The University Office for Diversity and Inclusion is hosting a series of symposiums on Race, Racism, and Racial Equity (R3) throughout the year. The first symposium, “The Historical Exploitation of Black and Brown Bodies at UNC: Learning from the Past to Change the Present,” will be held on Thursday, Sept. 10, 1:30–3 p.m. 

REGISTER HERE

Panelists:

BRANDON BAYNE is an Associate Professor and the current Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Religious Studies. He specializes in religion in the Americas, especially violence and memory in colonial evangelistic encounters. His first book, Missions Begin with Blood: Suffering and Salvation in the Borderlands of New Spain (Fordham University Press), demonstrates how Catholic priests invoked the rhetoric of martyrdom and redemptive sacrifice to justify epidemic disease, colonial dislocation, and the territorial dispossession of indigenous communities. His current research focuses on issues of race, religion, memory, and erasure, connecting the 20^th century memorialization of colonial missionaries in the U. S. southwest to white supremacist monuments in the American south and their purposeful erasure of Indigenous and Black histories.

Professor Bayne teaches courses on Religion in the America, Indigenous Christianities, and Religion and Violence. He has a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, master’s degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and doctorate from Harvard University.

LAURA HART is a technical services archivist in Wilson Special Collections Library. She writes and edits archival description chiefly for the Southern Historical Collection and Southern Folklife Collection and co-chairs the University Libraries’ Conscious Editing Steering Committee, which guides descriptive practices and narrative framing that is centered in diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.

JAMES LELOUDIS is Professor of History, Peter T. Grauer Associate Dean for Honors Carolina, and Director of the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence in the College of Arts and Sciences. With Professor Patricia Parker (Communication), he co-chairs UNC’s Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward. He earned his BA in History with highest honors from UNC in 1977, an MA from Northwestern University in 1979, and a PhD from UNC in 1989. He has published extensively on the history of the American South. His latest book, Fragile Democracy: The Struggle Over Race and Voting Rights in North Carolina, will be available from UNC Press in late August. He is a recipient of the Students’ Undergraduate Teaching Award, the General Alumni Association’s Faculty Service Award, and a number of awards and prizes for his publications from national and international scholarly organizations.

SONOE NAKASONE is the Community Archivist for the University Libraries’ Mellon funded Community Driven Archives project, housed in the Southern Historical Collection of Wilson Special Collections Library. Community Driven Archives seeks to address imbalances in the archival record by supporting marginalized communities to collect and preserve their own historical records. Sonoe is also co-chair of the Libraries’ Conscious Editing Steering Committee.

DONNA NIXON is Electronic Resources Librarian and Clinical Assistant Professor of Law. She licenses and manages the law library’s online resources, including journals, electronic books and media. She also teaches legal research and Introduction to Law of the U.S. She is curator of the digital collection Law School First – The African Americans Who Integrated UNC-Chapel Hill, which documents the successful legal fight by the five men who integrated UNC-Chapel Hill.

Donna earned a degree in computer science from Brooklyn College, her law degree from Stanford Law School, and her master’s in library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She briefly practiced law in the Bay Area beforcoming to Carolina.