CAHSS Social Justice Colloquium
27th Annual Social Justice Colloquium Theme: Art Making as a Tool for Change, Bridging the Divide, and Community as a Path Forward
Our theme for the 27th Social Justice Colloquium is “Art Making as a Tool for Change, Bridging the Divide, and Community as a Path Forward” to highlight diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion through tangible actions that engage multiple forms and levels of creativity.
Drawing on the expertise of diverse scholars, university stakeholders, and community members, this year’s Social Justice Colloquium (SJC) draws on our commitment to positionality, intersectionality, storytelling, and the visual arts as a meaningful tool to explore DEAI initiatives. The 2024-25 SJC will include art making workshops as a framework for exploring our similarities and differences, and new ways of seeing and understanding structural systemic and societal injustices that are important to our communities. Social justice is a cultural necessity for organizational reform across cultural and educational sectors, and these workshops will support the theme Art Making as a Tool for Change, Bridging the Divide, and Community as a Path Forward.
We are excited to announce we are currently accepting an open call for artwork from CSUMB staff and faculty in conjunction with this year's event. The exhibition "DEAI Now!" will be a showcase of cultural diversity that promotes scholarship through social justice, community-engagement, and mentorship that is centered on diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI).
All events are Free & Open to the Public! See all event details below.
Schedule of Events:
Image courtesy of Visual & Public Art Program
EXHIBITION TITLE: DEAI Now! Art Exhibition
EXHIBITION DATES: April 7, 2025 through April 25, 2025
OPENING RECEPTION: April 10, 2025
LOCATION: VPA COMPLEX, Build. 70, Project Space
De-installation: April 28, 2025, 10am-5pmEntry is Free & Open to all CSUMB Staff & Faculty!
About Exhibition: DEAI Now! is a showcase of cultural diversity that promotes scholarship through social justice, community-engagement, and mentorship that is centered on diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI).
Drawing on the expertise of diverse scholars, university stakeholders, and community members, this year’s Social Justice Colloquium (SJC) draws on our commitment to positionality, intersectionality, storytelling, and the visual arts as a meaningful tool to explore DEAI initiatives. The 2024 SJC will include art making workshops as a framework for exploring our similarities and differences, and new ways of seeing and understanding structural systemic and societal injustices that are important to our communities. Social justice is a cultural necessity for organizational reform across cultural and educational sectors, and these workshops will support Art Making as a Tool for Change, Bridging the Divide, and Community as a Path Forward to highlight diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion through tangible actions that engage multiple forms and levels of creativity.ELIGIBILITY: Must be CSUMB Staff or Faculty
DEAI Now! features work by Carlos Acevedo, Liliana Agudo-Garcia, Jesus Aguilar, Julie Altman, Jasmine Atrisco, Ashley Brunetti, Jackie Casareno, Violet Cavicchi-Munoz, Nizhoni Chow-Garcia, Jennifer Dyer-Seymour, Nancy Espitia, Ronan Fleming, Cydney Gaither, Genesis Garcia, Kenny Garcia, Suzanne García, Melanie Gatica, Amber Gomez, Victoria Gomez, Chrissy Hernandez, Ellie Honkoski, Alexandria Jones, CSUMB Landscaping Crew, Yhashika Lee, Jennifer Lovell, Juan Luna-Avin, Manuel Luna & Landscaping Crew (Antonio, Enrique, Jorge & Fernando), Mercedes Maciel, Angela Maggott, Joshelyn Martin, Yefry Mata-Diaz, Rudy Medina, Gladys Mejia, Hector Mendoza, Victoria Mills, Tasneem Mohamed, Beatriz Mora-Hussar, Akemi Moreno Romero, Liyah Morgan, Mark Muckenfuss, Angelica Muro, Bernadette Ortiz, Rocio Ortiz Rivera, Reveriana Pacheco, Jacqueline Perez, Alyse Pierce, Maria Reyes, Renie Rondon Jackson, Rachel Safa, Sara Salazar Hughes, Alaina Sanders, Bethany Schwartz, Ibrahim Shelton, Sriya Shrestha, Shannon Snapp, Evelyn Stephenson, Kamille Stevens, Emily Tilton, Zugey Velasco, David Vila Dieguez, Steev White, Alo Wilson, Peter Xiong, and Jeremias Zunguze.
For ADA accommodations, questions, or general information, please contact Mercedes Maciel, MeMaciel@csumb.edu.
Site Specific 8: an art fair
Site Specific is a Visual and Public Art open house that focuses on bringing together the CSUMB community for a unique, vibrant, and creative event that’s focuses on arts, culture, place-making, and belonging. Since spring 2013, Site Specific events have showcased faculty, staff, alumni, and students working across VPA major learning outcome themes. This year’s Site Specific theme, Collaborative & Community Planning Skills will feature works in the context of social issues, reciprocity, and community engagement–––including works by VPA Beginning Drawing, Color Theory, Intro to Painting, Screenprinting, Painting and Mural, Mixed Media, Life Drawing, Digital Photography, Hand-building with clay, and Sculpture & 3-D design students.
Inter-Campus Affiliated/ Collaborative Events:
Otter Media Showcase
This year's Site Specific event will include a collaborative outdoor art exhibition by Otter Media, curated and organized by VPA major, Charlotte Donk, as a "free range art show with a variety of different styles and creative minds, all consisting of visual pieces including paintings and drawings." The Otter Media showcase will feature a variety of student artists, displays, and vendors located between buildings 70 and 71.
Please join us in supporting our student artists!
Event Time: 5-7pm
Event Location: VPA Complex (Quad between build 70 & 71)
Free & Open to the Public!
Katherine Sherwood, Visiting Artist-in-Residence
in conjunction with the 27th Annual Social Justice ColloquiumAbout Visiting Artist: Katherine Sherwood is a mixed media painter whose work explores the intersections of art, disability, and healing. Her recent series, Pandemic Madonnas (2019–2024), reimagines historical Madonna and Child icons as proud and resilient figures with disabilities. Sherwood frequently incorporates MRI scans of her own brain into her compositions, “cripping” art historical imagery to reflect both personal experience and broader cultural narratives around the body and disability. Sherwood’s work was recently featured in For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability at MCASD La Jolla (2024-25), a landmark exhibition recognizing the work of artists with disabilities. A longtime disability rights activist and educator, she taught painting and disability studies at UC Berkeley for over 30 years.
Sherwood currently serves on the board of Creative Growth in Oakland, an organization that supports artists with developmental disabilities. Sherwood is represented by George Adams Gallery (New York), Walter Maciel Gallery (Los Angeles), and Anglim/Trimble (San Francisco). She has had ten solo shows of her work in the past decade, and an extensive catalog of her recent work, In The Garden of the Yelling Clinic, was published in 2022. Her work is held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Ford Foundation, and the National Academy of Sciences, among others. She lives and works in Rodeo, California.
Artist's Website: https://www.katherinesherwood.comSJC Visiting Artist Lecture
Date: April 24, 2025
Time: 6-8pm
Artist Lecture Reception & DEAI Now! Viewing: 5:30-6:00pm
Location: Building 70
Title of lecture: Art, Medicine and Disability
Description: Katherine Sherwood will be showing her artwork as well as providing an introduction to her groundbreaking class Art, Medicine and Disability. It surveys how visual artists have responded to illness and disability through time.Free and open to the campus and community, all are welcome. For ADA accommodations, questions, or general information, please contact: Mercedes Maciel @ MeMaciel@csumb.edu
Date: April 25, 2025
Time: 10am-12pm
Location: VPA Building 72Title of Lecture: Disability Justice x Visual Art
Description: In the United States, one out of four adults has some form of disability. Most families in the United States have family members that are disabled. In this workshop we will discuss Disability Justice and see examples of contemporary visual art that embrace and illustrate that construct. We will explore painting on found materials. Participants should bring their paints, brushes, and any found materials (2D and 3D) on which they will make a painting surface. Techniques and examples of various surfaces will be discussed.
Workshop is free & open to the CSUMB campus community!
Art-making materials will be provided. Participants are encouraged to bring their own found materials like cardboard, recycled paper, or porous surfaces. These materials offer unique textures, colors, and shapes, allowing for personalized expression and experimentation. They also promote sustainability by utilizing previously discarded materials.
27th Annual Social Justice Colloquium Acknowledgements
The 27th Annual Social Justice Colloquium is made possible in part through CSUMB Special Event Funding, the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, and partnerships & collaborations with:
- College of Business
- Humanities and Communication
- Performing and Visual Arts
- Psychology
- Social, Behavioral Sciences and Global Studies
- World Languages and Cultures
27th Annual Social Justice Colloquium Committee:
Angelica Muro, Phuong Nguyen, Estella Porras, Angie Tran.
More About the Social Justice Colloquium
The Social Justice Colloquium was initiated in 1997 by Dr. Gerald Shenk (US Historian) and Dr. Angie Tran (Political Economist) from the CAHSS School of Social, Behavioral, and Global Studies. It has grown to be a collaborative effort across the college spanning a week or more of guest speakers in keynote, plenary, public, and classroom workshops across the college community. The goals:
- To combine teaching and scholarship in support of specific curricular offerings.
- To address topics and issues uniquely significant to the diverse students, faculty, staff and administration at CSUMB and to our constituent communities in the Monterey Bay region.
- To erase the artificial academic line that has been drawn between what is scholarly and what is personal.
- To offer CSUMB students faculty and staff the opportunity to engage in scholarly conversation with recognized scholars and experts from outside the campus.
- To invite all members of the CSUMB constituent communities to explore critically current issues of social justice in their historical, local, and global contexts.
This annual event has been funded each year since 1997 by the campus’ special events funding pool, coupled with contributions of staff and faculty time, talent and funds from campus departments. A dedicated fund would stabilize the funding for the event, thus enabling the campus to enhance its ability to bring thought leaders on the social justice issues of our time into conversation with campus and community members and afford focused guest lectures and workshops in our classes across the curriculum. Recent expansion of the program to be across the college and in multi-disciplinary venues and expressions realizes the college’s mission and enriches our contribution to the campus and community.
This event is part of the CAHSS Arts & Lectures Series, a wide range of events that includes guest artists and notable speakers as well as our renowned faculty.
Read more about the 24th Annual Social Justice Colloquium featuring the topic Trauma and Healing.
Read more about the 22nd Annual Social Justice Colloquium Featuring Zeynep Tufekci.