Critical Intersections: Conversations on History, Race, and Science

REGISTRATION REQUIRED. Event is open to the Caltech community only.

In this event, members from the Caltech community will present their reflections on a collection of digitized materials curated from the Caltech Archives. The "Uncomfortable Things" selected for this discussion are artifacts of experiences of exclusion, inequality, discrimination, and bigotry in the history of Caltech. In this session, we acknowledge that the legacy of Caltech is intertwined with stories of injustice. By asking participants to personally reflect on that legacy, this event highlights how there is no single solution or perspective sufficient to answer the multitude of questions and concerns that our community has about its history. We propose that our responses to systemic and historical structures of inequality must take many paths, and we begin that journey in conversation and reflection.

To register, please click here.

Related Artistic Interventions:

Two artists have been engaged to participate in and follow up on the conversation by Caltech community members at this event.

Artist Robby Herbst will create a printed artwork that will be mailed to early registrants who provide their mailing addresses when registering for the event. The number of prints will be extremely limited, so please register early if you hope to receive one.

Artist Dorit Cypis will hold a People's Lab workshop in collaboration with the CCID to be held Friday, October 16, 12-2 p.m. PST.

For its inaugural year of 2020-2021, the "Critical Intersections: Conversations on Race, History, and Science" seminar series is dedicated to the history leading up to and beyond eugenics. The events are jointly organized by faculty in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences [Maura Dykstra (Assistant Professor of History), Jennifer Jahner (Professor of English), and Hillary Mushkin (Research Professor of Art and Design)] and University Archivist Peter Collopy.