KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Dr. Diana Murtaugh Coleman, a former Luce Fellow in Indonesia, is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at Northern Arizona University. Her research, focused on contemporary Islam, U.S. militarism, and carceral issues includes numerous talks, presentations, and publications. She is the author of a chapter in Guantánamo: The Humanities Respond; the article “El Sur También Existe: Imagining futures” in Cultural Dynamics, and articles in two special issues of Sargasso: the 2017-18 Guantánamo: What’s Next? Issue and the 2020-21 Camps, (In)Justice & Solidarity issue. She has conducted research, presented and participated in dozens of conferences, led panels and workshops, and guest lectured nationally and internationally, in the U.S., France, Morocco, Germany, South Africa, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Argentina, Uruguay, Bangladesh, Austria, India (virtually), and the UK. She was a Humanities Scholar and presenter for the 2023 TOM KIEFER: El Sueño Americano / The American Dream exhibit at the Coconino Center for the Arts and recently completed training with the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program at Temple University. As NAU’s 2024/25 College of Arts and Letters teacher of the year and NAU’s Interns to Scholars program 2024/25 Mentor of the Year, Dr. Coleman is deeply committed to empowering her students and to reaching broader publics beyond walls and borders.

Abstract

Title- Rooting [out] our Entangled Present

Abstract- The rapid emergence of authoritarianism, the dismantling of legal frameworks, the stifling of political speech, the explosive expansion of Department of Homeland Security scope, funding, and infrastructure, and the ramping up of overt interference throughout Latin America and beyond did not spring fully formed from the architects of Trump’s second term. Rather, these developments must be traced from the deep taproots, from violent imperial beginnings through the U.S. Global War on Terror and ultimately mapped onto the fascism of end stage capitalism. The logic of camps relies on populist appeals rooted in racism, classism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and other hatreds to control, order, and divide our humanity, but also demand impunity for perpetrators of human trafficking, carceral systems, forced labor, torture, and murder. How then to reckon with the past, confront our present, and to advocate for our collective future? A lineage of scholars from W.E.B. Du Bois to Angela Davis to Rinaldo Walcott offer visions that promote radical change to ground alternative futures. We must think with moral clarity, name truths with explicit language, and work shoulder to shoulder with the activist exemplars of our past and those in our midst today, to imagine, wrest, and create radically new futures for all.

Dr. Elithet Silva-Martínez has been with the Beatriz Lassalle Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Puerto Rico since 2011 and currently serves as its Interim Director. The only Latina member of the National Institute of Justice’s Research Consortium, she specializes in economic abuse and gender violence in universities, sharing her research in several countries including Ireland, Chile, and South Africa. Her collaborative work with the Center for Dominican Women led to participatory research initiatives, notably the book Narrativas de Lucha: Immigrant Women and Gender Violence in Puerto Rico. She recently won an award for her children’s story, “The Secret Dream of a Ballet Tutu,” from the Popular Education Network for Women of Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. Silva-Martínez produced the award-winning short film “Desempacando: Gender, Migration and Violence,” recognized as the best national documentary at the Enfoque International Film Festival. She has taught courses at the University of Iowa and conducted an ethnographic study with Mexican undocumented women, resulting in published work and a Feminist Manuscript Award. Additionally, she co-founded the SIEMPRE VIVAS Metro organization to support survivors of gender violence. Inspired by the stories of the women in her life—her grandmothers, mother, and daughters, Lina and Lara—Dr. Silva-Martínez continues to engage in impactful research and advocacy.

Rinaldo Walcott is Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo. He holds the Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies. A writer and critic, his research is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender and sexuality with interests in nations, nationalisms, multiculturalism, as well as the histories of slavery, emancipation, incarceration and ongoing struggles for freedom. An interdisciplinary scholar, Walcott has edited or co-edited multiple works, and he is the author of Black Like Who: Writing Black Canada (Insomniac Press, 1997 with a second revised edition in 2003). He is also the author of Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora and Black Studies (Insomniac Press, 2016) and co-author of Black Life: Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom (Arbeiter Ring, 2019). In 2021, Walcott published The Long Emancipation: Moving Towards Freedom (Duke University Press) and On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition (Biblioasis), which was nominated for the Heritage Toronto Book Award, longlisted for the Toronto Book Awards, named a Globe and Mail Book of the Year, and listed in CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2021.