Americanist Dinner Forum: Moving Stories: Migration, Advocacy, Art, and Scholarship in Conversation

All are invited for dinner and conversation on Wednesday, October 18th at 5:30pm at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Moving Stories brings together participants from scholarship, the art field, and advocacy to discuss the challenges of incorporating and honoring the dignity of immigrant narratives in different practices.

Following the format of a critical conversation, the discussion will touch on relevant topics such as the presence of surveillance and climate change and its impact on migratory movements, the challenges involved in researching long-term immigrant communities, and the privileged forms of engagement used by migration-inspired art pieces.

Moving Stories is a transdisciplinary project led by faculty from Visual Arts, Art History, Romance Languages and Literatures, Sociology, and Design that reflects on how narratives work to bridge divides between migrants and the communities in which they settle.

This roundtable with migration specialists will be moderated by Dr. Ila Sheren, Associate Professor, Department of Art History & Archaeology, Associate Director, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity and Director of Graduate Studies, American Culture Studies.

The roundtable participants include:

Nicole Cortes-Co-Director and attorney at the Migrant and Immigrant Community Action (MICA) Project. Her practice includes deportation defense, asylum, and other humanitarian relief.

Pia Singh- Art writer and independent curator based in Chicago. Born in Mumbai, her proposed research investigates community-engaged arts practices at the intersection of contemporary art and design thinking.

Ria Unson- Filipino American artist centered in the construction of narratives of a mixed race, post-colonial Filipino American.

Mitra Naseh- Assistant professor at Brown School, WUSTL
Research Director of the Initiative on Social Work and Forced Migration (ISWFM)
Co-chair of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Immigrants and Refugees (I & R) cluster

Adriano Udani- Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Director, Public Policy Administration Program, UMSL
Research Advisor, Community Innovation and Action Center, UMSL

This event is being supported by the American Culture Studies Program, The Incubator for Transdisciplinary Futures, The Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity, the Global Studies Program and the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures.