Event Details

Wednesday, May 20, 2026, 12:00 - 2:00PM - A "Gems of the Ocean: Black Maritime Imaginings" Panel with Prof. Matana Roberts & Dr. Caroline Collins - PEB 201 (rsvp to support catering)

This panel will feature Dr. Andie Berry, Assistant Professor of Theater Arts at Brandeis University, Professor Matana Roberts, UC San Diego, Assistant Professor of Music and Dr. Caroline Collins, UC San Diego, Assistant Professor of Social and Spatial Justice in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Dr. Berry will present her paper titled "'A Kingdom Out of Nothing': Liberatory Ecologies in Gem of the Ocean" which reads the literary and physical presence of the seemingly immortal 350-year-old character Aunt Ester in August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean (2003) as simultaneously a feminine healer and a masculine seafarer while guiding characters to the City of Bones at the center of the Atlantic Ocean. The paper argues that Aunt Ester theorizes the ocean as a paradoxical location of threat, violence, and freedom that opens Black feminist and speculative interpretations of Wilson's larger American Century Cycle.

Professor Roberts will present their work on the sonic life of ancestry, oceanic migration, and somatic experiencing through sound and motion. Rooted in their embodied practice of ocean swimming, surfing, and other water-based activities, Roberts is a dynamic saxophonist, composer, improviser, and mixed-media sound conceptualist.

Dr. Caroline Collins, Assistant Professor of Social and Spatial Justice in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, will present her scholarly project examining early histories of oceanic movement and settlement by people of African descent along the Pacific Coast. Paying special attention to the project's public history component, this talk centers the Pacific not just as a geographical site, but as an archive—one activated by the bodies, migrations, and histories of Black life. (UC San Diego Calendar)

Thursday, May 21, 2026, 4:30 - 6:30PM - Staged reading of Hunting M, a Black Feminist reimagining of Medusa by Andie Berry - Arthur Wagner Theater, GH 157 (rsvp) 

Hunting M--- by Dr. Andie Berry, A Staged Reading Presented by The Black Feminist Creative Arts Residency is a Black feminist reimagining of the classical story of Medusa. Brought to life by student actors from the Department of Theatre and Dance, the play is set "at the edge of the world". The time? "How long does it take the scour the Earth?"

“My spirit moves to tell of shapes transformed
into new bodies. Gods, inspire my work
(for you’ve transformed it too) and from creation
to my own time spin out unceasing song.”
--Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by Stephanie McCarter, 1.1-4

“I exist in between, now: between being killed
and being un-dead; between life on earth
and life beyond it; between all time, which
has no beginning and no end, and all space
which is both a seedling as well as the sun it
yearns for. All that is available to me. I join
the underwater women; stroll with them
in dark light, listen to their music in the
spangled deep.”
--Toni Morrison, Desdemona, 4

“…a ‘looking’ for M --- that asks when s/he might be, even as she
haunts us now, invests in an interpretive project that, while
circumscribed by the exigencies of the present, is nonetheless
creative.”
--Kara Keeling, “Looking for M—: Queer Temporality, Black
Political Possibility, and Poetry from the Future,” 577 (UC San Diego Calendar)

PEB is the Social Sciences Public Engagement Building, and GH is Galbraith Hall. See map below or visit UCSD Maps for directional support.