Difficult Dialogue: Microaggressions
Part of the CHA's Difficult Dialogues: Community Conversations series and Colorado Chautauqua's Voices at Chautauqua series.
Microaggressions: What Are They and How Can We Understand How They Hurt Others?
Have you ever been told that something you or someone you know said was a microaggression? Have you had a friend or colleague make a comment about your identity that hit you the wrong way or hurt your feelings? If it’s micro doesn’t that mean the aggression isn’t that bad? Join us to talk about what microaggressions are, how they can hurt people’s feelings, and what we can all do to not hurt people’s feelings or how we can respond when people we care about hurt our feelings.
Event Guidelines
Our objective is NOT to necessarily agree, fix anything, prove anyone right or wrong, or alter anyone’s position.
We are committed to fostering productive dialogues in the hopes that minds and hearts might expand. We ask that you:
1. Keep an open mind
2. Be respectful of others
3. Listen with the intent to understand
4. Speak your own truth
We expect to experience discomfort when talking about hard things. Remain engaged and recognize that the discomfort can lead to problem-solving and authentic understanding.
Jennifer Ho, CHA Director, Ethnic Studies Professor, CU Boulder
She/Her
The daughter of a refugee father from China and an immigrant mother from Jamaica, whose own parents were immigrants from Hong Kong, Jennifer Ho (she/her) is the director of the Center for the Humanities & the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she also holds an appointment as Professor in the Ethnic Studies department.
She is the past president of the Association for Asian American Studies (2020-2022) and sits on the board of directors for the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), the National Committee on US-China Relations, and Kundiman (an Asian American literature non-profit). Ho has co-edited two collection of essays, Narrative, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States (Ohio State University Press 2017) and Teaching Approaches to Asian North American Literature (Modern Language Association 2022), and she is the author of three scholarly monographs, Consumption and Identity in Asian American Coming-of-Age Novels (Routledge 2005), Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture (Rutgers University Press 2015), which won the South Atlantic Modern Language Association award for best monograph, and Understanding Gish Jen (University of South Carolina Press 2015).
She has published in journals such as Modern Fiction Studies, Journal for Asian American Studies, Amerasia Journal, The Global South, Southern Cultures, Japan Forum, and Oxford American. Her next two academic projects are a breast cancer memoir and a monograph that will consider Asian Americans in the global south through the narrative of her maternal family’s immigration from Hong Kong to Jamaica to North America. In addition to her academic work, Ho is active in community engagement around issues of race and intersectionality, leading workshops on anti-racism and how to talk about race in our current political climate.
Steven Frost, Assistant Professor, Department of Media Studies; Associate Director of the Unstable Lab Design at ATLAS Institute, CU Boulder
They/Them
Steven Frost (they/them) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Studies at CU Boulder, Associate Director of the Unstable Design Lab, and an interdisciplinary fiber artist. Their research focuses on textiles, queer studies, and community development. Using weaving, Frost combines traditional materials like yarn and cotton with non-traditional materials from a range of sources, exploring the ways history and time are uniquely embedded in textiles. Frost is a Co-Founder of the Experimental Weaving Residency, Slay the Runway, and the Colorado Sewing Rebellion and the Associate Director of the Unstable Design Lab at CU Boulder's Roser Atlas Institute. Frost has exhibited and performed across the US and Internationally. Frost's work has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and can currently be seen at the Denver Art Museum.
