International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life

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View upcoming and past events from the Program in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation (CAST). CAST is administered by the Ethics Center.

November 9, 2021- February 25, 2022
Kniznick Gallery

Curated by Dr. Toni Shapiro-Phim

• Artist, curator, and event participant bios
• Events
• Resources
• The REDress Project at Brandeis

Water. Stone. Twigs. Bodies. The color red. These elements appear throughout Jaime Black’s exhibition, between us, honoring the interdependence between humankind and the natural and spiritual worlds. The artist, of mixed Anishinaabe and Finnish descent, focuses special attention on Indigenous women’s potency in all these realms as nurturers, as trust-builders, as knowledge-holders and knowledge-givers.

The photographs, video and poems on display tell stories alongside empty red dresses, which hang facing the four cardinal directions, dresses that, with their absence of bodies, allude to the thousands of Indigenous women and girls who have been missing or murdered across North America. Elsewhere on campus, clusters of such dresses will appear, a re-creation of Black’s renowned REDress Project, reminding us of the gendered and racialized violence experienced by Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States. These dresses, along with Black's other work in the exhibition, ask us to consider ways to confront such injustice, while celebrating beauty, and reverencing women as the weavers of, as Black says, “the threads that bind and sustain us.”

Students in CAST 150b: Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation have collaborated with Jaime Black, situating and contextualizing red dresses in specific campus locations. Read more about the REDress Project at Brandeis.

See all events associated with the exhibition.

Brandeis University is located on territories originally inhabited and stewarded by Indigenous Nipmuc, Pawtucket, and Massachusett peoples.

Kniznick Gallery exhibitions are made possible thanks to the generous support of Rosalie & Jim Shane, the Marcus Arts Endowment and the Rosenberg Arts Endowment. between us is sponsored by the Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation Program (CAST) and the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts. Additional gratitude is offered to Dr. Elaine Reuben ’63, for her generous support, and to the Departments of Fine Arts and of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies for their co-sponsorship.

November 18, 2021

How to engage, not avoid, racial encounters

4:00 - 5:30 pm

Rapaporte Treasure Hall in the Goldfarb Library and Livestreamed.

Dr. Stevenson's book, Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools, will be available for purchase by cash or credit card ($24.95).

Howard C. Stevenson, a nationally recognized clinical psychologist and researcher of racial stress and trauma, will be honored as the 2020 winner of the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize. Dr. Stevenson is the Constance Clayton Professor of Urban Education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, where he serves as executive director of the Racial Empowerment Collaborative and directs Forward Promise, a national philanthropic office that promotes a culture of health for boys and young men of color, to help them heal from the trauma of historical and present-day dehumanization, discrimination and colonization. Dr. Stevenson will be in residence at Brandeis from November 17 to 19, 2021 (Dr. Stevenson is the 2020 Gittler Prize winner; his residency was postponed until November 2021 due to COVID-19). Read up-to-date residency information.

The Gittler Prize is hosted by the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life on behalf of the Office of the President and Office of the Provost. Dr. Stevenson's residency is cosponsored by the Education Program at Brandeis.

Additional open events during Dr. Stevenson's residency at Brandeis: