Speaking into Silences - Incite at Columbia University
Speaking into Silences
- Funding Program Assembling Voices
- Timeframe 2022–2023
- Location Mayagüez, Puerto Rico
- Assembling Voices Fellow Ricia Anne Chansky
- Partner Organization Oral History Lab @UPRM
Speaking into Silences organized four mass-listening events across the Puerto Rican archipelago: on the west coast, in the mountainous interior, in an underserved neighborhood in San Juan, and on an island municipio. These events centered stories of surviving simultaneous stratified disasters—including hurricanes, earthquakes, political upheaval, economic depression, and the Covid-19 pandemic—within a context of colonial practices and institutionalized racism.
Community partners were empowered with funding, equipment, and training to record their own narratives. Support from Assembling Voices went toward organizing a day of mass-listening, activism, music, and food at community centers.
About the Team
-
Ricia Anne ChanskyRicia Anne Chansky, Ph.D. is a professor in the English Department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and the Director of the Oral History Lab @UPRM. Her work is focused on decolonial storytelling projects as a means of amplifying the voices of disaster survivors for the purpose of mitigating the climate crisis within the Puerto Rican archipelago and around the world.
More Projects
-
go to Art in the Midst of Cultural and Ecological Crisis
Art in the Midst of Cultural and Ecological CrisisExamining the work of artists responding to ecological crisis and cultural erasure. Part of the Breakdown/ (Re)generation Project
-
go to Hey Neighbor
Hey NeighborConnecting communities from all five boroughs of New York City around storytelling and portrait photography. Part of Assembling Voices
-
go to The Promise and Paradox of Climate Change Litigation
The Promise and Paradox of Climate Change LitigationExamining ambitious litigation pursued by South African Indigenous groups to oppose mining and protect their way of life. Part of the Breakdown/ (Re)generation Project
-
go to The Bifurcation of Racial Justice Discourse
The Bifurcation of Racial Justice DiscourseInvestigating the bifurcated conversation around Black Lives Matter using large web datasets. Part of the Breakdown/ (Re)generation Project