The Geopoetics workshop series consisted of four convenings between September 2023 and April 2024. It brought together poet-scholars and early career researchers to practice geopoetics as a living methodology at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences, keeping in mind questions of epistemic justice. Across the series, participants worked with pieces of empirical data in hand (objects, transcripts, field notes, spreadsheets) through specific writing exercises and the exquisite corpse method, in order to practice collective qualitative methods. By spending time with one another’s data, participants practiced what it means to hold research as collective rather than proprietary, experimental rather than fixed, to surface new themes and conversations across datasets.
Feminists and postcolonial scholars–from Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulation to Christina Sharpe’s atmospheric writing, Kathleen Stewart’s attunement to the ordinary–have long shown that the manner in which we gather information through the research process is not always conscious. Much happens just below the surface of awareness in the relations we establish during fieldwork.
The series began in in September 2023 with an exploratory Zoom session among poet-scholars—Sahar Romani, Monica de la Torre, Richa Nagar, Celina Su, and Kendra Sullivan—working at the intersection of the humanities and social sciences with an epistemic justice orientation. By March 2024, the group reconvened in person to write with data together, treating geopoetics as affective attunement: listening across languages, disciplines, and positions, allowing multiple voices to compose what no single author could write alone.
In parallel, two additional encounters convened PhD candidates in Human Geography and Environmental Psychology interested in similar questions from within their disciplinary training—Anna Schlenz, Simone Parker, Irina Shirobokova, Clairette Atri, and Natalia Lara Gonzalez. Through collaborative mapping and creative constraints, we explored how arbitrary rules–when acknowledged rather than naturalized–can generate new ways of seeing, and how disassembling academic forms must be paired with reassembling them into something new.
The final convening in April deepened these threads around generative bounds and language as world-making, drawing on Erin Manning’s “minor gestures”—the smallest movements that transform how language is experienced and enacted. Participants proposed continued explorations of embodied methods going forward: participatory mapping, choreographic inquiry, and creative constraints as guides rather than restrictions.
The CUNY Gittell Collective Public Scholar Book-Writing Workshop supports CUNY faculty in developing and publishing great first books by providing structured feedback infrastructure: negotiated deadlines, peer camaraderie and accountability, and feedback from field/subfield experts and esteemed interlocutors.
The 2024 Awardees are:
Anthony Dest, Anthropology, Lehman College
Dissident Peace: An Ethnography of Struggle in Colombia
Ted Gordon, Music, Baruch College
The Composer’s Black Box: Cybernetics and Instrumentality in American Experimental Music
Rhea Rahman, Anthropology, Brooklyn College
Muslim Humanitarians in Black, Brown, and White: Racializing the Umma
Shreya Subramani, Anthropology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Carceral Transitions: The Productive Relations of Reentry Governance in New Orleans
The CUNY Gittell Collective is launching a second year of its Public Scholar Workshop Program. It aims to provide CUNY faculty with the support and feedback infrastructures to write and publish great first books. We acknowledge that the resources provided by book workshops– negotiated deadlines, peer camaraderie and accountability, and feedback from field/subfield experts and esteemed interlocutors– are often informally distributed, inaccessible or intimidating for scholars from historically marginalized communities, or codified and available at only certain well-resourced universities. Up to three awardees will receive support to organize a virtual book workshop in summer 2024.
A $2,800 award will be used to provide four expert reviewers an honorarium for their participation in the workshops. This workshop aims to help CUNY faculty in political science, sociology, anthropology, urban studies, and related disciplines to advance book manuscripts.
We especially encourage applications from scholars who book projects focus on issues related to cities, social justice, community participation and development, political engagement and social movements, and democratic governance, both domestically and abroad, and/or those that draw upon some aspect of community-based research and related methodologies, with the aim of combining knowledge and action for policy or social change. This program was inspired by a Book Workshop project run as a partnership between John Jay College-CUNY, Howard University, and the University of Maryland, developed by Professors Niambi Carter (UMD) and Heath Brown (JJC CUNY). This version is sponsored by the Gittell Urban Studies Collective at the CUNY Graduate Center, co-led by Drs. Celina Su and Heath Brown, and co-coordinated/organized by Dr. Kahina Meziant (kmeziant@gc.cuny.edu).
Eligibility
This workshop is designed for CUNY-affiliated faculty, whether full-time or part-time, who can share a completed draft of a first book manuscript by May 1, 2024. While applications from junior faculty (tenure-track or adjunct) will be prioritized, applications from senior faculty will also be considered if applicants 1. Wish to workshop their first book and 2. Agree to participate in a facilitated discussion mentoring junior faculty in the program.
Timeline of meetings
Awardees will meet as a cohort, to share plans for their respective book projects, in late January 2024. A second potential meeting may take place around spring break; this meeting would be an opportunity for awardees to share a portion of an introduction or a book proposal and to receive some feedback. Awardees will meet with 4 reviewers in a virtual workshop to receive feedback on their book manuscript in June 2024.
The CUNY Gittell Collective Public Scholar Book-Writing Workshop supports CUNY faculty in developing and publishing great first books by providing structured feedback infrastructure: negotiated deadlines, peer camaraderie and accountability, and feedback from field/subfield experts and esteemed interlocutors.
The 2023 Awardees are:
John Frank (Sociology), Lehman College: The Self Illusion: A Simplified Equation for “You”
Marta-Laura Haynes (Anthropology), John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Untrusting: The quest for democratic policing in urban Brazil
Jinwon Kim (Sociology), College of Technology, The Koreatown in Manhattan: Branding Korea and Consuming Ethnicity in the Global Economy
Nerve Macaspac (Geography), College of State Island, Spaces Of Peace: How Ordinary People Protect Their Lives During War
The CUNY Gittell Collective is launching its first Public Scholar Workshop Program. It aims to provide CUNY faculty with the support and feedback infrastructures to write and publish great first books. We acknowledge that the resources provided by book workshops– negotiated deadlines, peer camaraderie and accountability, and feedback from field/subfield experts and esteemed interlocutors– are often informally distributed, inaccessible or intimidating for scholars from historically marginalized communities, or codified and available at only certain well-resourced universities. Up to three awardees will receive support to organize a virtual book workshop in summer 2023.
A $2,000 award will be used to provide four expert reviewers an honorarium for their participation in the workshops. This workshop aims to help CUNY faculty in political science, sociology, anthropology, urban studies, and related disciplines to advance book manuscripts.
We especially encourage applications from scholars who book projects focus on issues related to cities, social justice, community participation and development, political engagement and social movements, and democratic governance, both domestically and abroad, and/or those that draw upon some aspect of community-based research and related methodologies, with the aim of combining knowledge and action for policy or social change. This program was inspired by the American Political Science Association’s Minority-Serving Institution Virtual Book Workshop project run as a partnership between John Jay College-CUNY, Howard University, and the University of Maryland, developed by Professors. Niambi Carter (UMD) and Heath Brown (JJC CUNY). This version is sponsored by the Gittell Urban Studies Collective at the CUNY Graduate Center, co-led by Drs. Celina Su and Heath Brown, and co-coordinated/organized by Dr. Kahina Meziant (kmeziant@gc.cuny.edu).
Eligibility
This workshop is designed for CUNY-affiliated faculty, whether full-time or part-time, who can share a completed draft of a first book manuscript by May 1, 2023. While applications from junior faculty (tenure-track or adjunct) will be prioritized, applications from senior faculty will also be considered if applicants 1. Wish to workshop their first book and 2. Agree to participate in a facilitated discussion mentoring junior faculty in the program.
Timeline of meetings
Awardees will meet as a cohort, to share plans for their respective book projects, in late January 2023. A second potential meeting may take place around spring break; this meeting would be an opportunity for awardees to share a portion of an introduction or a book proposal and to receive some feedback. Awardees will meet with 4 reviewers in a virtual workshop to receive feedback on their book manuscript in June 2023.
Earth and Environmental Sciences Doctoral Program Presents
Dr. Jaime Jover,Gittell Postodoctoral Fellow
For decades, economic growth in Lisbon and Seville-the third and fifth largest cities in the Iberian Peninsula-has been sustained by tourism development. When Covid-19 interrupted global mobilities, both cities’ profound dependency on tourism became evident. Instead of sparking reflection on alternatives, the pandemic reinforced a sense that tourism is the only way out of the crisis. The lecture will highlight the impacts of tourism on housing markets and unpack tourism-oriented local and regional governance in Lisbon and Seville, focusing on city strategies and urban planning in the years before and during Covid-19. A final argument centers on how tourism solidifies class structures. The goal is to question tourism as an accumulation strategy that exploits urban cultures and ask, ultimately, whether tourism can exist beyond capitalism.
April 14, 2022 4:15-6:15 p.m.
Skylight Room, 9100
The Graduate Center, CUNY
This presentation will also be accessible on Zoom. See below for Zoom Link.
Topic: Colloquium with Dr. Jaime Jover Time: April 14, 2022 04:10 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Meeting ID: 811 205 1577 Passcode: EES One tap mobile +19292056099,,8112051577# US (New York) +13126266799,,8112051577# US (Chicago)
Dial by your location +1 929 205 6099 US (New York) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) Meeting ID: 811 205 1577 Find your local number: https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/u/kcENI6iTsj
Fri, Mar 18, 2022 – Sun, Mar 20, 2022 Kaufman Music Center, Merkin Hall, 129 West 67th Street, Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10023
About the 2022 Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival
Started in 2020, the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival is a platform for the performance and discussion of the complex and unique contributions of Ukrainian composers to contemporary music. Through three separate concert programs and academic discussion with scholars and musicians, the festival engages the intersection of new music, contemporary events and the culture of Ukraine.
Join us for this year’s festival which will journey through the ancient Ukrainian landscape, mythologies of nature and centuries of agrarian life, to the modern city, exploring Ukraine’s diverse landscapes as we contemplate the role of music in our planet’s past, present and future.
Ukraine in 2022: UCMF Statement
While the war effort is of paramount importance, it is also crucial that Ukrainian culture does not disappear. It is the lie that Ukraine has no culture of its own that forms the basis of Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine is not a proper country, a lie that has put the people of Ukraine in grave danger. UCMF 2022 will take place despite the challenges, aiming to showcase Ukrainian artists and music in a time when these matter most. So it more important than ever to give Ukrainian art and artists an international voice. Any and all acts of solidarity with Ukraine are crucial; we encourage you to support Ukrainian artists in any way you can. We are offering three performances by contemporary Ukrainian composers and artists in NYC. We invite you to join us and discover incredible music from Ukraine. Click here or below to get tickets and attend.
CONCERT SCHEDULE:
Forest Song | Лісова Пісня
Friday, March 18, 2022 at 7:00 PM. Kaufman Music Center, Merkin Hall
Photo credit: Maryna Prykhodko
Ivan Nebesnyy, Air Music 1/Wind Music
Zoltan Almashi, The echo from hitting the trunk of a dry mountain spruce in Rytsarka Hurna village
Anastasia Belitska, Rusalochka
Ostap Manulyak, Trees
—INTERMISSION—
Alla Zahaykevych, Nord/Ouest
Join us in the forest to explore a powerful source of Ukrainian traditions and mythologies. Named after Lesia Ukrainka’s poetic play, this concert reveals contemporary composers’ preoccupation with the natural world and the myths that have grown from the mysterious settings of Ukrainian forests in the North. Mixing instruments and voices with electronics, we present varied realizations of life in the woodlands. The concert culminates with Alla Zahaykevych’s sonic journey through the Polissya region, a site of feral, mystical lands, increasingly depleted since the Chornobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.
Performers include Ekmeles vocal ensemble, James Baker, Itay Lantner, Isabel Lepant Gleicher, Alice Teyssier, Laura Cocks, Gleb Kanasevich, Stella Saliei, Margarita Rovenskaya, Lindsey Eckenroth, Sean Statser and Iryna Klymenko and Serhiy Okhrimchuk of Drevo.
Saturday, March 19, 2022 at 8pm. Kaufman Music Center, Merkin Hall
Photo credit: Maryna Prykhodko
Zoltan Almashi, Carpathian Song
Yevhen Stankovych, Morning Music
Myroslav Skoryk, Hutsul Triptych
—INTERMISSION—
Improvisations and pieces by String Air Synthesis (duo SAS)
Many Ukrainian folk songs describing the facets of agrarian life begin with the “In the field…” (“Oy, u poli…”). Our second concert explores music inspired by the folk culture that accompanied centuries of rural existence. Works influenced by the Carpathian region and the traditions of the Hutsuls, an ethnographic group of Ukrainian pastoral highlanders, are are juxtaposed with the music of duo SAS, who transform elements of the same sonic world with wholly different results. Their program will include composed pieces in microtonal and even temperament for Kharkiv-style bandura and flute, with the use of extended techniques, synthesized and electronically processed sounds.
Performers include Shelest Piano Duo, Solomiya Ivakhiv, Quynh Nyugen, Sabina Torosjan, Ira Khonen Temple, and duo SAS.
Sunday, March 20, 2022 at 3pm. Kaufman Music Center, Merkin Hall
Photo credit: Maryna Prykhodko
Alexey Shmurak, Greenland
—INTERMISSION—
Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko, Chornobyldorf Partita
Our final concert interrogates the destructive consequences of human exploitation of the Earth, moving from the land as a site of magic and abundance to one of damage and devastation. Alexey Shmurak’s Greenland sheds a reflective light on the erosion of the Arctic, while the Chornobyldorf Partita by Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko imagines life in a post-apocalyptic world.
Click here or below to see the full list of composers.
PERFORMERS
Click here or below to see the full list of performers.
Click here for the official 2022 Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival website and more information, including performers, composers, video recordings, photos, past events, media, partners and more. The Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY and the CUNY Adjunct Incubator with the Gittell Urban Studies Collective are proud co-partners and supporters of the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival organized by Leah Bastone.
Read “Surveying Ukraine’s Musical Landscape: 2020 to 2022” in anticipation of the 2022 Festival from organizer and creative director Leah Batstone who offers an update on Ukraine’s musical landscape since the inaugural Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in 2020.
The Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY and the CUNY Adjunct Incubator with the Gittell Urban Studies Collective are proud co-partners and supporters of the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival organized by Leah Bastone (Hunter College, CUNY).
Statement from the organizer: “As a musicologist, my research is rooted in intersections of music and politics. I am interested in music’s response to political change and its role in mediating philosophical ideas, particularly its relationship to Leftist discourses, the history of socialism in the 20th century, and challenges to narratives of hegemonic cultures. The Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival grew out of a project I conducted examining how musical programming had changed in Ukraine following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. It has continued to serve as a site to investigate the newest music and composers from Ukraine as well as to examine their works as part of a longer history of Europe’s largest country. The geopolitical circumstances coinciding with this year’s festival make the need to highlight the anti-imperial narratives of Ukrainian music even more relevant and urgent.”
We are so delighted and proud; not at all surprised and just thrilled, that Gittell Chair Professor Celina Su, a scholar/activist/poet, was published this past weekend in the New York Times magazine. Congratulations Celina!
Gittell Collective 