99 Workshop Six : Eos READS for Black Lives

Download Workshop 6 Eos Reads HERE

General Instructions: (15 minutes to check in, read the instructions, select which questions you plan to focus on, and get settled in for the workshop)

Today’s workshop is divided into three parts.  For the first part, you’ll be in a Zoom Breakout Room with a few colleagues.  Jody will also join for part of the time.  While in your small group, please discuss the questions developed by Eos for the READS discussion groups that most perplex and/or interest you.  If you try to discuss all of the questions, you’ll have 5 min. for each, which is probably not sufficient so please try to select three questions for each text that you will center in your discussion.  You may wish to take a few moments for quiet reflection to gather your thoughts before you begin (or as you begin to discuss each prompt).

After an hour and 15 minutes, there will be a thirty-minute interval between small group discussions and our reconvened seminar.  This includes time for stretching and time for individual reflection.

Third, we will reconvene for a student-led seminar.

Part One: Small groups (60 min)

 Please begin with Frantz Fanon’s “On Violence.”  Discuss:

• How does Fanon define decolonization? How does the violence of the colonizer compare to the violence of the colonized?
• What role does education in “Western values” play in colonial society and in what respects does it resemble “the barracks and the police stations”? How does education bring violence “into the homes and minds of the colonized subject”?
• Please describe the relations between “the colonialist bourgeoisie,” “the colonized intellectual,” and “the masses.” How exactly do their interactions turn “all the Mediterranean values, the triumph of the individual, of enlightenment and Beauty” into “pale, lifeless trinkets”?
• What specifically African countermodels does Fanon provide to the individualism placed on the “Greco-Roman pedestal”? What would these look like in practice?
• What does it mean to “leave this Europe which never stops talking of man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, at every corner of the world”?
• What should we be doing instead of simply “freeing more and more slaves”?

Next, please turn your attention to Margo Hendricks, “Coloring the Past, Rewriting Our Future: RaceB4Race,” and discuss the following:

• How does settler colonialism in academia as defined by Hendricks relate to the historical phenomenon of settler colonialism that she also discusses?
• How can we avoid participating in settler colonialism in scholarship on race?
• What distinguishes premodern race studies from premodern critical race studies (PCRS) as Hendricks defines the terms?
• What continuities and departures do you see between Fanon’s and Hendricks’ approaches to resisting settler colonialism?
• Hendricks says: “Consider me your ancestor.” What is the significance of identifying ancestors in one’s scholarship, teaching, and activism?
• Hendricks says: “PCRS is about being a public humanist. It’s about being an activist.” What does it mean to have an activist orientation to your scholarship?
• What steps can we take to advance PCRS in our teaching, research, and responsibilities as colleagues to practitioners of the Classics (or Medieval Studies, or Archaeology, or in language departments) who have been marginalized in our departments and/or fields?

Part Two:  Intermission (30 minutes)

Stretch Break : 10 min.

Snack Break : 10 min.

Individual Reflection : 10 min.  Please begin to contemplate the following questions, which we will discuss in reconvened seminar.

• At which points did you find yourself energized to act on these ideas in your work and in your life?

• Where, in turn, did you find yourself resisting what you are reading or discussing?

• What do you think motivates this resistance, both in yourself and more broadly? How can you overcome that resistance in yourself, in your department, in your community, in the field of Classics?

• For participants unaffiliated with the field of Classics: how did these readings and discussions inform your perceptions of the field of Classics and of the scholars within it? Did the readings and discussions make you think differently about your own field?

Part 3.  Seminar Discussion (60 minutes)

1. Which questions from your small-group discussion of Fanon do you have an impulse to report out on or discuss further?
2. Which questions from your small-group discussion of Hendricks do you have an impulse to report out on or discuss further?
3. Let’s discuss our responses to the reflective prompts above that you were asked to contemplate while reading and again in your individual reflection:

• At which points did you find yourself energized to act on these ideas in your work and in your life?
• Where, in turn, did you find yourself resisting what you are reading or discussing?
• What do you think motivates this resistance, both in yourself and more broadly? How can you overcome that resistance in yourself, in your department, in your community, in the field of Classics?
• For participants unaffiliated with the field of Classics: how did these readings and discussions inform your perceptions of the field of Classics and of the scholars within it? Did the readings and discussions make you think differently about your own field?

Student-led Seminars

A productive student-led seminar requires several contributions from each participant.  For one, it helps to come with questions.  Please come to class on seminar days with one question already prepared!  Today, our questions were generously provided by Eos, but feel free to bring any additional questions of your own!  Second, you should not expect a “spokes on a wheel” model of discussion with the course instructor at the center, moderating your discussion.  You are in charge.  To move the conversation along, therefore, please try to contribute the following to each discussion:

1. Pose one question for discussion;
2. Respond at least once to someone else’s proposed discussion question;
3. Contribute at least one process-oriented comment, e.g. “We seem to have exhausted our discussion of this question, shall we move on? Who has another question to propose? I see that Jane has their hand raised / has unmuted themselves / has commented in the chat …..”