Systemic racism is defined as “policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization, and that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race (Cambridge Dictionary).” How does systemic racism bleed into education? The University of Cincinnati Libraries’ R.E.S.P.E.C.T. developed a 20-Day Self-Education Challenge to explore examples of systemic racism – both past and present – that exist in various areas of education, along with ways in which we can help dismantle those practices.
Scheduled to take place May 22-June 16, the challenge is divided into four weeks, each with a different theme.
- Week 1: Critical Race Theory – what is it?
- Week 2: Systemic Racism in Education – a history
- Week 3: Systemic Racism in Academia
- Week 4: Systemic Racism in Academic Libraries
Learn on your own and then gather online each Friday at 11am via Zoom for a moderated discussion of each week’s module. Register now to watch, read and listen to informative pieces. The challenge is free and open to all. Each week’s module will be sent to those who register along with the Zoom link for the weekly conversation
R.E.S.P.E.C.T. (Racial Equity Support & Programming to Educate the Community Team) is a UC Libraries committee charged with developing external programming that explicitly addresses the negative role that systemic racism plays in our society.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, an exhibit installed on the 4th floor lobby of the Walter C. Langsam Library features work by the 2022/23 Poetry Stacked poets. Included in the exhibit are poems from 13 of the University of Cincinnati student, faculty and community member poets that read at the series. Included in the exhibit are UC faculty poets: Aditi Machado, Rebecca Lindenberg, Felicia Zamora and Simone Savannah.
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Her poetry collections include Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press 2022), and A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila Na Gig Editions 2020) winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award. She is an artist in residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts, a Pillars of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio, the founder/executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of its anthology series Women Speak. Her work has been featured in Verse Daily, World Literature Today, The New York Times and Poem-a-Day. 
As in previous years, entries will be judged according to such categories as “Most Delicious,” “Most Creative,” “Most Checked Out” and “Most Literary.” Those awarded “Best Student Entry” and “Best Overall” will win UC swag.
Felicia Zamora is the author of six books of poetry including, I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize (University of Iowa Press, 2021) and the 2022 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, and Body of Render, Benjamin Saltman Award winner (Red Hen Press, 2020). She won the 2022 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from The Georgia Review, a 2022 Tin House Next Book Residency, and a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, AGNI, The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2022, Boston Review, Georgia Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Orion, Poetry Magazine, The Nation and others. She is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and associate poetry editor for the Colorado Review.