Anita Chari

Speaker Bio:

Anita Chari is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. She is a somatic educator, a faculty member in the Inside-Out Prison Education Program, and the co-founder of Embodying Your Curriculum, a program that introduces trauma-informed pedagogies to the higher education classroom in the context of the pandemic and global movements against historical racial violence. Her scholarly and creative writing focuses on the significance of aesthetics, artistic practices, and embodiment for critical theory and practice. Her first monograph, A Political Economy of the Senses, was published in 2015 by Columbia University Press, and she is currently working on a book on the conceptual art collective, Claire Fontaine. You can read more about her work at anitachari.com.

Presentation: The Pandemic Condition: Meditations on Virtual Vulnerability and Embodiment

Political theorist and somatic educator Anita Chari will explore the embodied, emotional, and perceptual dimensions of the current moment, thinking through the implications of experiencing the global pandemic while dwelling largely within boxes and screens. How do we perceive our relationship to society and to our bodies within the frame of the technologies through which we live the present? We watch the marketing language of the moment shift to softer tones, as capitalism wears its own protective facemask (or maybe a ventilator), selling us a brighter and more comfortable form of atomization and isolation. Even amidst the vulnerability of quarantine and social distancing, we are seduced over and over again through our screens and phones by commodities that are unsustaining. The situation calls into question what human beings truly need right now to survive, emotionally, physically, economically, and politically. Where can our gazes, our hearts, and our pens turn in these times of crisis, as so much of what has sustained a way of life falls away? 

Breakout Presentation: Deepening Your Resiliency in a Time of Overwhelm

In this breakout session, Anita Chari and Angelica Singh will lead you through embodied practices for grounding and slowing down your nervous system during what is, for many, an overwhelming time. The session will teach you protocols that you can use to settle yourself in contexts that you may find yourself in on a daily basis, especially during the pandemic.

• Learn how to take care of yourself and come out of an activated state without inhibiting your workflow.
• Explore trauma-informed practices to guide you in relating to a patient, or another person, in overwhelming moments.
• Receive protocols to down regulate, integrate and complete when you've had a challenging shift.

Chari and Singh are the co-founders of "Embodying your Curriculum," an online program that teaches educators of all disciplines how to integrate trauma-informed practices, pedagogies of social justice and diversity, and the neuroscience of mental health into the classroom. You can learn more about the program at https://anitachari.com/embodying-your-curriculum/.