Common Ground
Into the Stratosphere with Dr. Bishop and Friends: Radical Healing
Featuring Damaris Dunn, Tené Howard, Carmelyn P. Malalis, and Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
to
12:30 p.m. Eastern / 9:30 a.m. Pacific
This event is produced by The Brooklyn Rail. Learn how you can donate ✨🌈
Join Dr. Elizabeth Bishop and friends for Episode 2 in this series that brings together various educators and activists into the rhizomatic orbit of solidarity, knowledge building, and critical love. We conclude with a poetry reading from Kwame Opoku-Duku.
In this talk
Watch Episode 1 »
Damaris Dunn
Native New Yorker and educator, Damaris Dunn is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Georgia’s Mary Frances Early College of Education. Her research interests are educational equity and Black girl joy.
Tené Howard
Executive Director Tené Howard leads the Sadie Nash Leadership Project, a NYC-based non-profit organization that promotes leadership and activism through programs designed to strengthen, empower, and equip young women as agents for change in their lives and in the world. Tené previously served as the Director of Global Outreach, Service and Sustainability at the Packer Collegiate Institute. She has a deep commitment to engaging youth as leaders and change-makers in their communities and beyond. Before this, she worked at Global Kids Inc, a NYC-based non-profit that develops youth leaders for the global stage. As the Director of Training and Education, Tené built and ran global competency training programs for educators and developing international study abroad programs for youth.
Carmelyn P. Malalis
Chair and Commissioner of the NYC Commission on Human Rights, Carmelyn P. Malalis was appointed in November 2014 following more than a decade in private practice as an advocate for employees’ rights in the workplace. Previously, Commissioner Malalis was a partner at Outten & Golden LLP where she co-founded and co-chaired its Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Workplace Rights Practice Group and co-chaired its Disability and Family Responsibilities Discrimination Practice Group; and successfully represented employees in negotiations, agency proceedings, and litigation involving claims of sexual harassment, retaliation, and discrimination based on race, national origin, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, pregnancy, disability, and religion.
Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
Award-winning associate professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz published her first full-length collection of poetry Love from the Vortex & Other Poems (Kaleidoscope Vibrations) in 2020.
Elizabeth Bishop
Writer, researcher, professor, youth advocate, Nietzschean, and surf monk, Dr. Elizabeth Bishop is the author of two books, Becoming Activist (2015) and Embodying Theory (2018). She lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Messy.
The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we’re fortunate to have Kwame Opoku-Duku reading.
Kwame Opoku-Duku
A Ghanaian-American poet and fiction writer, Kwame Opoku-Duku is the author of The Unbnd Verses (Glass Poetry Press), and his work is featured or forthcoming in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review Online, Poetry Magazine, BOMB Magazine, Apogee, The Literary Review, Bettering American Poetry, and elsewhere. Kwame lives in New York City, where he is a humanities teacher and an associate poetry editor for BOAAT Journal. Kwame has served as an Adroit Journal mentor, as well as a teaching artist with 826NYC. Kwame curates the reading series Dear Ocean, which centers work about climate change and environmental justice. It was supported by an Impact Artist Residency through the Human Impacts Institute. Kwame is represented by Annie DeWitt at The Shipman Agency.
❤️ 🌈 We'd like to thank the The Terra Foundation for American Art for making these daily conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive.