Programs in Anthropology are excited to announce the upcoming International & Transcultural Studies Workshop featuring Dr. Amina Tawasil. Dr. Tawasil will share her research on Archipelagos of the Spray Can: Graffiti Writing Between Brooklyn and Louisville. The workshop will be held on Tuesday, February 3rd at 12:00pm.

This is a hybrid event. Please join us in-person in 281 Grace Dodge Hall or follow this link to join online. Food and drinks will be provided.

To request disability-related accommodations, contact OASID at oasid@tc.edu, (212) 678-3689, (212) 678-3853 TTY, (646) 755-3144 Video Phone as early as possible.

Drawing on four years of participant-observation, ethnographic conversations, visual documentation, and social media analysis, this presentation examines how graffiti writers create inter-urban networks through memorial practices. Using Édouard Glissant's Caribbean-rooted concepts of archipelagic thinking and relation, Dr. Tawasil analyzes how the deaths of two writers who experienced self-exile — ZEXOR (d. 2019), a Puerto Rican Brooklyn-native who moved to Louisville seeking rootedness amid gentrification, and 2BUCK (d. 2015), a Kentuckian who sought refuge in Brooklyn — transformed into interurban connections that continue to reshape Brooklyn and Louisville's urban landscapes through memorial networks.

Dr. Amina Tawasil is an Associate Professor of Teaching in Anthropology & Education in Programs in Anthropology at Teachers College, Columbia University.