糖心Vlog

Fall schedule is forthcoming鈥� 

The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address as Transformative Worldview and Pedagogy 

Meeting Time: Mondays, 12:15-2:15 p.m. (Weller Room, LIB 212) 
Max Enrollment: 12 
Facilitators: Kahstoserakwathe Paulette Moore, visiting lecturer and Co-Creation Initiative community partner, and Angela Beallor, documentarian in community co-creation, MDOCS 

Community description
In this learning community, we center the Haudenosaunee Oh茅nton Karihwat茅hkwen/Thanksgiving Address as a challenge, inspiration, and guide for the way we may transform perceptions, interactions, and outcomes in our classrooms, with the public, and with each other. As the effects of recent years of social, economic, and climate upheaval and ongoing stress around illness continue to take their toll, educators and students alike benefit from a shift and expansion in the ways we listen, teach, understand, and learn.  
  
The Oh茅nton Karihwat茅hkwen (OK) is the foundational Haudenosaunee ceremony that reminds us to create around us an environment of gratitude, reciprocity, abundance, and responsibility which serves to shore up our collective intellect, spirit, and ways of moving through the world. This is not an abstract, theoretical, or shamanistic exploration. The OK reminds us that the natural world supports us by providing food, shelter, water, language, guidance (through wind, landscape, and more), and examples of how we may live through the rhythms and wisdom of the animal world and the understandings of how our seasons unfold.  
  
Perceptions, values, and actions shift as we center the natural world in this way. When COVID hit our Haudenosaunee communities and people were at a loss of what to do, our Akwesasne Bear Clan Mother told us she had given the illness a Kanyen鈥檏eh脿:ka name so we can be in relationship with the illness, understand why it is here, and ask it to leave. This provided a powerful, collective way forward for our communities. It is notable that we are giving thanks to these entities, whether they are in shadow or light, and not for them. Gratitude as our original instruction combines with the passion and skill we all carry to help us understand what our responsibilities are as they intersect with community needs.  
 
Participants will engage in gift making and giving from the natural world with other members of the group to inspire kinship, connection, and gratitude. We will explore Rotinonhsy贸n:ni consensus-based decision-making process, embroidery and beading meditations, round-robin text reflections, and other activities to illuminate the very real ways that Indigenous world view is not only viable, but critical. 
  
The teaching methods we will explore are text (see: ) and arts-based, interactive, and embodied. Kahstoserakwathe shares her own films and articles from years of exploring these themes and practices. Facilitators will guide foundational exercises to support each participant in exploring the concept of place knowing: where we are (where we work, where we live), on whose unceded lands we are situated, what these lands provide, and where we鈥檝e come from (looking at relocations, migrations, and where our ancestors are from), in order to situate us within considerations of movement, time, histories, kinship, and other relationships.  

To Apply: In 250 words, please detail the course/project/research/creative work/personal goals that draw you to this learning community.鈥疨lease send your responses directly to abeallorpres@skidmore.edu and paulettefilms@gmail.com by Friday, Sept. 6. 

Teaching through Conflict: Emergent Strategies, Radical Futures, Making & Being 

Meeting time: Wednesday 12:15 to 2:15 p.m. (Weller Room, LIB 212) 
Max enrollment: 12
Facilitators: Lindsay Buchman, Visiting Artist-in-Residence & Ruben Castillo, Assistant Professor

Community description

Conflict surrounds us, from global issues to our campus community; we bear witness to tension, despair, violence, transgression, and loss. We welcome all perspectives across staff and faculty in our collective contemplation of how we preserve our capacity to think beyond conflictual moments and respond with possibility, inviting action into our daily lives, classrooms, and minds. In this learning community, we will focus on administering to the needs of our students through conflict (in the classroom and beyond) to apply emergent strategies to pedagogical frameworks guided by the Black feminist tradition. We will examine canonical texts by bell hooks, Audre Lorde, adrienne marie brown, and Alta Starr, alongside Sarah Shulman, Sara Ahmed, and Paul Soulellis, to examine organizational approaches and embodiments designed to instill a sense of community while establishing methodologies for scholars and learners across campus. Participants in this learning community will distill narratives, experiences, reflections, and testimonies within a small DIY publication using methods from radical zine dissemination. This publication will serve as an archive of our collective world-making and an invitation to current and future 糖心Vlog members seeking support to engage with our campus community through local and global conflicts.

Participants should anticipate weekly readings spanning theoretical texts, somatic exercises, and praxis-based learning, balanced by reading prompts and reflections to activate discussion. There will be a site visit to the Tang Museum to examine objects engaging in social justice-informed ephemera. Participants will conclude with a workshop on zine production and collaboratively produce book spreads connected to the themes of the learning community. In bell hooks鈥� Teaching to Transgress, she writes that 鈥渙ur work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students鈥� (13). With this ethos in mind, we will examine the relationship between personal and political forms of hope and collective futures, tasking us with locating nuance within divisive and bad faith narratives. Together, we will reimagine our associations with conflict and its role in our collective learning environments, social contracts, and innermost lives, aimed at fostering a sense of connection and engagement among all participants.

To Apply: 鈥婭n 250 words, please detail the course/project/research/creative work/personal goals that draw you to this learning community. Please send your responses directly to lbuchman@skidmore.edu and rcastillo@skidmore.edu by Friday, September 6th.