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 Check out some creative responses to the Trans-local Session from the HAL 2023 National Convening by students in Professor Anne Englot's class!

 

 

Humanities Action Lab “Translocal Learning Studio”

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To get the latest TLS updates as well as Zoom links please subscribe to the HAL newsletter. 

Please contact Leora Fuller at leorafuller@gmail.com if you have questions or need documentation to support getting credit from your academic institution.

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HAL’s Translocal Learning Studio (TLS) is a virtual studio for developing and expanding accountable, transformative, and community-centered learning practices that activate history and memory for justice-centered movements and mutual aid in the current moment. This studio is “translocal,” a core tenet of HAL that honors the unique circumstances, autonomy, and tools of hyperlocal organizing and supports building reciprocal learning relationships between these localities across the world. 

 

In the TLS, participants engage as both teachers and learners to collaboratively experiment with exercises, workshops, readings/media, and other forms that challenge what teaching and practicing justice-centered public history can and should be. The “course” includes structures for intentional, reciprocal mentoring to facilitate a lasting learning community. It will generate community curated resources and model practices collaboratively designed by members, which will shape how TLS develops each year. 

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Goals:​

  • Foster anti-racist, decolonial, and liberatory pedagogies, specifically around public history/memory for  systemic change

  • Reimagine public history/heritage for the current moment, including exploring what mutual aid and direct action storytelling can look like

  • Facilitate translocal learning: collective learning in which participants are grounded in their localities but exchanging and learning together

  • Model how to center community needs in the classroom, redefining university-non university collaborations

  • Interrogate what “public engagement” looks like: Who are you working with and for? What change are you trying to create?  

  • Create a model of student- and community-centered public history that connects one’s own experience to structural oppression and systemic harm

  • Create models of resource advocacy and distribution led by faculty within universities to challenge institutional harm and create lasting change

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Structure:​

  • 3-5, 1.5-2 hour Zoom sessions

  • Option to attend all sessions or individual sessions, synchronously or asynchronously

  • Most sessions will be hosted by HAL; but some will be “field trips” into one participant’s space

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Committed Core Participants to Date: 

​The below people are being invited to participate in multiple consecutive sessions. 

  • Community organization leaders: 

    • Anthony Diaz, Newark Water Coalition, Newark, NJ

    • Mutual Morris, Morris, NJ

    • Claudia Navarro, WeCount, Homestead, FL

    • Rosa Furumoto, Padres Pioneros, San Bernardino, CA

    • Camille Mays, Peace Garden Project MKE, Milwaukee, WI

  • Students (undergraduate and graduate) from: 

    • Florida International University, Literature 

    • Rutgers University-Newark, History, Sociology and Social Justice Minor 

    • University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, Literature 

    • Cal State University-Northridge, Chicana & Chicano Studies

    • University of Illinois-Chicago, Latin American and Latino Studies

    • University of New Orleans, Public History and Social Justice Programs

  • Faculty: 

    • Rosa Cabrera, Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Anthropology, Graduate College, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Museum & Exhibition Studies University of Illinois at Chicago

    • Ricia Chansky, Professor of literature, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez

    • Catherine Gudis, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Riverside

    • Valerie Johnson, Associate Professor of Political Science, Grace School of Applied Diplomacy, Critical Ethnic Studies, DePaul, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

    • Molly Mitchell, Raphael Cassimere Professor of History,  Ethel and Herman L. Midlo Endowed Chair, and Director of the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies, University of New Orleans

    • Stevie Ruiz, Assistant Professor, Chicana and Chicano Studies, California State University, Northridge

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Schedule (subject to change): 

​Session 1 - Thursday, April 1, 1:30-3pm EST

  • This session explores mutual mentorship

  • This session is free and open to the public. Advanced registration required: Register here.

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Session 2 - Thursday, April 8, 1:30-3pm EST

  • This session explores mutual aid storytelling

  • This session is free and open to the public. Advanced registration required: Register here.

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​Session 3 - Thursday, April 22, 1:30-3pm EST

  • This session explores transforming learning spaces

  • This session is free and open to the public. Advance registration required: Register here.

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Outcomes We're Dreaming Towards: 

  • A set of resources for anti-racist and decolonial learning approaches and practices that activate history and memory for transformative direct action against oppression

  • Collective project on mutual aid storytelling/public history for systemic change

  • Reciprocal mentoring relationships (for core participants) and a lasting learning community

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Previous Translocal Learning Studio Sessions--Fall 2020:

​Session 1 - Thursday, October 15, 1:30-3pm EST

  • This session will ground our community of practice, and identify participants’ goals and interests.  It will also offer models for how participants can ground public memory projects of their own that seek to activate history and memory for justice-centered movements and mutual aid in the current moment.  Topics will include:  locating yourself and your history in relation to systemic power and histories of liberation and historical harm; bringing transformative justice approaches to public memory projects; and creating reciprocal relationships among mentors and partners for co-creation and knowledge sharing.

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​"Field Trip" - Wednesday, October 28, 5-6:15pm EST

  • “Field Trip” to Stevie Ruiz’s Environmental Justice and Chicana/o Communities class at Cal State University Northridge, "Race, Migration, and Reimagining Environmental Justice" - featuring Lisa Park of UC Santa Barbara.

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Session 2 - Thursday, October 29, 1:30-3pm EST

  • In the spirit of our TLS shared values radical of honesty and openness, this week's meeting will be a planning session where core group members and the larger HAL network will collaboratively envision an upcoming workshop on "mutual aid storytelling." TLS is an ongoing and evolving process of collectively creating a learning community and we want to make that in-process aspect visible to everyone who participates. Join us to see what horizontal and sustainable workshop development can look like and gather tools and resources for your own efforts.

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"Field Trip" - Monday, November 2, 5-6:15pm EST

  • “Field Trip” to Stevie Ruiz’s Environmental Justice and Chicana/o Communities class featuring Suzanne Pierre “Towards a Critical Ecology.”

 

​"Field Trip" - Wednesday, November 11, 5:30-6:30pm EST

  • “Field Trip” to Latino Cultural Center (University of Illinois-Chicago) Climates of Inequality event: scholar & activist Jessie Fuentes will discuss Puerto Rico’s reconstruction process after hurricanes and COVID-19 devastated the island. This recovery process is rooted in  Puerto Rico’s history of slavery and racism, where powerful, rich industries see reconstruction  as a means to assert more power and increase profits. Students from Rosa Cabrera's Environmental & Climate Justice course will facilitate the conversation.

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Session 3 - Thursday, November 12th, 1:30-3pm EST 

  • This session will explore ways that sharing stories -- whether individual, community, or broader structural histories -- supports ongoing mutual aid and organizing efforts. Led by organizers of mutual aid in cities from Newark to Miami to Milwaukee, the workshop will explore what mutual aid is and how it's different from charity or social service; how story sharing is central to sustaining and growing mutual aid; who storytelling is for and how history/memory can support mutual aid; and what roles people from different subject positions (students, organizers, faculty, local residents) can play.  It will explore "mutual aid storytelling" as a practice for this moment and offer ways to ground learning spaces in holistic listening and healing practices.  

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"Field Trip" - Wednesday, November 18th, 5-6:15pm EST 

  • “Field Trip” to Stevie Ruiz’s Environmental Justice and Chicana/o Communities class featuring Carolyn Finney on African Americans and the Great Outdoors.

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"Field Trip" - Wednesday, November 18th, 5:30pm-6:30pm EST 

  • “Field Trip” to Latino Cultural Center (University of Illinois-Chicago) Climates of Inequality event:  Cheryl Johnson with People for Community Recovery (CPR) will present on the organization's community organizing and advocacy efforts in the Altgeld Gardens public housing project on Chicago's South Side. Students from Rosa Cabrera's Environmental & Climate Justice course will facilitate the conversation.

 

Session 4 - Thursday, December 3rd, 1:30-3pm EST

  • This session will build on our growing exploration of the role of storytelling in mutual aid and other non-hierarchical organizing efforts. We will be joined by Tara Taylor of the mutual aid project Helpful Jellyfish based in Philadelphia who will help ground us in the slow work of shifting our deeply embedded ideas of what our own story is and what it can be. Together we will reflect on how to challenge “trauma porn” narratives, re-work our stories to have real material change in our lives, and better connect to each other through our shared experiences. 

 

Session 5 - Thursday, December 17th, 1:30-3pm EST

  • This session will be shaped by our core participants out of our shared efforts

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