On April 22, 2024, the UCSF Emancipatory Sciences Lab held its first annual unconference, “Creating Resistance: Art, Activism, & Academia in the Emancipatory Sciences.” The day-long, hybrid event brought faculty, staff, and students together to discuss and imagine strategies for engaging activism and advocacy effectively and sustainably from within and beyond the academy and to explore the possibilities of resisting dominant structures of power within academia and health systems. Participants came together to share their experiences of emancipation within clinical care, health research, and the larger Bay Area. The event was co-sponsored by the UCSF Black Womxn’s Health & Livelihood Initiative and the UCSF Center of Excellence in Women’s Health.
Collectively, we explored questions such as:
- What, in practical and actionable terms, are emancipatory sciences?
- Is it possible to do emancipatory science work within the academy? Can you change the academy as a scholar?
- What might efforts toward that end look like at UCSF and more broadly?
- How can creative practice advance liberatory work?
- How can those within the academy use art and creative expression to advance emancipatory visions?
The event centered on smaller, deeper conversations as well as hands-on opportunities for exploring art, creative expression, and activism. Matthew Beld was the event MC.
Panel 1 featured four speakers who discussed scholar activism and organizing within and outside the academy -- Bernadette Lim, Aimee Medeiros, Taylor Cruz, and Rupa Marya, and moderated by Jen James.
Panel 2 featured six speakers who discussed their work using arts and humanities as activism -- Jhia Jackson, Karen Barrett, Theresa Allison, Ramona Laughing Brook Webb, Lingsheng Li, and Sophie Wang, moderated by Jarmin Yeh.
In the afternoon we held a series of interactive workshops highlighting creative practices within the emancipatory sciences including:
- Zine Making with Sophie Wang & Kourtney Nham
- Letter Writing with Jarmin Yeh & Brittney Pond
- DrawTogether Strangers with Lingsheng Li & Tracy Lin
- EDGE Runners Podcasting with Rebecca Wolfe & Nicholas DiCarlo
- Poetry Writing with Ramona Laughing Brook Webb
Our day ended with a closing ceremony with a song session from Dr. Theresa Allison and a reading from Ramona Laughing Brook Webb, the Poet-in-Residence at UCSF Center of Excellence in Women’s Health. Scholar-activists outlined the strengths and limitations of resisting within a system that polices its constituents, encouraging participants to find their liberation outside of academic and clinical systems while moving towards emancipation within them. Researchers and clinicians also demonstrated the power of the Arts & Humanities within the emancipatory sciences to organize activism and create opportunities for collaboration between activists.
While the fields of medicine and the humanities may seem disparate in nature, the work of the attendees of the unconference “Creating Resistance: Art, Activism, & Academia in the Emancipatory Sciences” began to show the strength that is created when scholar-activists incorporate their creativity and the arts in their work. This event heightened the public visibility of UCSF as a leader in emancipatory sciences and promoted the work of our lab across campus. Additional funding for the event was received from the UCSF Office of Research and the Community-Building Small Grants Program.
Follow-up Resources:
- Selected performances by Jhia Jackson
- Critical Zine on AI and Automation in Los Angeles by Sophie Wang and Taylor Cruz
- Saturday afternoon at Portsmouth Square, San Francisco Chinatown in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society by Lingsheng Li
- Sound Health Network
- Meditation Moments with Mona
- Routledge Aging and Society Book Series
- DrawTogether Strangers
