Sessions For: Marsal Family School of Educ

Developed for the Black Curatorial Institute (BCI)
Facilitator: Dr. Kelli Morgan

Wednesday, January 28, 2025
1:00 - 2:30 pm; Tribute Room (1322)

Practicing Equity is an interactive seminar designed for educators, artists, and cultural workers committed to building inclusive, community-centered teaching and research practices. The session integrates foundational texts from Black Feminist scholars and curators, alongside various community-centered exhibitions, to connect critical theory with actionable professional practice. Additionally, it outlines a methodology and approach to scholarship that reimagines possibilities for spaces of learning. Rooted in the Black Curatorial Institute’s Community Impact and Connection to Practice core pillars, this curriculum encourages participants to see teaching, research, and curatorial work as both an ethical responsibility and a transformative form of care.

This event is presented by the Eileen Lappin Weiser Center for the Learning Sciences in partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). Light snacks will be provided.

Register to secure your spot.

Speaker: Jon Wargo, Associate Professor, Educational Studies, Marsal Family School of Education

Thursday, February 5, 2026
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Tribute Room - 1322
Marsal Family School of Education Building
610 E. University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

Professor Jon Wargo shares insights from his project with Shakespeare in Detroit’s Summer Youth Conservatory—a program providing hands-on learning experiences culminating in a youth-led production of a classic Shakespeare play.

In his presentation, Professor Wargo explores how youth participants in a dramatic arts conservatory cultivated new relationscapes through the embodied processes of ‘feeling-with’ as they learned to play a part. Drawing on theoretical insights from affect studies and interaction analysis, Wargo re-enters video data generated from two ‘felt’ event sequences during rehearsal: animal work and stage combat. Through this dual lens and approach, he investigates how Manning's (2012) concept of “thinking-in-motion” functioned both as an artistic technique and a sentient mode of relational understanding. In doing so, Wargo seeks to extend conversations surrounding the performing arts’ place in the learning sciences while advancing the affective tapestry through which we might embroider and understand ensemble learning.

This project and event is supported by the Eileen Lappin Weiser Center for the Learning Sciences.

Bring your lunch and your curiosity! Light snacks will be provided.

Join the Eileen Lappin Weiser Center for the Learning Sciences to hear from Dr. Rebecca Quintana and Annie Zhou about their project working on AI-Generated Instructor Avatars.
This is an informal, works in progress conversation. Light snacks and beverages will be provided. Attendees are invited to bring their lunch!