From Westchester to the World: Patricia Murphy Robinson and Black Feminist Anti-Imperialism
A conversation and film screening of "Pat! A Revolutionary Black Molecule," with Lupe Family, filmmaker and executive producer, and Emilia Ottoo, creative director. Led by Dr. Robyn Spencer.
Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Time: 2:15–3:30 p.m.
Location: Amersfort Lounge, Student Center, Brooklyn College
Patricia Murphy Robinson (1926–2013) was an anti-imperialist activist and left theoretician who authored seminal essays about black women, working-class politics, and socialism in the 1960s and 1970s. Lupe Family (filmmaker) and Emilia A. Ottoo (creative director) will show excerpts of the documentary in progress, "Pat! A Revolutionary Black Molecule," and talk about the creative process of using documentary film to recapture the history of radical black women. In conversation with Robyn C. Spencer, who is working on a biography of Patricia Murphy Robinson entitled "Sista Socialist: Patricia Murphy Robinson and Black Left Feminist Intellectual History in New York."
Lupe Family/S. Lupe Guinier
Lupe Family/S. Lupe Guinier—Lupe Family is a video producer, novelist, playwright, and poet whose work centers on labor, women, and undoing racism. She has facilitated many workshops and, talk backs, including using meditation and yoga to undo racism through reflection at the annual Lehman College Restorative/TRANSFORMATIVE Justice Conference through City University of New York. She has led faith/spiritual-based workshops using walking meditation and conflict resolution and Playback Theater/Theatre of the Oppressed Tools. She co-ordinated for seven years the Harlem Wellness Circle using energy healing and yoga for restoring well-being. For more than five years she went to New York City detention centers to lead incarcerated youth in restorative yoga.
Emilia A. Ottoo
Emilia A. Ottoo, alias emma lee, is a creative young professional living in New York City. Born in Uganda and raised in Harlem and the outer boroughs, her experiences combine the pressure, diversity, and possibility of urban life, immigrant spirit, and global awareness. She uses these in her transformative outlets of music, creative arts, digital media, sports and wellness, entrepreneurship, cultural exchange, community service, and youth empowerment.
Dr. Robyn C. Spencer
Dr. Robyn C. Spencer is a historian who focuses on black social protest after World War II, urban and working-class radicalism, and gender. In 2018–19 she is Women’s and Gender Studies Visiting Endowed Chair at Brooklyn College. Her book The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland was published in 2016. She is co-founder of the Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project and has written widely on gender and Black Power. Her writings have appeared in the Journal of Women's History and Souls as well as The Washington Post, Vibe Magazine, Colorlines, and Truthout. She has received awards for her work from the Mellon foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Association of Black Women Historians.
