Cat Cafe
2-4 pm | HST Forum Room 101
Love cats?! So do we. Foxy’s Cradle is a nonprofit kitten nursery providing care and adoptions for kittens without homes. Grab a coffee, see if any cats like you enough to give you any attention, and stay for an informative talk by Dr. Kelly Wright, experimental sociolinguist, Lexicographer, and scholar-activist researching disabling institutionalized linguistic oppression to enhance equity and inclusion across diverse contexts.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC – Register here

Dr. Kelly Wright
2-3:30 pm | HST 3rd Floor
Dr. Kelly Wright is a sociolinguist, Lexicographer, and scholar-activist at Virginia Polytechnic University. Dr. Wright’s public-facing and peer-reviewed scholarship utilizes co-created and equity-grounded approaches to understanding the role of linguistic expressions that shape our identities, evolve ideologies, and offer opportunities for justice. Learn how perception flows through the body and how this essential embodiment creates variation in linguistic systems. Most individuals command a linguistic style that deviates from the Standard, and many individuals are aware that this deviation is typically perceived as inferiority. Dr. Wright will use this space to encourage radical love of one's own language and to encounter free speech from an embodied perspective.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC – Register here

Dr. Sami Schalk
4-5:30 pm | HST 3rd Floor
Dr. Sami Schalk, author of “Black Disability Politics” and “Bodyminds Reimagined,” Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and pleasure activist, is the foremost researcher on disability, race, and gender in contemporary American literature and culture. Learn about love and struggle with Dr. Sami Schalk in this conversation moderated by Marcon Mountain Hawks Charlie Paynter and Aisha Touré.
*This talk will be interpreted in American Sign Language (ASL).
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC – Register here

Art in My Heart: Artist’s Workshop
5:30-6:45 pm | HST 3rd Floor
Award-winning student leader, artist, and future education policymaker Afiwa Afandalo is leading an art workshop inspired by her art and designed to render Black women and girls visible with fully embodied love. Afiwa’s work teaches us to illuminate Black joy through representations of Black girls and Black women in love, being loved, and living life in spite of oppression and injustice. You do not have to be an artist to have art in your heart.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC – Register here

Where We Stand Closing Ceremony
6:45-7 pm | HST 3rd Floor
Stick around for a few minutes after Afiwa’s Workshop to connect with the community and take stock of the love embodied in the 2024 Radical Love Conference. Adam Ercolani, Dept of Theatre and Campus Engagement Manager at Zoellner Arts Center will lead the “Where We Stand” ritual, an experiential exercise designed to facilitate understanding and a sense of belonging.
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC – Register here