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The Indiana Daily Student

Deep Dialogue workshops use poetry to discuss race, ethnicity

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This brief has been published to correct, clarify and add new information to a previously published story.

IU is in the midst of a four-week long workshop event called “Deep Dialogue: Readings on Race and Ethnicity” to promote conversation about the impact of race and ethnicity through reading poetry as a community.

Although the first workshop has already passed, there will be three more workshops on each Saturday from Sept. 16 to Sept. 30. In addition, there will be a final event on Oct. 14 to review previous workshop topics and decide how to apply the conversations to real life, Professor Maria Hamilton Abegunde, co-facilitator of the workshops, said.

“The conversation shouldn’t end at the workshops,” she said. “We want people to take what they’ve learned and connect to conversations across the country.”

Each workshop, which is held at the Monroe Convention Center, uses a work of literature as the central point of focus, which Abegunde said she hopes will provoke deeper, more meaningful conversations.

Abegunde said that each piece of literature will be read in lectio divina, or "divine reading," style. This is a traditional Benedictine practice of scriptural reading, in which participants read out loud with each other. 

In doing so, readers can place their egos aside and fully focus on the reading, Abegunde said.

“Reading in this manner allows us to focus and mindfully read the work, not focusing on the words but rather the lives that are being written about,” she said.

The workshops are sponsored by the Writers Guild at Bloomington and Indiana University’s Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs. It is funded by Indiana Humanities with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The opening panel for the workshops featured four panelists from the IU community who discussed their multiracial backgrounds and the struggles in their communities. 

The panelists were masters student Willy Palomo, adjunct lecturer Lisa Kwong, retired professor John McCluskey, Jr. and fourth-year Ph.D. student Traci Jordan.

The recording of the panel can be found under the Standing Room Only page on the WFHB website.  

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