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
Seán Hemingway and Joan Silber
John F. Kennedy Library
Elise (Lise) Breen has investigated the practice of slavery on Cape Ann, resurrecting profiles of individuals who resisted their enslavement as well as their enslavers. She has identified Cape Ann citizens’ participation in the slave trade, surfacing evidence from international archives as well as overlooked local materials from 1685 through the mid-nineteenth century. Lise has shared her research in her many public talks and with local institutions and scholars. Her essay, “Hidden City: Slavery and Gloucester’s Quadricentennial” in Gloucester Encounters: Essays on the Cultural History of the City 1623-2023 was published by the Gloucester Cultural Initiative. Lise co-authored Objects of Myth and Memory, American Indian Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Nerissa Williams Scott is the founder of the Boston-based company That Child Got Talent (TCGT) in 2009 and the producer of Dill. Her career experience includes more than 30 years in performing and media arts and the production of two feature films. Over the past 10 years, Nerissa has served as Production Manager for a variety of live events, theater, fashion films, documentaries, narrative shorts, and music videos in New England. Nerissa also leads the operations of Next Leadership Development Corporation and serves on the board of Women in Film and Video New England (WIFVNE). She received her MFA in Film Production (Emphasis in Producing) from Emerson College.
Old South Meeting House
Jeneé Osterheldt is a culture columnist who covers identity and social justice through the lens of culture and the arts. She centers Black lives and the lives of people of color. Sometimes this means writing about Beyoncé and Black womanhood or unpacking the importance of public art and representation. Sometimes this means taking systemic racism, sexism, and oppression to task. It always means Black lives matter. She joined the Globe in 2018. A native of Alexandria, Virginia and a graduate of Norfolk State University, Osterheldt was a 2017 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, where her studies focused on the intersection of art and justice. She previously worked as a Kansas City Star culture columnist.
Museum of Science
Moderator - Nina Yoshida Nelsen, Boston Lyric Opera Artistic Advisor and Mezzo-Soprano; Panelists - Paul Chihara, Composer; Michael Sakamoto, Choreographer; Erin Aoyama, Scholar, American Studies;
John F. Kennedy Library
The Beantown Swing Orchestra
John F. Kennedy Library
L’Organisme is a Montreal-based collective that brings choreographers with different approaches and practices together to embody and enact the complexity of human experience through movement, sound, and collaboration. Their aim is to take dance beyond the traditional performance space to bring people closer together; to cultivate compassion and to foster discovery within and for oneself and the other - be they dancer or viewer.
Peabody Essex Museum
Marjie Thompson
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Marjie Thompson
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Marjie Thompson
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
For the latest information regarding each event please contact the presenting organization.