A group of staff and faculty members filtered into Merrick Lecture Hall on a recent Monday afternoon. Looking around the room, someone spoke up: “We don’t have to sit segregated this time?”
Welcome to “What Is Race?” where even the seating plan is part of the lessons. Nearly 150 faculty and staff members are participating in the seven-week seminar, which just wrapped up its third session. The course has been designed to help participants learn more about the historical construction of race, and the way it effects people every day.
Faculty from across the disciplines—history and religion to English and women’s studies—have volunteered to co-direct the course and to offer answers to the question “What is race?” from a wide variety of perspectives.
“You can take what I say and think of it with your own experience as a historian or a chemist,” said Sociology and Anthropology Professor Jamie Mullaney, who spoke Monday. She discussed sociological insights into misperceptions about race by kicking off the talk with a personal story about her own blind spots.
“I love that this is a space for sharing and vulnerability,” she said. “Even for [those of] us presenting.”
The seminar was designed last spring in response to the many difficult, but important, conversations being held about race and racism on Goucher’s campus and others nationwide, said Associate Professor of Philosophy Steve DeCaroli, who co-organized the seminar with Yousuf Al-Bulushi, an assistant professor in the Peace Studies program.
The seminar is open to all Goucher staff and faculty for personal education, professional development, and increased race literacy on campus. The class will meet from 3:30-5 p.m. on Monday afternoons through November 2.
“The high level of participation from all corners of campus underscores the commitment and personal responsibility Goucher community members have to being educated, empathetic advocates for social justice,” President José Bowen said.