CONWAY, Ark. (August 16, 2018)
– Hendrix College will welcome diversity scholar Deniece
Dortch, Ph.D., to present
“What Happens When I Don’t Show up?: Exercising Agency and Finding Your Voice” as
the 2018 Senate Jennings Lecturer on Thursday, September 13, at 7:30 p.m. in
Staples Auditorium.
Dr
. Dortch, an
internationally recognized speaker and published author, studies the
socialization of undergraduate and graduate students of color, using critical
phenomenological approaches to understand how African American undergraduate
and graduate students experience and respond to race and racism at
predominantly white institutions of higher education. She is especially
interested in how psychological violence and fear is experienced, manifested,
and reproduced in the academy. Her most recent projects explore intra-racial
relationships, racial agency, and their effects on persistence in higher
education, and her publications address topics such as the self-efficacy of
graduate students and the sense of belonging of undergraduate students of color
at predominantly white institutions.
In “What Happens When I
Don’t Show Up?,” Dortch will address the expectation that historically
marginalized individuals undertake race-based conversations, and how that
expectation can be burdensome, tiring, empowering, or even invigorating. The
ways in which students and others in higher education address racism
traditionally have been through social protest movements and, more recently,
through social media. The primary focus of racism discourse and action leans
toward a broad conversation about higher education in general. What can
individuals do to pay attention to or address the concerns that they see? Dortch will address this question and guide the audience in exploring
motivations for racial agency, and the ways in which it can be tackled in
public and in private, both at Hendrix College and in other communities.
Before she joined the
faculty at George Washington University, Dortch was a postdoctoral research
fellow at the University of Utah, where she created the African American
Doctoral Scholar’s Initiative, a comprehensive mentoring program focused on
graduate student socialization into the academy. A former Program Director at
Texas A&M University, Dortch also co-founded Sista to Sista, a
co-curricular leadership development program designed to foster a sense of
connectedness among Black female college athletes. Dortch is a returned
United States Peace Corps Volunteer who served in both Morocco and Jamaica. She
earned her Ph.D. in Higher & Postsecondary Education Leadership from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, an Ed.M. in Higher & Postsecondary
Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, an M.A. in Intercultural
Service, Leadership & Management from the School for International Training
in Vermont and a B.A. from Eastern Michigan University. She has been featured
on NPR and PBS.
Dortch’s visit to campus is
sponsored by Senate Jennings Lecture Series and coordinated by the College’s
Office for Diversity and Inclusion. For details, call 501-505-2951 or email diversity@hendrix.edu.
About
the Senate Jennings Lecture Series
At the time of his death,
Dr. James M. Jennings was the Cynthia Cook Sandefur Odyssey Professor of
Education and History at Hendrix College. Following his passing in October of 2015,
the Hendrix Student Senate moved to establish an endowed fund for a lecture
series with the sole purpose of providing lectures and training opportunities
on topics of diversity. The Student Senate desires for students and student
leaders to discuss diversity issues and develop potential solutions, and
expects that the lecture series and its trainings will foster leadership
development, community building, and engagement in conversations that matter to
the broader Hendrix community. By bringing experts to campus, the Student
Senate hopes to encourage proactive, meaningful conversations that result in
action for the betterment of student associations and the community as a whole.
About
Hendrix College
A private liberal arts
college in Conway, Arkansas, Hendrix College consistently earns recognition as
one of the country’s leading liberal arts institutions, and is featured in Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That
Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges. Its academic quality and
rigor, innovation, and value have established Hendrix as a fixture in numerous
college guides, lists, and rankings. Founded in 1876, Hendrix has been
affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. To learn more, visit www.hendrix.edu.