Annual Themes

For 2023-2024, the CSSR asks us to think: FOREWORD. The word FOREWORD — most often used to describe literary introductions — also prompts consideration of the tension between that which precedes us and the conditions that will yet emerge and be carried forward.

In 2022-2023, the CSSR asks us to think: After/Math. How have mathematical analysis, algorithmic knowledge, and statistical modeling produced and reproduced categories of race and demarcation? In what ways have practices of applied mathematical knowledge in fields such as artificial intelligence, biometrics, and actuarial science codified racial formations?

Where do we intersect with structures of race and forms of structural racism? How does race intersect with other categories of analysis? The 2021-2022 annual theme, Intersections, draws on both the spatial presence of structures of race at Roanoke College and the concept of ‘intersectionality’ which forms an essential role in academic debates about structural racism.

The CSSR's first annual theme is: Openings. The theme captures the process of opening a new teaching and research space on campus; it thinks about openings as a series of opportunities for new forms of thinking and dialogue about structures of race; and it considers the difficult movements we must make between the past and present as we interpret the structures of race on and around our campus.