Cosponsored by the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at UMass Boston
The freedom to learn has been inextricably linked to race across time and space. From the era of enslavement in the Americas to book burning in Nazi Germany down to the present humans around the globe have demanded the freedom to learn as a fundamental human right. This right to learn is intrinsically linked to race, gender, sexuality, and class -the denial of which diminishes society while threatening democracy. Denying groups and individuals the right to learn impacts everyone in society and oftentimes involves the censoring of curriculum, arrest of educators, and book banning or book burning. The freedom to learn has been particularly denied to marginalized communities including people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
In November 2024, the International Interdisciplinary Conference on Race will focus on “Race and the Freedom to Learn” and invites papers from a range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, education, gender studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and other disciplines that have grappled with this subject. We welcome individual papers or complete panels from scholars, educators, artists, and activists whose work is related to race, its intersections, and the freedom to learn in history, society, and culture. We also seek papers from international scholars and offer a few travel stipends to scholars traveling from abroad to attend the conference.