The Core 100 program invites students and faculty from the College to join us for our weekly lecture series. Each week, all of the first-year students participate in lecture-discussions with about 400 of their classmates. We have space in the Center for the Arts (Building 1P) Williamson Theatre to accommodate individual guests (no permission needed) and can have as many as two additional classes at each of the lectures. Permission is not required for classes to attend, but please notify Donna Scimeca at 718.982.3405 if you plan to bring a class.
The lectures are 50 minutes and are all in the Williamson Theatre. They meet on the following days/times: Wednesdays at 12:20pm, and Thursdays at 8:00am, 10:10am, 4:40pm, and 6:30pm.
Please note that in the spring, the Saturday 10:10am lectures are held in the Center for the Arts Lecture Hall, but due to space limitations, we unfortunately cannot accommodate additional classes.
The Lecture Series schedule for the week of Monday, Mar. 30 is as follows:
Wednesday, Apr. 1:
-12:20pm: “Mendez v. Westminster School District,” presented by George Sanchez.
This lecture will address how the path to school desegregation, and the overturning of Plessy v. Ferguson, can be traced to a 1946 federal court case decided in the Ninth Court of Appeals, eight years before the pivotal Brown v. Board of Education decision. This case ruled that the exclusion of Mexican American children from California public schools were unconstitutional based on the 14th Amendment.
George Emilio Sanchez is a Professor and Chairperson of the Performing and Creative Arts Department at CSI. This is his sixth year of teaching Core 100.
Thursday, Apr. 2:
-8:00am: “Racial Segregation in the U.S. Military,” presented by Niles French.
Explore the history of segregation in the United States through examining the experiences of African American soldiers and the legal changes that our nation has faced in the military.
Niles French earned his MA degree in History from the College of Staten Island. He is an Adjunct Professor, teaching in both the Core and American Studies programs at CSI, and is also the head of Development at the Staten Island Historical Society at Historic Richmond Town.
-10:10am: “Rocking Civil Rights” presented by Richard Powers.
In “Civil Rights and Popular Music,” we will be exploring how popular culture and race have been intertwined throughout U.S. history, and how rock ‘n’ roll came to play a role in integrating this country during the civil rights era.
Richard Gid Powers has been teaching history at CSI since 1971 and was one of the people responsible for creating Core and having it be a required course at CSI. He has written books on J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, U.S. Anticommunism, and the FBI in popular entertainment, and has just published a religious thriller, The Mystery of the Trinity.
-4:40pm: “The Life, Death, and Burial of Jim Crow,” presented by Donna Scimeca.
This lecture will discuss how Jim Crow came into existence, its impact on society, and how it ended. The lecture will highlight the role played by Charles Hamilton Houston as the man who killed Jim Crow, and will include a short clip from the documentary The Road to Brown.
Donna Scimeca earned her MA in History from the College of Staten Island and is the Core Program Coordinator and Lecturer.
-6:30pm: Special Event: The Core Program, in partnership with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, will be presenting Every Mother’s Son, a documentary about police misconduct and the growing national movement for the need to reform policing. The film will be shown in the first hour (6:30pm to 7:20pm). Following the showing of the documentary, King Downing, and attorney and founder of the Human Rights – Racial Justice Center, and one of the mothers profiled in the film, Iris Baez, will join Professor John (Jay) Arena, to lead the audience in a discussion (7:30pm to 8:15pm). This is a CLUE-certified event.
John (Jay) Arena, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, earned his PhD in Sociology, and MA in Latin American Studies, from Tulane University in New Orleans and joined the College of Staten Island’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology in fall 2008. Prior to and during graduate school, he participated in various community and labor-organizing efforts in New Orleans. As a public sociologist, he has built on and maintained this commitment to social change by linking his research, writing, and teaching to the service of changing oppressive social conditions.
