We are delighted to welcome Dr. Anise Vance as our next colloquium speaker on Wednesday 1st November. This event is co-sponsored with UBC Geography, Creative Writing and St. John’s College.
Hope at the Ends of World: Resistance and Belonging in Moments of Rupture
Anise Vance’s debut novel, Hush Harbor, explores issues of resistance, belonging, and justice in the context of police violence on black bodies. In this talk, he will expand on those themes by exploring moments of civil unrest and rupture — moments that destabilize conceptions of belonging. To that end, expect an exploratory conversation relying on stories that cross geographic boundaries, social groups, and time periods.
Anise Vance is a writer from the African and Iranian diasporas. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Camden. As a Mitchell Scholar, he received an MPhil in Geography from Queen’s University Belfast. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and currently lives in North Carolina with his wife and two children.
Anise currently serves as the Assistant Director of the City of Durham’s Community Safety Department (DCSD), a department formed after the murder of George Floyd, and on a foundation set by years of community advocacy and building. In 2022, the Durham Community Safety Department (DCSD) launched four 911 crisis response programs—collectively known as HEART (Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams)—to divert calls away from law enforcement and meet the needs of people in crisis with behavioral health expertise. In its first fifteen months of operation, and having responded to over 8,000 calls, HEART has become a leading national alternative response model. For more, please visit DCSD’s website and dashboard, watch this clip from CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, listen to this segment on NPR (WUNC), or read this piece from The Assembly to learn more.
This event will take place in-person and on Zoom, on Wednesday 1st November from 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Pacific.
No registration is necessary for in-person attendance, in St. John’s College Social Lounge (2111 Lower Mall).
Please register to receive Zoom meeting details..
