Oberlin College has long cultivated a reputation for advancing cutting-edge thinking and scholarship, and for supporting historically disenfranchised communities. My Name Is My Own takes this work another step forward, cultivating exciting conversations within the Oberlin community, across disciplines, and with national scholars and community organizers on the front lines of academic and sociopolitical innovation.
Each year, the Multicultural Resource Center is honored to work in collaboration with our many partners including faculty (in particular African American Studies, Comparative American Studies, and Gender and Women’s Studies), students, and staff as well as other programming series like APA Heritage Month, Latino/a Heritage Month, Latino/a Film Series, Black History Celebration, LGBT Film Series, Life After Oberlin, Taking the Lead Series, World AIDS Week programming, and Trans Day of Remembrance to conceive, develop, and implement such an exciting series that involves and connects so many individuals and communities.
The primary mission of My Name Is My Own is to provide institutional support to Oberlin communities that identify as queer and of color in the broadest senses of those words. In pursuit of this goal, My Name Is My Own supports and creates multiple and varied spaces in order to allow for (1) support reflection and community-building within queer communities of color at Oberlin, (2) education and confrontation of oppressive praxis in non-queer and/or non-of color Oberlin communities and individuals, and (3) inter- and intra-community coalition-building. These spaces encourage participants to explore the construction and experience of race and sexuality, gender and sex in various communities, foregrounding the experiences, concerns and work of queer people of color. My Name Is My Own features public lectures, film screenings, artistic and activist performances, workshops, and small discussion groups between students, faculty and national scholars and organizers.
The 2005-2006 My Name is My Own Series is dedicated to the ten-year anniversary of the MRC
The 2004-2005 My Name is My Own Series was dedicated to Gloria Anzaldua, who passed away May 15, 2004
The 2007-2008 My Name is My Own Series Schedule:
THE MISSION COALITION – IRIS MORALES
Public Lecture "The Mission Coalition: Environmental Racism and Justice" on October 11, 2007 at 4:30 p.m. in Craig Auditorium.
SHARON BRIDGFORTH
Open Lunch/Discussion for Several Academic Departments on November 15, 2007 at 12 p.m. in Wilder 115. Public Reading: “Like Jazz a Staged Reading of Jazz/Blues/Prayer Poems & Performance Stories” on November 15, 2007 at 4:30 p.m.
YASMIN HERNANDEZ
Artist in Residence, February 4-13, 2008
Co-sponsored by the My Name is My Own Series, the Edmonia Lewis Center (ELC) for Women and Transgender People has invited Puerto Rican visual artist Yasmin Hernandez to do a mural on campus. The mural will be located in the ELC and will capture the important role that people like Edmonia Lewis, Rachel Beverly, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Yuri Kochiyama, Sylvia Rivera, and Marlon Riggs have played in the development of the social justice movement at Oberlin College. We envision this mural in conversation with other pieces on campus, particularly the murals that exist in spaces like Afrikan Heritage House, Third World House, and Third World Co-op. We hope that this mural will serve as a testament to the importance of queer and trans folks and women of color in the struggle for liberation and justice worldwide.
SUSAN PENA
Open Lunch Discussion for Faculty on March 11, 2007 at 12 p.m. in Wilder 115.
Public Lecture: "Transgender in Miami's Borderlands: Documenting Early Cuban American Transgender Activists" on March 11, 2007 at 4:30 p.m. in Wilder 101.
YELLOW RAGE
Public Performance on April 12, 2007 at 8 p.m. in the Cat in the Cream
RODERICK FERGUSON
Open Lunch Discussion/Workshop for Faculty on April 15, 2007 at noon in Wilder 115.
Public Lecture: TBA on April 15, 2007 at 4:30 p.m. in Wilder 101.
My Name is My Own Pamphlet for 2006-2007
