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31st Annual International Roundtable

Slowing Down, Seeking Roots, Making Sanctuary: Belonging Beyond the Anthropocene

“Slowing down is not about reducing one’s speed but about lingering in the places we are not used to. Seeking out new questions. Becoming accountable to more than what rests on the surface. Seeking roots. … Making Sanctuary.”
Bayo Akomolafe (2020)

Inspired by the idea of slow curation, we ask how we may stretch our collective attention span, to create and inhabit an extended flow of compassion, creativity and curiosity, of belonging in this time of global turmoil. We hope that the theme of IRT 2025 will grow out of our conversations and learnings from IRT 2024, allowing us to further explore the spacious idea of “belonging beyond the anthropocene”. 

In trying to understand belonging’s multivalences and messiness, we invite the community to think beyond human-centered frameworks. The prevailing sense of despair might not be new to humanity, but what looms larger is the constriction of our human imagination by the imperatives of capital, the nation-state, and the technologies harnessed by them. 

What does belonging ask of us? What does it mean to be humbled by our fellow human beings and by other beings who have graciously shared the planet with us, and to things and forces that elude rationality? 

What practices and ideas related to belonging might emerge if we challenge frameworks of modernity predicated on the idea of human rationality, constructed through binary logics: “human vs. nature”, “white vs. black”, “men vs. women”, etc. These ideas were supposed to bring us “progress” and/or “freedom”. But where are we now? At a crossroads? At a precipice? What does it feel like to dwell in spaces of liminality? What does it mean to find spaces–for roots and sanctuaries–between categories that have so far anchored, shaped, and separated subjectivities, communities, and movements? What does it take to cultivate a politics that seeks not solidness in solidarity, but flows of imagination and belonging between and beyond humans?

Is it ok if we begin our Roundtable with questions, and end with more questions?

Is it ok if, for at least part of the roundtable, we do not sit at a table or even on chairs; if we relate to each other and the world around us in ways that do not solely depend on the verbal language of humans?

Belonging invites multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary inquiries along a vast spectrum of scales: from digital belonging complicated by mis- and disinformation to analog belonging fostered through aesthetic practices or artistic creations, from planetary belonging (climate justice and sustainability) to belonging on campus (in relation to our sesquicentennial celebration and other efforts in community building). How do we make sanctuaries in all of the time-spaces we inhabit? 

International Roundtable 2023 Theme Selection Panel

Hui Wilcox, Dean, Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship
Sedric McClure, Associate Dean, Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship
Mozhdeh Khodarahmi, Associate Library Director – AIRS
Joëlle Vitiello, Professor & Chair French and Francophone Studies
Gonzalo Guzman, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies
Lela Pierce, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History
Yinka Saba, Neuroscience, ’24
Elizabeth Bolsoni, Administrative Coordinator, Olin-Rice Hub

International Roundtable 2023 Organizing Committee

Hui Wilcox, Dean, Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship
Joëlle Vitiello, Professor & Chair French and Francophone Studies
Khant Wai Yan, International Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, ’25
Lisa McCarthy, Administrative Coordinator, Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship
Shakthi Palraj, Economics, ’27
Mozhdeh Khodarahmi, Associate Library Director – AIRS
Nadia Linoo, Program Coordinator, Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship
Sedric McClure, Associate Dean, Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship
Ruth Janisch, Associate Dean, Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship

Plenary Schedule

Wednesday, October 9, 2024 (Alexander G. Hill Ballroom, Kagin Hall)

  • 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. Opening Keynote: Bayo Akomolafe – For Those Spirited Away: Making Sanctuary as a Vocation of Exile in Restless Times
  • 6:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Public reception

Thursday, October 10, 2024 (Weyerhaeuser Boardroom)

  • 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Keynote Two: John Kim – Solidarity Programs in the Anthropocene
  • 11:45 p.m. – 1:15 p.m. Lunch provided
  • 1:15 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Community Roundtable Conversations: Belonging Beyond the Anthropocene

Friday, October 11, 2024 (Location TBD)

  • 12:45 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. Closing Reflection with Art and Lunch

Student-led Sessions

Thursday, October 10, 2024 (Locations TBD)

  • 8:15 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Student Panel #1: Luding (Dean) Hu, ‘26 and Lea Wang ‘27 – LivingHood, Self-Expression, and Kinship of Shanghai and China’s Queers
  • 9:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Student Panel #2: Kampe Rushoka ‘26 – Truth Talking: A Grassroots Method Used to Heal a Divided Country
  • 2:45 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Student Panel #3: Marouane El Bahraoui and Nancy Bostrom – International Students Research Project: Belonging and Community
  • 4:15 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. Student Panel #4: Yamali Rodas Figueroa, Dani Arena, Damaris Zamora-Aguilar – Cultivating Identity and Empowerment: Celebrating Central American Culture and Building Sanctuary Spaces

Friday, October 11, 2024 (Locations TBD)

  • 8:15 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Student Panel #5: Mathilda Barr ‘25 and Minor Kishi ‘25 – Soil and Solidarity
  • 9:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Student Panel #6: Meira Smit, ‘25 and Joel Sadofsky’ 25 – Sitting with the Prairie: Doing Nothing in Multispecies Community
  • 11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Student Panel #7: Aram Petrosyan, Mozhdeh Khodarahmi, Bethany Miller, Akshat Koirala – Digital Sanctuary and Belonging in the Age of AI
  • 11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Student Panel #8: Meira Smit ‘25, Stella Gardner – Sow and Tell: Planting Seeds of Change in Environmental Storytelling