Join the Ethnic Studies Department for our colloquium speaker series:

“Unbroken Spirit: The Rise of the Pelican Bay Short Corridor and California SHU Prison Hunger Strikes”

By Angélica Camacho

Monday, November 4, 1:00–2:00 pm in INTS 3023

The 2011 and 2013 Pelican Bay and California SHU prison hunger strikes marked the beginning of a contemporary prisoner-led movement that would expose the brutality and corruption of the California Department of Corrections. I argue that the theorizing emanating from this historical prisoner and family-led movement provides us valuable insights for anti-prison organizing that can help us transform our way out of over 50 years of tough-on-crime legislation. Additionally, these hunger strikes remind us of the strength and power wielded by a common insurrectionary and unbroken spirit. Whereas even after years of being submitted to one of the most repressive sites in the world, incarcerated people adamantly refused to collaborate with their captors. Instead, they chose camaraderie across racial and geographical lines, reclaiming their bodies, and weaponizing their words to craft new possibilities for the future.

Angélica Camacho (Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, UC Riverside, 2017) is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice Studies at San Francisco State University. Her current research documents the 2011-2013 Pelican Bay California prisoner hunger strikes and the subsequent uprising of their families in opposition to the conditions of confinement in Secure Housing Units (SHU).

Join the Ethnic Studies Department for our colloquium speaker series:

“X es mi Amor: On Latino Queer Spaces and Preserving the Mundane”

By Reynaldo Rivera

Monday, October 14, 1:00–2:00 pm in INTS 3023 (Please note the room change)

Reynaldo Rivera is a photographer whose work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, and Berlin. His photos are in the permanent collections of MOCA, LACMA, and The Getty Museum (L.A.), and of MoMA and The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC). He is the author of Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City (2020), which the Los Angeles Times called “an alluring yet candid record of interconnected communities.”