The Latinx Research Center presents:
Student Activism in Higher Education
Ivonne del Valle and other special guests
The Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way
Tuesday, February 26 | 3-4:30pm
ISSI Graduate Fellows Program Colloquia:
Immigrant Sanctuary as the “Old Normal”: A Brief History of Police Federalism
Trevor Gardner, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Washington, with Franklin E. Zimring, William G. Simon Professor of Law, UC Berkeley as respondant
Three successive presidential administrations have opposed the practice of immigrant sanctuary, at various intervals characterizing state and local government restrictions on police participation in federal immigration enforcement as reckless, aberrant, and unpatriotic. This Article finds these claims to be ahistorical in light of the long and singular history of a field the Article identifies as “police federalism.” For nearly all of U.S. history, Americans within and outside of the political and juridical fields flatly rejected federal policies that would make state and local police subordinate to the federal executive. Drawing from Bourdieusian social theory, the Article conceptualizes the sentiment driving this longstanding opposition as the orthodoxy of police autonomy. It explains how the orthodoxy guided the field of police federalism for more than two centuries, surviving the War on Alcohol, the War on Crime, and even the opening stages of the War on Terror. In constructing a cultural and legal history of police federalism, the Article provides analytical leverage by which to assess the merits of immigrant sanctuary policy as well as the growing body of prescriptive legal scholarship tending to normalize the federal government’s contemporary use of state and local police as federal proxies. More abstractly, police federalism serves as an original theoretical framework clarifying the structure of police governance within the federalist system.
Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
Sponsored by: ISSI Graduate Fellows Program
Co-sponsored by: Center for Research on Social Change, Department of Sociology, Center for the Study of Law and Society, and the Center for Race and Gender
Thursday, February 28 | 4-5:30pm
Evidence, Replication, and Ethics in Ethnographic Research
Steven Lubet, Williams Memorial Professor of Law, Northwestern University, and Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
With Moderator: Calvin Morrill, Stefan A. Riesenfeld Professor of Law, Professor of Sociology, and
Associate Dean for Jurisprudence and Social Policy, UC Berkeley
This special event will feature Steven Lubet, author of Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters, and Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, author of several ethnographies, most recently Burning Dislike: Ethnic Violence in High Schools. Lubet and Sánchez-Jankowski will discuss what counts as evidence in ethnographic research and whether replication is possible or desired, as well as considering the ethics of ethnographic research and writing.
Goldberg Room, 297 Simon Hall, Berkeley Law
Co-sponsored by: Center for the Study of Law and Society, and the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program
March
Friday, March 1 | 5 - 7pm
The Latinx Research Center presents:
"Making Ohlone Visible," Art Exhibition Opening of New Work
Celia Herrera Rodríguez and Corrina Gould
The Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way
Thursday, March 7 | 4:00-5:30pm
Joseph Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues Colloquia Series:
Hegemonies of Language and Their Discontents: The Southwest North American Region Since 1540
Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, ASU Regents' Professor; Presidential Motorola Professor of Neighborhood Revitalization; Founding Director Emeritus, School of Transborder Studies; Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change; Emeritus Professor of Anthropology of the University of California, Riverside
Spanish and English have fought a centuries-long battle for dominance in the Southwest North American Region, commonly known as the U.S.-Mexico transborder region. Covering the time period of 1540 to the present, the book provides a deep and broad understanding of the contradictory methods of establishing language supremacy and details the linguistic and cultural processes used by penetrating imperial and national states. He argues that these impositions were not linear but hydra-headed, complex and contradictory, sometimes accommodating and many times forcefully imposed. Such impositions created arcs of discontent resulting in physical and linguistic revolts, translanguage versions, and multilayered capacities of use and misuse of imposed languages—even the invention of a locally-created trilingual dictionary. These narratives are supported by multiple sources, including original Spanish colonial documents and new and original ethnographic studies of performance rituals like the matachines of New Mexico. This unique work integrates the most recent neurobiological studies of bilingualism and their implications for cognitive development and language as it spans multiple disciplines. Finally, it provides the most important models for dual language development and their integration to the Funds of Knowledge concept—each contributing creative contemporary discontents to monolingual impositions and approaches.
Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
Co-sponsored by: American Indian Graduate Student Association, Latinx Research Center, American Indian Graduate Program, Native American Studies, Native American Student Development
Tuesday, March 12 I 4:00-5:30pm
ISSI Graduate Fellows Program Colloquia:
When Did Black Americans Lose their Indigeneity?: Antiblackness, Indigenous Erasure, and the Future of Black-Indigenous Relations on Turtle Island
Kyle T. Mays (Black/Saginaw Anishinaabe), Assistant Professor, Department of African American Studies & the American Indian Studies Center, UCLA
This talk will analyze moments of solidarity between Black and Indigenous peoples throughout U.S. history. It will also argue for a new way of thinking and talking about people of African descent on Turtle Island, and how this might look going forward.
Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
Sponsored by: ISSI Graduate Fellows Program
Co-sponsored by: Joseph Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, Center for Research on Social Change, American Indian Graduate Student Association, American Indian Graduate Program, Native American Studies, Native American Student Development
Wednesday, March 13 I 4:00-5:30pm
ISSI Colloquia Series:
Lives, Not Metadata: Possibilites and Limits of Mapping Violence
Monica Muñoz Martinez, Andrew Carnegie Fellow and the Stanley J. Bernstein Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University
Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
Thursday, March 14 | 3:30 - 5pm
The Latinx Research Center presents:
Lecture on Transmodernity and Decoloniality
Enrique Dussel
The Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way
Tuesday, March 19 | 12-1:30pm
Center for Research on Social Change Colloquia series presents:
Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics
Jamila Michener, Assistant Professor, Department of Government, Cornell University
Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
Co-sponsored by: Institute for Governmental Studies, the Department of Political Science, and the Berkeley Institute for the Future of Young Americans
April
Monday, April 1 I 12 -1pm
The Latinx Research Center presents:
Latinx Labor in California
Ivón Padilla-Rodriguez, Lilia Soto, and other special guests
The Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way
Tuesday, April 2 I 4 -5:30pm
Cultural Capital, Systemic Exclusion and Bias in the Lives of Black Middle-Class Women: A Conversation
Dawn Marie Dow, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, and Tina K. Sacks, Assistant Professor of Social Welfare, UC Berkeley, with moderator Amani Allen, Associate Professor of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Toll Room, Alumni House
Sponsored by: Center for Research on Social Change and Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society
Co-sponsored by: Gender and Women's Studies, American Cultures Center, Townsend Center, Sociology, Center for Race and Gender, School of Social Welfare
Monday, April 15 I 12 -1pm
The Latinx Research Center presents:
New Research in History and Sociology
Pablo Gonzalez and other special guests
The Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way
Thursday, April 18 I 4 -5:30pm
Center for Right Wing Studies Colloquia series:
The Extreme Gone Mainstream
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Professor of Education and Sociology; Director, International Training and Education Program, American University
Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
Thursday, April 25 - Saturday, April 27
Inaugural Conference on Right-Wing Studies
Sponsored by: Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies
Co-sponsored by: Department of History, Institute of European Studies, Center for Latin American Studies, Scholars Strategy Network, Southern Poverty Law Center
More information is available on the conference website.
Monday, April 29 I 12 -1pm
The Latinx Research Center presents:
New Research in Spanish and English Literatures
Génaro Padilla, Robert Reyes, and other special guests
The Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way
May
Thursday, May 9 I 4 -6pm
The Latinx Research Center presents:
Spring Semester Closing Reception
The Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way
