12-1 p.m.
474 Park Hall

Join Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, and the Department of Sociology, in a talk about how U.S. scholarship on transgender studies often moves between two extremes: a normative emphasis on violence (corporeal, symbolic, or systemic) as a social problem that merits attention; alternatively, a recent emphasis on joy has emerged (as a superfluous form of validation ignoring the structural barriers faced by transgender people). Yet plenty of lived experiences, emotions, and ways of being exceed this simplistic binary.

This talk is based on a 5-year collaborative project with a high school/GED program for adult transgender students (ranging from their 20s to their 50s), named The Bachillerato Popular Travesti y Trans Mocha Celis. (In Argentina, as in other countries, “trans” is not the only nor most used category to express self-identity for transgender people; travesti is an identity marker preferred by older, racialized, migrant trans women, but used by many in Argentina and other Latin American countries.) Salvador Vidal-Ortiz’s work is in the fields of Puerto Rican and Latinx Studies, race, ethnicity, (im)migration, diaspora, transnationalism, gender and sexuality, and racialized sexualities. He co-authored the book "Race and Sexuality," co-edited, in English, "The Sexuality of Migration: Border Crossings and Mexican Immigrant Men and Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism" and in Spanish, "Travar el Saber/“Transing Knowledges,” on Argentine trans education. This year, he is one of ten Distinguished Visiting Scholars in the College of Arts and Sciences, University at Buffalo, and is focusing this time on a book: An Instrument of the Orishas: Racialized Sexual Minorities in Santería. 

5 - 6:30 p.m.
112 Center for the Arts Screening Room, North Campus

Moderated by: Nicole Horsley, 2023-24 Distinguished Visiting Scholar

Join the Department of Africana and American Studies and the Distinguished Visiting Scholars Program as they host a panel discussion about difficult dialogues concerning hip hop and the criminal justice system, along with homophobia and misogyny. These were topics that were covered on “Louder than A Riot,” a podcast on NPR that lasted two seasons. The hosts, Rodney Carmichael and Sidney Madden, provided insight and analysis on the way rap lyrics were being used in criminal trials, as well as the way women and LGBTQ/non-binary identifying artists have navigated hip hop culture and the music industry from marginalized spaces.

Hosts Carmichael and Madden, along with podcast producer Gabby Bulgarelli, will be at UB to reflect on episodes from the past two seasons, and discuss the current state of hip hop going into 2024. 

Support is provided by the Office of Inclusive Excellence.

To continue celebrating 50 years of Hip Hop, join us for a conversation between visual artist Eric Haze and writer and activist Bakari Kitwana, Distinguished Visiting Scholar. Both have been deeply immersed in Hip Hop culture throughout their lives, and this conversation will focus on when they first became immersed in the elements of MCing, B-Boying, DJing, and graffiti. They will also discuss how both have engaged with hip-hop through their respective mediums while also offering their thoughts about the current state of the culture. 

Born and bred in New York City, Eric Haze has contributed to the worlds of graffiti, contemporary art, and graphic design for over four decades. HAZE’s formative years were spent as a founding member of the influential New York City graffiti collective The Soul Artists, with whom he first exhibited work in 1974. HAZE went on to exhibit paintings and drawings alongside close friends such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat in the early 1980s. HAZE has since made a career out of pushing creative boundaries in a wide variety of mediums. After shifting his focus from galleries to the applied arts in the mid ’80s, HAZE soon emerged as the premier graphic designer of the exploding hip-hop movement, creating iconic logos and album covers for some of the most influential and historic names in the genre. 

An internationally known cultural critic, journalist, activist, and thought leader in the area of hip-hop, youth culture, and Black political engagement, Bakari Kitwana is the Executive Director of Rap Sessions, which for the last fourteen years has conducted over 150 townhall meetings around the nation on difficult dialogues facing the hip-hop and millennial generations. He is the collaborating writer for pioneering hip-hop artist Rakim’s memoir "Sweat The Technique: Revelations on Creativity From The Lyrical Genius" (Amistad, 2019) and the 2019-2020 Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellow at the W.E.B. Dubois Research Institute / Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of "The Source" magazine, where he wrote and edited hundreds of articles on hip-hop, youth culture, politics and national affairs, Kitwana co-founded the first-ever National Hip-Hop Political Convention. The gathering brought over 4000 18-29-year-olds to Newark, NJ, in 2004 to create and endorse a political agenda for the hip-hop generation.