Author and scholar Christine Sleeter will be the keynote speaker for the upcoming Culturally Responsive Campus Community (CRCC) Conference. Under the theme “Uniting to Challenge Systems of Oppression,” the conference will be October 24-25 at Illinois State University’s Bone Student Center.
The conference is free, but registration is required, and seating is limited. Registration is required by October 15.
Christine Sleeter
Sleeter’s research focuses on anti-racist multicultural education and teacher education. The author of the novel White Bread, she has published nearly 150 scholarly articles in books and journals, such as Educational Researcher, Multicultural Education Review, Urban Education, and Teaching and Teacher Education. She has garnered the American Educational Research Association Social Justice in Education Award, and the Charles DeGarmo Lecturer Award from the Society of Professors of Education. Find out more about her work.
The aim of the conference is to equip attendees with strategies to talk about oppression in their workplace and life, said Assistant Professor of Special Education Stacey Hardin, one of the coordinators of the CRCC conference.
“When we talk about systems of oppression, we’re talking about policies, laws, ideas, expectations, and even language that places certain people in a box,” said Hardin, who noted oppression can be inflicted for a multitude of reasons—from race, identity, and religion, to gender, age, or nationality. “It is ingrained in the American psyche to think of anyone not white, male, or heterosexual as outside the sphere of ‘normal.’ And this attitude can lead to isolation, or even hostility.”
The two-day conference will focus on understanding and approaching conversations on oppression. “If students or faculty are feeling isolated, it is not conducive to a learning environment,” said Hardin. “The goal of this conference is to reach people at all levels of understanding, from educating the community on what these systems are, and the active work that is being and must continue to be done to dismantle them.”
Find out more information on the conference. Those with questions can contact Hardin at (309) 438-5993 or CRCC@ilstu.edu.
