Saturday, January 18, 2020, 10 a.m. - noon Immigration Politics: Between Rights and Restrictions with Dr. Alise Coen
Debates over U.S. immigration policy have been shaped by a complex history characterized by tensions between migration restrictions and migrant rights. To understand ongoing policy shifts regarding immigration and asylum, it is important to engage with the evolution of both nativism and human rights advocacy. International law and evolving court interpretations have also played a crucial role in immigration politics, exemplified by recent discussions about the Flores Settlement Agreement and zero tolerance policies designed to deter undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers. Dr. Coen’s presentation aims to weave together these diverse and sometimes paradoxical historical forces to help shed light on current political realities.
Alise Coen is Associate Professor of Political Science at UW-Green Bay. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Delaware and her B.A. in International Relations from Syracuse University. Her research focuses on refugees, migration, human rights, and U.S. foreign policy and has been published in journals such as Ethics & International Affairs, Politics & Religion, and The International Journal of Human Rights. Dr. Coen is currently working on a book about U.S. refugee responsibility-sharing and the impact of the 2016 U.S. elections.
Presented in Partnership - Door County Auditorium & Door County Civility Project
Saturday, February 8, 2020, 10 a.m. - noon
How Many Reconstructions Does It Take to Be Free?: A Meditation on the Long Civil Rights Movement with Dr. Vince Lowery
With the abolition of slavery, the United States entered the period of Reconstruction, which historian Eric Foner calls “the unfinished revolution.” The meaning of freedom for African-Americans, and in fact all Americans, remained in question. That “revolution” began again in the mid-twentieth century with the civil rights movement, which some historians refer to as the “Second Reconstruction.” Now fifty years removed from that event, in light of the persistence of Jim Crow-style policies and practices, many are calling for a “Third Reconstruction.” In his talk, Vince Lowery will trace the threads connecting these three eras, exploring moments of progress and regression and the road left to travel.
Vince Lowery is the Director of Student Success and Engagement at UW-Green Bay, a role he assumed after spending his first decade at UWGB in the classroom, teaching an array of African-American history and ethnic studies courses in humanities and history. Lowery is the co-editor and a contributor to The Dunning School: Historians, Race, and the Meaning of Reconstruction (University Press of Kentucky, 2013). His article, “The Transatlantic Dreams of the Port City Prophet: The Rural Reform Campaign of Hugh MacRae,” earned the 2013 Robert D. W. Connor Award for the best article published in the North Carolina Historical Review. In addition to this work, he has written a variety of pieces of related to immigration programs in the turn-of-the-century US South, and he is currently working on an article about the relationship between these programs and US immigration law.
Presented in Partnership - Door County Auditorium, Door County Civility Project & Just Door County
Saturday, February 22, 2020, 10 a.m. - noon
Woman Suffrage 100 Years Later: Assessing Its Triumphs and Limits with Kimberley Reilly
How did the women’s rights movement win passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, and what lesson can we learn from that victory? One hundred years after women won the constitutional right to vote, we will examine the history of the suffrage movement alongside battles that were left unfinished. We will also consider how the legacy of the suffrage movement influences the fight for gender equality today.
Dr. Kimberley Reilly is an Associate Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. Her research has been published in Law and History Review and the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and she has received fellowships from the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation and the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Her current project is a legal history of marriage in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States.
Presented in Partnership - Door County Auditorium, Door County Civility Project & League of Women Voters of Door County
Saturday, February 29, 2020, 10 a.m. - noon
The Radical Vision of the American Abolitionists with Nolan Bennett
Speaking at a Fourth of July celebration in 1860, the formerly enslaved Frederick Douglass famously asked his audience: “Why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?” With this fierce denunciation of American hypocrisy—that the country would celebrate liberty and equality while so many remained enslaved in the South—Douglass offered a radical vision of American history and democracy. In this talk we will look at how those opposed to slavery (like Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, David Walker, and Abraham Lincoln) offered a new, expansive reading of American ideals as they challenged the “peculiar institution.” We’ll consider how they looked back to the founding era and its documents and forward to a new dawn of justice. In light of that progressive outlook, we’ll also discuss the lasting legacy of the abolitionists and how slavery continues to influence American politics and ideas.
Nolan Bennett is an Assistant Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. He is a scholar of American political thought, and his research considers why and to what effect historical actors and movements ground their claims for democratic justice in personal experience. He recovers genres like autobiography, slave narrative, and prison writing as appeals to popular authority and representation not found in state or electoral politics. Nolan is particularly interested in issues of prison reform and punishment in the United States, inspired by the long history of prison writing, and with a committed interest in teaching in carceral spaces.
Presented in Partnership - Door County Auditorium & Door County Civility Project
Freewill Donations Encouraged
The 2020 Winter at DCA Series is Sponsored by Dahl Law Firm & Ross Estate Planning Coffee and bakery from Kick Ash Coffee available for purchase
watch THESE videos
a presentation about our organization
The following is a 32-slide power point presentation that provides an overview of the Door County Civility Project and reviews the basic tools of Speak Your Peace that enhance civil discourse.