About this book talk
Join us with the Urban Education Ph.D. program for a joint book talk discussion featuring Ujju Aggarwal discussing her new book Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education (University of Minnesota Press) and Conor Tomás Reed discussing their recent book New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University (Common Notions Press). The authors will joined in conversation with city organizers Noelle Mapes, Rosie Frascella & Mariel Acosta about abolition feminism, care, place, and organizing across institutions. The discussion will be moderated by Jenna Queenan and Lucien Baskin.
This in-person and online event is free and open to the public.
Click here to Register to attend online via Zoom.
To attend in person, the event will be held at 6:30 PM in the Urban Education Lounge, Room 4202 of the CUNY Graduate Center. No registration necessary to attend in person.
Author Bios:
Ujju Aggarwal is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Experiential Learning in the Bachelor’s Program for Adults and Transfer Students, and an affiliate faculty member in Global Studies and the Department of Anthropology. She also serves as Coordinator of BPATS' Self-Directed Learning Program.
Aggarwal’s research examines questions related to public infrastructures, urban space, racial capitalism, rights, gender, and the state. Her first book, Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education is forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press, 2024. Aggarwal's next project, Education Against Enclosure, is supported by the Spencer Foundation. Her work has appeared in popular outlets, scholarly journals, and edited volumes including Transforming Anthropology; Scholar & Feminist Online; Educational Policy, and Feminists Rethink the Neoliberal State: Inequality, Exclusion, and Change (edited by Leela Fernandes). She is co-editor (with Edwin Mayorga and Bree Picower), of What’s race got to do with it? How current school reform policy maintains racial and economic inequality 2nd Edition (Peter Lang, 2020); and co-editor (with Linta Varghese and Rupal Oza) of Women’s Studies Quarterly Fall/Winter 2019.
Prior to joining The New School, Aggarwal was Visiting Joanne Woodward Chair in Public Policy at Sarah Lawrence College. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Vermont Center for Fine Arts and has also taught at Hunter College (CUNY) and Educational Opportunities Center (SUNY). Her research has been supported by the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis (African and African Diaspora Studies Department, University of Texas, Austin), the National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation, the Center for Place, Culture and Politics (CUNY Graduate Center), and the Davis Putter Fund.
In addition to her academic training, Aggarwal also brings a long history of work as a community organizer and popular educator. For over two decades, she has worked to build organizations that work for educational justice, immigrants’ rights, abolition and transformative justice as well as projects that focus on the intersection of arts and social justice, popular education, and adult literacy.
She currently serves on the Board of Teachers Unite, on the Advisory Board Member of the Parent Leadership Project (Bloomingdale Family Head Start Center, PLP), on the Advisory Board Member of PARCEO (Participatory Action-Research Center for Education, Organizing), and as a mentor to National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation doctoral and postdoctoral fellows.
Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed (all) is a Puerto Rican/Irish gender-fluid scholar-organizer of radical cultural/pedagogical movements in the Americas and the Caribbean, and the Program Director of the Shape of Cities to Come Institute.
Coco’s new book New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University (Common Notions) chronicles the rise of Black, Puerto Rican, and Women’s Studies and movements at the City College of New York and in New York City, as well as CUNY’s post-9/11 opposition to US imperialism, colonialism, and carcerality. Coco is also developing the quadrilingual anthology Black Feminist Studies in the Americas and the Caribbean (Malpaís Ediciones) with co-editors Diarenis Calderón Tartabull, Makeba Lavan, Tito Mitjans Alayón, Violeta Orozco Barrera, and Layla Zami. They are the current co-managing editor of LÁPIZ Journal and a contributing editor of Lost & Found:The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative.
Coco has been immersed in almost two decades of struggles at the City University of New York and in New York City around transforming education and public space, anti-imperialism, police and prison abolition, solidarity with Palestine and Puerto Rico, reproductive rights, housing justice, and beyond. Their work can be found in print and online via AK Press, ASAP/Journal, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Distributaries, El Centro Press, The New Inquiry, Verso Books, Viewpoint Magazine, Wendy’s Subway, and elsewhere.
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Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed (tode) es un puertorriqueñe / irlandés de múltiples géneros erudite y organizadore de movimientos culturales pedagógicos radicales en las Americas y el Caribe, y directore del programa del Instituto Shape of Cities to Come.
El libro nuevo de Coco, New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People’s University (Common Notions), relata el surgimiento de los estudios y movimientos negros, puertorriqueños, y de mujeres en el City College de Nueva York y en la ciudad de Nueva York, así como la relación de oposición de CUNY posterior al 11 de septiembre con el imperialismo, colonialismo, y carceralidad estadounidense. Coco también está desarrollando la antología cuatrilingüe Black Feminist Studies in the Americas and the Caribbean (Malpaís Ediciones) con les coeditores Diarenis Calderón Tartabull, Makeba Lavan, Tito Mitjans Alayón, Violeta Orozco Barrera y Layla Zami. Elle es el editore codirector actual de LÁPIZ Journal y editore colaborador de Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative.
Coco ha estado inmersa en casi dos décadas de luchas en la City University de Nueva York y en la ciudad de Nueva York en torno a la transformación de la educación y el espacio público, el antiimperialismo, la abolición de la policía y las prisiones, la solidaridad con Palestina y Puerto Rico, los derechos reproductivos, la justicia habitacional, y más allá. Su trabajo se puede encontrar impreso y en línea a través de AK Press, ASAP/Journal, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Distributaries, El Centro Press, The New Inquiry, Verso Books, Viewpoint Magazine, Wendy’s Subway y otros lugares.
This event is co-sponsored by the Urban Education Ph.D. program and the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as Public Scholarship Practice Space (PS2) and La Morada Restaurant and Mutual Aid Kitchen.
