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The 2022 Imagining Community Symposium took place April 7-8, 2022, at the Hub at the Dayton Arcade. The theme was "Shaping a More Equitable Dayton." This was the inaugural symposium.
Keynote: "Chicago Footwork: A Lesson on Language and Reclaiming Black Humanity," ShaDawn Battle
This was the symposium's keynote address. In Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying, he seems to suggest that Black male humanity could not be denied based on their mastery of standard American English and logocentric notions of literacy. Gaines locates the humanity of his death row protagonist, who is likened to a "hog" in the literal broken lines of his unintelligible journal reflections, among other attributes. Likewise, if Black youth in Chicago also exist in a state of "imminent death" and are also considered to be disposable, subhuman menaces to society, ShaDawn Battle reclaims their humanity in non-logocentric terms. Through the urban art form Chicago Footwork, which she argues is an embodied vernacular dance of Black liberation, Battle joins the chorus of post-humanist and disability scholars who challenge the argument that verbal language and conventional notions of literacy are preeminent markers of what it means to be human. She incorporates a short Footwork performance and interviews from her docuseries on Chicago Footwork to illuminate Footwork as a language of the body in everyday communicative exchanges.
Plenary Session: "Removal and Redlining: Resisting Erasure in Indigenous Ohio," Tereza M. Szeghi, Carolina Castoreno, Guy W. Jones, and John N. Low
Carolina Castoreno (Apache), Guy Jones (Standing Rock Sioux), and John Low (Potawatomi) offered perspectives on the history of the removal of Indigenous peoples from Ohio and the surrounding area, along with ongoing Indigenous activism to advance sovereignty and land claims.
Plenary Session: "Shaping a More Equitable Dayton: Perspectives from Daytonian Scholar Activists," Daria Y. Graham, Amaha Sellassie, Faheem Curtis-Khidr, and Furaha Henry-Jones
In this interactive plenary session, three prominent Dayton scholar-activists discussed the history, legacy, and impact of Dayton's racial segregation with an eye toward how to move forward collectively. The session explores opportunities for change and growth in our Dayton neighborhoods.
Aging While Black: Realities, Myths, and Opportunities for Community Planning, Antonia Dosik, Donna Kastner, Leigh Sempeles, and Mary E. Tyler
Challenged to Move: Using Humility as Inspiration for Change, Tazeen Ahmed, Amy Hamilton, and Richard Hairston
Community Development via Religious Location: Dayton’s African American Religious Community, Marlese Durr and Geoffrey Owens
Crafting Music Community in The Funk City, Mike Bankhead, Paige Beller, Kevin Carter, Amber Hargett, Brian Johnson, David Payne, Don Thrasher, and Arthur J. Jipson
Envisioning Community Through Artistic Responses, R. Darden Bradshaw
Equity Starts with Literacy, Debra Brathwaite and Joni Watson
Factors Impacting Equitable Park Infrastructure in Dayton, Mackenzie Martin, Grace Oldfield, Andrew Weis, Laura Wilker, and Juliana Vollmer
Finding Peace through Literature: Discussing Complex Topics in Small Communities, Drew Wichterman, Aimee Noel, and Brenda Mahaney
Health Equity Lens: Understanding Dayton and Montgomery County, Tazeen Ahmed, Fabrice Juin, Shannon Nicks, Jessica Saunders, Tiffany Terry, and Nancy McHugh
Home Ownership and the American Dream, Michael Carter, Chad Sloss, and Will Smith
How Community Finds Us: Reframing How We Think about Our Communities, Eric Charlton
How Unearthing Historic Injustices Can Transform Mindsets and Power Change, Nina Carter, Maya Dorsey, and Dakota Pawlicki
IACT in the Community: Human-Centered Design of Enabling Technology for Social Impact in Dayton, Kevin Hallinan, Eric Janz, Brendan Ochs, Ryan Johnston, Patrick Boudinot, and Trent Brown
Latinx Communities as Invisible in Race, Neomi DeAnda, Sam Ortiz, and Ernesto Rosen Velasquez
Montgomery County Equity Leadership Institute, Corinne Brion and Shannon Cox
More than a House: Eviction Rights and Dayton, Kristina Coen, Randy Smith, Addison Caruso, Taylor Burns, Aaron Primm, Shenise Turner-Sloss, and Kass Greenberg
Moving from Environmental Justice to Environmental Equity in the Dayton region, SeMia Bray, Margaret E. Maloney, Brian Martin, Courtney Rutledge, Tom Tappel, Jacie Womack, Leslie King, and Kelly Bohrer
Picturing Community: An Artist Talk and Workshop with Photographer Shon Curtis, Shon Curtis
Redlining: Barriers and Boundaries, Trish Burke-Williams, Dair Arrnold, Carol Bonner, Myla Cardona-Jones, and Jacqueline Housel
Redlining Communities from the Academy: Eliminating Discriminatory Community Engagement Practices, Sierra Leone and Castel Sweet
Redlining to Resettlement: Students Navigate Partnership and Convening Conversations around Housing in Dayton, Rachel Carr, Sarah Behnke, Riley Cronin, Patrick Hoody, Elizabeth Kolb, Sophia Locker, Anna Luepke, Claire Pawlecki, Naomi Pearson, Simone Schuller, Sydney Sparks, and Ellie Worpenberg
Social Inequity and Voting, Christine Corba, Dianne Herman, Jacqueline Housel, Jeremy Lisco, and Lucy Anne McKosky
The Intolerable Cruelty of Midwestern Nice, Jason Harrison
The Role of the Faith Community in Identifying, Challenging, and Changing Racism, Rockney Carter, Samuel N. Dorf, Sheherazadh Ishaq, Satish Joseph, Brian Q. Newcomb, Darshan Sehbi, Simran Sehbi, and Crystal Walker
The Sister Neighborhood Project: Finding Equity and Other Unexpected Outcomes of Improbably Pairings, Peter Benkendorf, Henrietta Thompson, and Cynthia Gehrie
Using Human Rights to Pursue Racial Justice in Dayton, Erica Fields, Sabrina Jordan, Mary E. Tyler, Donald Wiggins, and Joel Pruce
West Dayton Park and Green Space Ecosystem: An Examination of Places, People, and Power, Karlos Marshall and Moses Mbeseha
What’s Stopping Us? How to Leverage Dayton’s Entrepreneurial Resources for Sustainability, Whitney Barklay, Keanna Daniels, Elizabeth Grubb, and Belinda Matthews Stenson
UnDesign the Redline by Designing the WE, led by Learn to Earn Dayton
Atlas of Dayton featuring the inaugural edition of the Atlas of Dayton Herald by Misty Thomas-Trout.
Vestiges of Redlining: Mapping Equity in Dayton by Jacqueline Housel, Sinclair Students, and University of Dayton Students
Gem City Desert by Sarah Elizabeth Brashears
Community Engagement Case Study: West Branch Library by Jayne Klose and Diane Farrell
Chicago native Dr. ShaDawn Battle is an assistant professor of Critical Ethnic and Black Studies at Xavier University. Her academic areas of interest include African American Literature and Studies, Hip Hop Studies, and Critical Race Epistemology. She is currently directing and producing a documentary on the dance form (of which she is a practitioner), titled "Footwork Saved My Life: The Evolution of Chicago Footwork."
Amaha Sellassie is an Afrofuturist, peace-builder, social healer, freedom fighter, network weaver, student of cooperation, and lover of humanity. Amaha is a practitioner scholar dedicated to building bridges of trust, healing historical wounds, and harnessing the unique gifts and talents of every human being as we press toward a just and equitable society. He is co-founder and board chair of the Gem City Market, a community-driven effort to address food apartheid through a food co-op dedicated to increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables within West Dayton.
Carolina Castoreno is the Executive Director of the American Indian Center of Indiana and an enrolled citizen of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas and is of Mescalero Apache descent.
Faheem is a tenured faculty member in Sinclair Community College’s History and AFS programs. Faheem’s local research project covering West Dayton’s now defunct Hog Bottom neighborhood has been recognized and showcased at the REACH Conference, National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center, and by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Faheem is co-lead of the Ubuntu Study Abroad program with Furaha Henry-Jones. Black thought, Black academia, and Black excellence are very much at the forefront of Faheem’s socio-academic nexus.
Furaha Henry-Jones is an English Professor at Sinclair and served as the Sinclair Poet Laureate from 2017–2021. She was honored to receive the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for Poetry in 2018. She is proud to say she has taught English at the secondary and college levels for nearly three decades in public high schools and prisons, GED programs and college courses, charter schools for out-of-school youth, and migrant education programs.
Guy Jones is a Hunkpapa Lakota and a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. He is one of the founding members of the Miami Valley Council for Native Americans and served as an advisor to the Minority Arts Task Force of the Ohio Arts Council and the Bias Review Council of the Ohio Department of Education.
John N. Low, Ph.D., JD, is an enrolled citizen and member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, Professor at the Ohio State University in the Department of Comparative Studies, and former Director of the Newark Earthworks Center.