Design Within Conflict, Building for Peace: Shana M. griffin, Bree Edwards

The Design Within Conflict lecture series is part of Malkit Shoshan’s Fall 2024 Interdisciplinary Art and Design Practices Seminar at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Stemming from socially engaged art and design practices, the course aims to develop artistic tools and approaches that challenge disciplinary boundaries that crossover and interact with communities, policymakers, institutions, and various experts and help cultivate new forms of interdisciplinary knowledge. The Design Within Conflict series is curated by Malkit Shoshan and co-hosted by the Graduate School of Design, ArtLab, and the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School.

Today, amid the climate emergency, militarized conflicts, mass migration, and deep-rooted inequalities of class, gender, and race, we need to reimagine visions, strategies, and pragmatic processes that allow new forms of life to flourish and place care and attention to others at the center. The lecture series will center on care: “maintaining, continuing, and repairing our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as fully as possible” and explore how artistic practice can critically engage with its surroundings and shape diverse visions and narratives of care across various scales and contexts—from the individual body to the collective, and from domestic spaces to a broader ecology—while examining the connections that bind us, allowing us to see and acknowledge our shared experiences.

Shana M. griffin is a feminist activist, sociologist, abolitionist, artist, and geographer based in New Orleans. Her practice is research-based, activist-centered, and decolonial, centering the experiences of Black women most vulnerable to violence and social exclusion. She founded PUNCTUATE, a feminist initiative integrating critical research methods with activism and socially engaged art. She cofounded Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, the first community land trust in New Orleans.

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Host or Publisher ArtLab Harvard University