Dear Chloe Center kinfolk,

Welcome back! I hope your summer break was restorative. This semester opens the first full academic year for the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism, and we have a lot in store.

Please join us for our fall kick-off reception, with food and drinks, on Friday, September 13, 4:00pm–6:00pm in the breezeway between Gilman and Mergenthaler. Come meet and mingle with Chloe Center board members, graduate fellows, and students. All kinfolk, including kiddos, are welcome!

The Chloe Center’s mission remains Research, Education, and Reparation, and we aim to carve out a unique space on this busy campus for interdisciplinary scholarship and community-engaged pedagogy and programming. Along these lines, I could not be more pleased to announce that our new Critical Diaspora Studies undergraduate major has received final approvals and will begin launching this spring! We’ve already held an “open house” and garnered a good deal of excitement from incoming first-year students.

Our plan is to begin cross-listing courses in the spring 2025 semester, and first-year students who are newly declaring majors will be able to choose Critical Diaspora Studies in the spring. Then, in the fall of 2025, a fuller complement of Critical Diaspora Studies courses will become available. More information will soon become available, with details to be posted on our website and on the university’s online catalogue.

This undergraduate major is incredibly exciting and innovative, not least because the hard work of a cohort of politically engaged students who pushed for its creation, envisioned its goals, and designed its architecture. As the major launches, students are continuing to spread the word and advise faculty on how best to realize their vision and demands for social justice–oriented curriculum. Any undergraduates who wish to become more involved with the Critical Diaspora Studies initiative should reach out to Vanessa Han ([email protected]).

The Chloe Center, building on the strong foundations of RIC, is committed to fostering unique opportunities for graduate students. To that end, we are working on a graduate conference during the spring semester, and we’ll be circulating more information about that soon. Additionally, we’ll be hosting a number of exciting interdisciplinary professionalization and methodology workshops over the fall. The first one is soon: On Tuesday, September 3, 4:00pm–5:30pm, please join us for Critical Approaches to Labor and Migration, with Paul Apostolidis, who is a political theorist and professor of Government at the London School of Economics.There’s one suggested reading, so please RSVP to ricjhu [at] jhu [dot] edu to receive it. This event is also open to advanced undergraduates who may be embarking on thesis research or other projects this year.

Looking toward the remainder of the semester, we will be hosting a number of additional events, and, as always, we are interested in hearing from our kinfolk about events that you would like to see, as well as ideas for collaborations across campus. One last major event I wanted to mention is a multi-day conference, hosted by Inheritance Baltimore: Humanities and Arts Education for Black Liberation: Inheritance Baltimore and the Struggle for Just Futures: Cultural Work as Reparations,on November 14th–16th. This conference will feature some of the university scholarships and community partnerships that the Chloe Center has initiated and co-sponsored over the past four years via Inheritance Baltimore. Coinciding with the American Studies Association Annual Meeting, it will conclude with a reception highlighting the work of the Chloe Center at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum on Nov. 16, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. Mark your calendars and get your dancing shoes ready. Be sure to register and view the entire conference schedule.

Finally, I want to welcome Nandini Pandey (Associate Professor of Classics), our newest faculty board member, and I also want to introduce two new graduate fellows who are joining the Chloe Center team: April Ma and Ronay Bakan. April is a second-year graduate student in International Relations in the Political Science Dept., who has already been quite active on campus and eagerly joined Chloe Center happenings. April’s research centers critical security in international relations, particularly the construction of threats and racialized political rhetoric, through the lens of empire. Ronay Bakan, a sixth-year graduate student in Comparative Politics in the Political Science Dept., has been a close collaborator with the Chloe Center for a while, helping to organize events in past years. Ronay’s research explores how war and counterinsurgency reshape urban landscapes and heritage sites through the engagement of international, national, and local actors, with a regional focus on the Middle East. Graduate students who wish to be involved with the Chloe Center should be in touch with Ronay (rbakan1 [at] jhu [dot] edu) and April (ama16 [at] jhu [dot edu). They’ll also be working on this newsletter and kinfolk interviews in the coming months. Graduate students interested in getting more involved should contact April and Ronay.

On behalf of the Chloe Center, I wish you the best for the fall semester.
 

In solidarity,

Stuart Schrader

Director, Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism