University of Michigan STS Colloquium
Sensing Bimbia: Ancestry Reconnection in an Anti-Crisis Atmosphere
"Empowered Illness Narratives, Rewriting Health Inequalities" Workshop
I am excited to return as an instructor for STaRT @ Rice Program through the School of Social Sciences this year from October 6-9, 2023, where I will be teaching undergraduate, graduate students, and professionals in the Houston area about how to use illness narratives to address health inequalities proactively.
The description of the workshop can be found below:
This workshop is an introduction to how the art of storytelling can help us reimagine the human aspects of illness for doctors and patients and speculate interventions into the structural conditions that predispose people to being sick. Drawing on ethnographic methods of social discourse analysis, this workshop aims to get participants to open up our diagnostic sensibilities about what makes individuals, groups, and societies sick. We will address interviewing techniques, developing a questionnaire, media analysis, and explore experimental techniques such as collaging and creative writing to recent people at the heart of redressing health inequalities.
UCSC Bioethics Lecture
On May 3, 2023, I will be giving a talk, “Of Albert Perry: A Biomythography of Genetic African Origins” at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) through the Science and Justice Center ad the UCSC Genomics Institute.
The lecture is a preview of the introduction for my forthcoming book manuscript, Prospecting Return: The Gift of Genetic Reconnection in Cameroon.
Refracting Biological Vision: The Poetics of Genetic Cameroonian Ancestry
This talk at the Menil Collection will examine how genetic information is changing the way we see the world. Not only are nucleotides forcing us to consider biological metaphors of sight. Drawing on her ethnographic fieldwork in the United States and Cameroon from 2010 to 2018, focusing on how African Americans and Cameroonians are connecting through genetic ancestry tests, Dr. Massie will discuss how people of African descent use a poetic approach to solidarity to redefine the prospects of being and making each other kin today.
This public talk is in conjunction with the exhibition Art of the Cameroon Grassfields: A Living Heritage of Houston (February 17-July 9, 2023).
"Where Are Our Women Artists?" Faculty Rountable
I am excited to be invited to the “Where are our women artists? Linda Nochlin’s Question in the Age of Feminist Visual Culture” 2023 Graduate Student Conference at Rice University. Hosted by the History of Art Department and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (CSWGS), I will be joining a panel of faculty speakers to discuss feminist methodologies in art history, and the future of feminist practice more broadly.
The Collaboratory for Black Feminist Health & Healing Book Discussion
Come join me for The Collaboratory for Black Feminist Health & Healing’s new book lecture series, “Writing Health Through Black Feminist Theory.”
Through co-sponsorship with the UCLA Department of African American Studies, I am excited to serve as the discussant to Dr. Natali Valdez (Purdue University)’s book, Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era (UC Press, 2021).
More information about the date and time (and Zoom link for those who are interested) will be available closer to the date.
"Empowered Illness Narratives, Rewriting Health Inequalities"
On Sunday, October 11, I will be leading a workshop for the second annual STaRT@Rice Program (October 7-11), which aims to provide “an innovative program that will provide a panoramic view of the research process and offer professionalization opportunities” to participants.
My project will be focusing on the power of storytelling to ask ourselves: How do stories shape our biological understanding illness and health? How are the biological stories we tell ourselves about health tied to the social, political, economic, and historical conditions that shape our lives? How might we find ways to recover and repair ourselves and our community, and better address structural inequalities that shape health, by incorporating storytelling into our healing practices?
"Call to Holistic Health: How my African Heritage Informs my Integrative Approach to Healing" by Dr. Thalia Micah
Please join me and Dr. Amarilys Estrella on Friday, September 9, as we launch the first talk for our BRIDGE project, “Stressful Crossings: How Black Immigrants’ Health is Immobilized in Houston.”
The inaugural speaker for the project is Houston’s own, Dr. Thalia Micah. Dr. Micah is a holistic wellness practitioner and healer. Drawing on her healing practices she saw growing up in Haiti, particularly watching her mother, Dr. Micah has focused her career redefining health with her ancestry front and center. Beyond the body, she seeks to find ways to integrate the physical aspects of healing with understanding meditation, herbal medicine, bodywork, rituals that is guided toward serving the people. She recently received her Doctorate of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine from the American College of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine here in Houston. She is also the owner and CEO of the Institute of Integrative Health Specialists and Holistic Wellness Center LLC.