About the Artists AMANDA SHEA Amanda Shea is a two-time Boston Music Award-winning Spoken Word Artist. Shea is an artist, performer, educator, artivist, publicist, host, and curator. She co-founded and curated six iterations of Activating ARTivism, a community festival to amplify POC through art, activism, and resistance. Her work can be found in the Museum of Fine Arts, The Boston Globe, TEDX, TEDXRoxbury, Netflix, Prime Video, BBC News, GBH, and much more. Shea will be releasing her first book, Pieces of Shea, in the spring of 2024. Amanda's work examines her personal life experiences, social justice issues, and healing through trauma utilizing art as the tool. ANITA D. Anita D. is a spoken word artist from Brockton, Massachusetts. Formally a slam competitor, Anita has been on the San Diego Slam Team as well as the House Slam Team of Boston. She has been a finalist in both the National Poetry Slam and the Individual World Poetry Slam. Her work centers around her personal life experiences and covers topics of generational trauma, mental health, domestic violence, women’s rights, and more. She has been featured on the platforms All Def Poetry and Button Poetry where she was acknowledged twice as “Best of Boston.” D. RUFF D. Ruff is a Roxbury-bred spoken word poet, author of "Staying on 94: Tales from a Misguided Soul," Creative Director of Boston Pulse Poetry program, and has been the co-host of the "if you can Feel It, you can Speak It" Open Mic movement for the last 13 years. He has been writing and performing for over 20 years, most recently in the NAACP convention and the Isabella Stewart Gardner production called "Dear Mr. McKeller." Most of his poems stem from personal experiences and his environments and therefore range in topics from black love and heartbreak to inequality and black culture. D. Ruff performs with inspiring passion in hopes that any black body will also want to find a way to express themselves, find that “tribe” and achieve their greatness, with the intention of leaving the cycle of hurt, pain, and negativity right where it was showcased. About the Advisor DANIEL CARPENTER Daniel Carpenter is the Allie S. Freed Professor of Government and Chair of the Department of Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Professor Carpenter's research on petitioning appears in his book Democracy by Petition: Popular Politics in Transformation, 1790-1870, which was awarded the J. David Greenstone Prize of the American Political Science Association, the Seymour Martin Lipset Prize of the American Political Science Association and the James P. Hanlan Book Award of the New England Historical Association. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1989 with distinction in Honors Government and received his doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago in 1996. He taught previously at Princeton University (1995-1998) and the University of Michigan (1998-2002).
Old State House
For the latest information regarding each event please contact the presenting organization.