Ekene Ijeoma’s Black Mobility and Safety: From Learning to Loving in the US course includes a series of public guest panels around living while Black. Tune in for the next event of this spring, featuring Frank Baumgartner and Gretchen Sorin, on March 30 at 1pm.
Event
Black Mobility and Safety Seminar: Driving while Black with Frank Baumgartner and Gretchen Sorin
Frank Baumgartner
Frank R. Baumgartner holds the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professorship in the Department of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is one of the country's leading scholars of public policy, framing, agenda-setting, policy change, and lobbying and has published extensively on these topics from both US and comparative perspectives. In recent years, he has focused on statistical studies of criminal justice issues, including the death penalty, racial disparities in traffic stop outcomes, and other issues. His most recent book Suspect Citizens (2018), which focuses on racial differences in the outcomes of routine traffic stops, was recognized with the Best Book Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association in 2019. His research on traffic stops following up and extending from his 2018 book has recently been published in the Policy Studies Journal, Politics, Groups, and Identities, and the Journal of Race and Ethnic Politics. He has active research projects on various criminal justice-related topics including the death penalty, racial disparities in arrests and sentencing, as well as traffic stops.
Gretchen Sorin
Gretchen Sorin is a historian and the Director and Distinguished Professor at the Cooperstown Graduate Program (CGP) at SUNY Oneonta. Before joining CGP, she worked as a museum educator, a director and a consultant to more than 200 museums over 30 years. In addition to directing the program, she teaches courses in museum studies, museum exhibition, and African American art. Her particular area of expertise is exhibition development, and she continues to enjoy creating exhibitions that address issues of social justice, with the belief that museums have a civic responsibility. Research for her recent book Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights (2020), began more than 20 years ago when she was an exhibition curator assembling visual records and oral histories of how the automobile provided greater mobility for Black Americans while further exposing them to systemic racism across the country. Sorin collaborated with the filmmaker Ric Burns to develop the book into the PBS documentary Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America (2020).