Seattle University will host a multi-disciplinary conference, “Race, Racialization, and Resistance: Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Humanities.” The conference, funded by the Mellon Foundation, will take place on campus on Saturday April 26 (full day) and Sunday April 27, 2025 (half day). On April 26 at 5:30 pm Dr. LaToya Brackett will deliver a keynote titled "Forgotten HUMANities: Unpacking Nuanced Pedagogies of Black Female Faculty" at Pigott Auditorium. Dr. Brackett is Associate Professor of African American Studies at the Race and Pedagogy Institute of the University of Puget Sound.

Any questions about the conference can be addressed to: mellonconference@seattleu.edu

• April 26  - Welcome Event, Panels, Presentations, Keynote, and an Evening Reception
• April 27 - Panels and Presentations

LaToya T. Brackett is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of Puget Sound, in Tacoma WA. She earned her PhD in African American and African Studies from Michigan State University where she also earned her master’s in Counseling. She began her journey in Black Studies at Cornell University where she earned her Bachelor’s. LaToya is a member of the Race & Pedagogy Institute’s leadership team, and member of the 2024-2025 Humanities Washington Speaker’s Bureau. Her research interests span Black popular culture topics and contemporary issues in the ever-changing African Diaspora. Her recent edited book, Working While Black: Essays on Television Portrayals of African American Professionals, focuses on Black professionalisms in scripted TV. Her current research takes her across the African continent as she engages with Black hair in Black places. And most essential for her, as a Black female academic, she strives to be able to say that she spoke up even when no one else would, a key foundation to why she remains dedicated to her discipline—Black Studies.

“Forgotten HUMANities: Unpacking Nuanced Pedagogies of Black Female Faculty”

Let me tell you a story, or two, or maybe three, about what it looks like to navigate teaching in the humanities as a Black female professor. We teach about human culture and society while our very own humanity is forgotten. Let me tell you a story about how nuanced our pedagogies must be to maintain the required balance prescribed by the institutionally racist universities and colleges we navigate each day. Let us center the Black female faculty’s humanity as one step of resistance in an effort to reimagine academic spaces and halt their continuous modus operandi of silencing, deleting, and yet somehow still expecting the Black woman’s uniquely impactful voice to get the work done. I hope this keynote address will ignite acts of resistance needed to listen to and retain the Black woman’s work. Too many times, have I found my academic self asking, “where is the humanity?” Too many times, I am reminded that my humanity is often forgotten, and yet, as Desmond Tutu has said, “my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” I am calling for us all to strive not only to teach the humanities but to live them as well.