Talking About Race Matters

These emblematic Ancestor Spirits Portraits ask us to examine who we are to each other, who we are as a nation and how we can work to heal the wound that enslavement created in our citizenship. The project is a synthesis of history, image, geography, and soundscape creating an opportunity for citizens of all ages to come face to face and heart to heart with a spiritual history rarely, if ever, encountered on the streets of America.

Born in NYC, Guyon’s work and public projects appear in public and private collections across the United States. Her work is at once both contemporary and ancient – a blend of mythology and graffiti. Her long standing gallery affiliations with George N’Namdi and David Lusk placed her work with collectors and institutions across the country. In 2009, she began a pivot into public projects – moving from the private space of the gallery, museum and university to create on the street museums in public space.

Marshall has spent the last 20 years working in Learning and Development. He serves as a communication broker through corporate training, a magazine columnist, podcast host and community liaison for an award-winning spirit project I Was Here. His belief is that “We can change your world by changing how you talk to it.” It is this belief that drives all of his engagements including the development of the F.R.E.E.D.O.M. from racism training: an online course that uses communication to overcome race.

Patrick J Mitchell is an international award winning Photojournalist from New York City. He has been published in several books (Anthology of Appalachian Writers)  and articles (Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine. The Breona Taylor Billboard installation). Documenting present day life and using human emotion to tell life’s stories with his images. He has been exhibited in several states across the country including The Lyric Theater, Arthouse and Purdue Cultural Center.

American baritone Michael Preacely is a rising star on the operatic stage and is also known for a versatile singing ability and style that allow him to cross between genres from classical repertoire to pop, contemporary, and Broadway. Mr. Preacely has performed with many major and regional opera houses and orchestras in the United States and abroad. Currently, Mr. Preacely is working on the release of his first album, Spirituals and Hymns, followed by a series of concerts and recitals in various venues across the United States.

Michael Baer is the the President and Owner of Fusioncorp and PIVT where they focus on areas of Creative Design, Web, Application Development and Creating immersive experiences utilizing Augmented Reality.  Michael sits on the board of the City of Lexington Jobs Fund Initiative, The Chamber of Commerce, The Muhammad Ali Center, Bluegrass Community and Technical College and the Technology Association of the Bluegrass.

Barry Darnell Burton, one of the models for the Ancestor Spirit Portraits is a resident of Lexington Ky. His family has traced roots in Lexington back to 1840 before which there is no information. Along with his physical image, he is also the installation technician for tapestry portraits and the author of “Where Do I Begin” the signature blessing that accompanies installation of the project.

New research involving archaeology, oral history, and archival research challenge existing historical narratives that predominate in the region and establishes a new understanding of this place as historically diverse and unique. This work draws from Prof. Matthews’ new book A Struggle for Heritage: Archaeology and Civil Rights in a Long Island Community.

Christopher Matthews is a professor of anthropology at Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ. He is an expert on the archaeological study of race and racism and social inequality in the mid-Atlantic as well as critical heritage studies and community-based research. After earning his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University he has gone on to publish several books including An Archaeology of History and Tradition, The Archaeology of American Capitalism, and, most recently, A Struggle for Heritage: Archaeology and Civil Rights in a Long Island Community.

Their close proximity to New York City and the agricultural Hudson Valley estates would have made the Dyckman slaves cosmopolitan in the truest sense, with the ability to navigate the rural and urban landscapes of the region. In short, the lives of enslaved people of the Dyckman family shed light on the complex relationships forged in the environs of New York City and the transformation of slavery in the North.

Dr. Gretchen Sullivan Sorin is Director and Distinguished Service Professor at the Cooperstown Graduate Program. Dr. Sorin is the author of Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights recently released in February 2020. Dr. Sorin holds a B.A. degree from Rutgers University in American Studies, an M.A. in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program and a Ph.D. from the University at Albany in American history. Dr. Sorin has more than thirty years of experience in the museum profession working for more than 250 museums as a museum exhibition curator and education, programming, and interpretive planning and strategic planning consultant.

Richard Tomczak is a PhD Candidate in History at Stony Brook University. His research examines the entangled relationships among law, labor, and empire in the colonial Americas.

We draw from our expertise and experience as professors of anthropology, people who actively question our assumptions and seek education, and parents raising children to be anti-racist.

Sallie Han is Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Oneonta, where she teaches courses in cultural, linguistic, and medical anthropology. She is a co-editor of The Routledge Handbook on the Anthropology of Reproduction (forthcoming in 2021). The daughter of Korean immigrants, Han was born in Queens, raised in New Jersey, and previously worked as a reporter at The Daily News. She lives with her husband and their two children in upstate New York.

Tracy Betsinger is Professor of Anthropology at SUNY Oneonta, where she teaches courses in biological and biocultural anthropology. She is co-editor of The Bioarchaeology of Urbanization: The Biological, Demographic, and Social Consequences of Living in Cities (forthcoming, Springer Press) and The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials (2020, University of Florida Press). Before completing her PhD, she worked as a Forensic Drug Chemist for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two sons.

Restrictions on movement before Emancipation carried over, in different forms, into Reconstruction and beyond; for most of the 20th century, many white Americans felt blithely comfortable denying their black countrymen the right to travel freely on trains and buses. Yet it became more difficult to shackle someone who was cruising along a highway at 45 miles per hour.

In Driving While Black, the acclaimed historian Gretchen Sorin reveals how the car–the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility–has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road.

Dr. Gretchen Sullivan Sorin is Director and Distinguished Service Professor at the Cooperstown Graduate Program. Dr. Sorin is the author of Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights recently released in February 2020. Dr. Sorin holds a B.A. degree from Rutgers University in American Studies, an M.A. in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program and a Ph.D. from the University at Albany in American history. Dr. Sorin has more than thirty years of experience in the museum profession working for more than 250 museums as a museum exhibition curator and education, programming, and interpretive planning and strategic planning consultant.

African chattel slavery and modern notions of race. Just as critical as the making of the racial “other”, however, was the creation of whiteness. This talk explores how whiteness emerged in the midst of debates surrounding forms of unfree labor on the Caribbean island of Barbados.

Using anthropological, archaeological, and historical perspectives, I explore how early modern racial distinctions were socio-legally constructed, how they come to bear on our understandings of localized histories of race in places like New York City, and how the complexities of race-making processes in the past are being manipulated in the present. For the latter, I focus on the re-emergence of the myth of “white slavery”, a narrative used to deny the historical realities of African chattel slavery and denounce contemporary movements for racial justice like Black Lives Matter.

Dr. Matthew Reilly is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Gender Studies, and International Studies at the City College of New York. He conducts archaeological research surrounding race and colonialism in the Caribbean and West Africa. He is the author of Archaeology below the Cliff: Race, Class, and Redlegs in Barbadian Society (2019), published with the University of Alabama Press.

Through a comparative analysis participants will be able to learn how the differences in racial formation impact Spanish speaking immigrants and their families within the U.S. and how they negotiate these differences as their race is read  in the  U.S. context. 

Dr. Maria Chaves Daza was born in Bogotá, Colombia, grew up in Hialeah/Miami Lakes, Florida and moved to Chicago for college. Now Maria resides in upstate New York. Their experiences as an 1.5 generation queer immigrant, ni de aqui, nide allá, shape her academic and personal life. As an assistant professor in the Africana and Latinx Studies Department at SUNY Oneonta (the only comparative studies program in the SUNY system), Maria uses Comparative Ethnic Studies, Feminist, Women of Color theory, Critical Race Theory to teach interdisciplinary classes in media studies, cultural studies, literature and playwriting. Her site drmariachavesdaza.com showcases her research and writing, sample course syllabi/assignments, and her student’s projects.