Edisa Weeks joins The New School as a Scholar in Residence as part of programming for The Moment is Now: In Dialogue with Changemakers. Weeks is a choreographer, educator, and director of DELIRIOUS Dances, and creates intimate environments that merge theater with dance to address issues in society. Described by The New York Times as having “a gift for simple but striking visual effects,” her work has been performed in a variety of venues including the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (NYC), Dance Place (DC), Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum (NYC), Harlem Stage (NYC), Kelly Strayhorn Theater (PA), and The Kennedy Center (DC), as well as on sidewalks, in storefront windows, and multiple living rooms, including living rooms in Berlin Germany as part of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations.
Weeks’ important and impactful scholarship and artistic work, characterized by a profound commitment to social justice and community engagement, spans various intellectual and artistic disciplines at The New School and will be of great interest to a broad cross-section of our university community. Her work is deeply aligned with our goal of embedding the principles of equity, inclusion, and social justice into everyday university life.
The residency will provide an opportunity for the New School community and the public to engage with Weeks’ creative process and learn from her unique approach to interdisciplinary art-making, with justice and equity at its core. Programming will be developed in collaboration with faculty, staff and students - register to receive updates.
The Moment is Now: In Dialogue with Changemakers features prominent and emerging scholars, thinkers, artists, and practitioners across disciplines that bring about positive change in the world and connect with the university’s academic strengths and mission.
Presented by the Provost's Office at The New School.
New School students seeking accommodations should contact the Student Disability Services office at studentdisability@newschool.edu.
Event guests seeking accommodations may contact the event organizer by emailing provost@newschool.edu.
Committed to amplifying diverse voices, The New School offers more than a thousand public programs and events each year, providing fresh perspectives and unique learning opportunities. These lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and performances feature prominent and emerging artists, activists, and thought leaders.
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Joy Bivins is Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture— a division of the New York Public Library and the world’s premier repository for archival materials related to African, African diaspora and African American life, history, and culture. Before joining the staff of the Schomburg Center in 2020 as Associate Director of Collections and Research Services, Bivins was Chief Curator of the forthcoming International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. From 2002-2018, she was on staff at the Chicago History Museum where she served as Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs. Ms. Bivins holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Cornell University.
Dr. Tia Brown McNair is the Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success and Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. She oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices (HIPs), and student success. McNair directs AAC&U’s Summer Institutes on HIPs and Student Success, and TRHT Campus Centers. She serves as the project director for several AAC&U initiatives, including the development of a TRHT-focused campus climate toolkit. She is the co-author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice in Higher Education (January 2020) and Becoming a Student-Ready College: A New Culture of Leadership for Student Success (July 2016 and August 2022 Second edition). McNair is the editor of Strengthening Campus Communities Through the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Framework that will be published by Routledge in June 2024.
In May 2023, McNair received an honorary degree from Franklin Pierce University for her national work to dismantle a false belief in a hierarchy of human value and for her efforts to advance racial equity to support the success of all students. NASPA, the association of Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, named McNair the 2024 recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Higher Education Award.
Dr. Renée T. White is the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at The New School in New York City, where she is also a professor of sociology with tenure at The New School for Social Research. With more than 25 years of experience working in higher education, Dr. White previously served as provost and a professor of sociology at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Simmons University.
She has also held a variety of faculty appointments, including professor of sociology and Black studies at Fairfield University, and a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and the African American Studies Research Center at Purdue University. Dr. White is the editor of four books, including the acclaimed Spoils of War: Women of Color, Cultures, and Revolutions and the recently published Afrofuturism in Black Panther: Gender, Identity, and the Re-Making of Blackness and is the author of Putting Risk in Perspective: Black Teenage Lives in the Era of AIDS.
She has served as editor of the Journal of HIV/AIDS Prevention in Children and Youth, and is a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education. She serves as a Strategic Leader for VisionForward — a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to advance gender equity through women’s leadership.
Cresa Pugh is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School. Her research examines the social and political legacies of imperialism, cultural heritage and museums, and violence in postcolonial Africa and Southeast Asia. Interrogating the ways in which healing and the reclamation of memory and communal historiographies materialize in the postcolonial context, Cresa’s research fundamentally explores the logics of restitution, refusal, and repair. Her work also engages questions around the ethical stewardship of human remains warehoused in museums as well as the theft of indigenous ands by public institutions and calls for their repatriation to native communities. Cresa holds a BA in Anthropology and Religion from Bates College, an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford, and an MA and PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University.
