Schedule 2005-2006

TFD meets in 111 Wimberly on alternate Thursdays.  Please join us.

Feel free to choose sessions to attend if you cannot attend every one.

Fall 2005                                            Jump to Spring

Date          Reading/Viewing:  Both books are available FREE through Deb Hoskins.  Email her to request a copy.

Sept. 8      Video:  The Way Home.  A longer video, we'll watch about half.  This is the "women's version" of the Color of Fear.  The filmmaker uses a very different format to set up her discussions.

Sept. 22     Video:  The Way Home.  We'll finish up our viewing and discussion of this video.

Oct. 6        Video:  The Way Home.  We'll finish up our viewing and discussion of this video.

Oct. 20      Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen:  An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League (?:  Broadway Books, 1999), Chapters 1-5.  At Ballou Senior High, a crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Like most inner-city kids, they know that any special attention in a place this dangerous can make you a target of violence. But Cedric Jennings will not swallow his pride, and with unwavering support from his mother, he studies and strives as if his life depends on it—and it does. The summer after his junior year, at a program for minorities at MIT, he gets a fleeting glimpse of life outside, a glimpse that turns into a face-on challenge one year later: acceptance into Brown University, an Ivy League school.

At Brown, finding himself far behind most of the other freshmen, Cedric must manage a bewildering array of intellectual and social challenges. Cedric had hoped that at college he would finally find a place to fit in, but he discovers he has little in common with either the white students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds, or the middle-class blacks. Having traveled too far to turn back, Cedric is left to rely on his faith, his intelligence, and his determination to keep alive his hope in the unseen—a future of acceptance and reward that he struggles, each day, to envision.

Nov. 3        A Hope in the Unseen, Chapters 6-10.  Happy birthday to me, too! 

Nov. 17      Video:  Disability Culture Rap.  A short video we can watch and discuss in one day.  A topic we haven't dipped into very much yet.  Check out this bibliography from the Disabilitiy Studies Web Ring:  http://www.aboutdisability.com/pages/bibprint.html

Dec. 1       A Hope in the Unseen, Chapters 11-Epilogue

Dec. 15      End of Semester Celebration! 

Spring 2006           

Feb. 2        Kristen Renn, Mixed Race Students in College:  The Ecology of Race, Identity, and Community on Campus (Albany:  SUNY Press, 2004), Preface and Chapters 1, 2, and 3.

"Kristen A. Renn offers a new perspective on racial identity in the United States, that of mixed race college students making sense of the paradox of deconstructing racial categories while living on campuses sharply divided by race and ethnicity. Focusing on how peer culture shapes identity in public and private spaces, the book presents the findings of a qualitative research study involving fifty-six undergraduates from a variety of institutions. Renn uses an innovative ecology model to examine campus peer cultures and documents five patterns of multiracial identity that illustrate possibilities for integrating notions of identity construction (and deconstruction) with the highly salient nature of race in higher education. One of the most ambitious scholarly attempts to date to portray the diverse experiences and identities of mixed race college students, the book also discusses implications for higher education practice, policy, theory, and research."

Feb. 16      Video:  The Color of Fear.  This is a 90-minute film, a classic in the "race relations" genre.  We'll watch the first half and discuss. 

Mar. 2        Mixed Race Students in College, Chapters 4, 5, and 6. 

Mar. 30      Video:  The Color of Fear.  This is a 90-minute film, a classic in the "race relations" genre.  We'll watch the first half and discuss. 

Apr. 6        Mixed Race Students in College, Chapters 7, 8, and 9.

Apr. 13      Video:  Black Is, Black Ain't.  Marlon Rigg's last film, produced posthumously.  The film is 87 minutes, so we'll watch the first half or so, and then talk.    At the bottom of this page -- http://www.newsreel.org/films/blackis.htm -- you'll find links to more info and an online facilitator guide."

Apr. 27      Video:  Black Is, Black Ain't.   We'll watch and discuss the rest of the film.  See Sept. 8th for more info.  End of Semester Celebration!