Colloquium – Caitlin Cahill

Social Science and Cultural Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; Graduate Center, CUNY

SPEAKER:

Caitlin Cahill, Pratt Institute

TITLE:

Home is where crisis is lived everyday

ABSTRACT:

Three years ago the Researchers for Fair Policing, an intergenerational participatory action research team, set out to document the experiences of young people growing up with “Broken Windows” policing in the contemporary context of gentrifying/still disinvested New York City.  Foregrounding an intimate and embodied geopolitics, our research explores the contradictions of the neoliberal city, offering insights into the intertwined struggles over representation, real estate, policing, public space, and the sites of social reproduction: home, school, and community.  This talk will focus on the ways that the crisis is policed at home (Hall et al., 1978). Our work suggests alternatives for understanding our cities and ourselves, and a new geographical imagination for sustaining affective alliances and building political community.

BIO:

Caitlin Cahill is an Assistant Professor of Urban Geography & Politics, Pratt Institute. A community-based urban & youth studies scholar, for over fifteen years Caitlin has conducted participatory action research projects with young people in cities across the US investigating the everyday intimate experiences of global urban restructuring, specifically as it concerns gentrification, immigration, education, and zero tolerance policies. Caitlin is interested in co-creating collective spaces for dialogue, creativity, knowledge production, critical research and action.  Caitlin is a founding faculty member of the Public Science Project, a center for critical participatory action research & justice at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. In Salt Lake City, Utah she co-founded the Mestizo Arts & Activism Collective, an intergenerational social justice think tank that engages young people as catalysts of change.