Lessons from/about Texas
CRC members in Austin, February 8, 2024.
Paula Moya, Ramón Saldívar, Bridget Algee-Hewitt, and Amy Potemski represented CCSRE at the Historical Studies of Texas Symposium, a multi-day convening of the Centering Race in the Arts and Humanities Consortium (CRC) in Austin Texas. Organized by Yale RITM, this meeting provided space for participants to share their experiences and grapple as academics and individuals with the challenge of teaching and doing race studies now, in this intense period of racialized violence, politics, and public discourse.
Inviting scholars from around the country to Austin, this special meeting addressed the ongoing raced, gendered, classed efforts in Texas to erase safe academic spaces, control access to critical thought-partnerships, and silence the voices, especially, of and for the vulnerable and underserved. Panels and breakout discussions on politics, violence, and community-based scholarship underscored how this Texas "moment" is but a signal for the intensification of a national movement that seeks to transform our educational systems, eroding our intellectual freedoms and threatening the very foundations of our democracy.
The Centering Race in the Arts and Humanities Consortium (CRC) is a Mellon-funded partnership between CCSRE and like Centers at Yale, Brown and Chicago.