Join us on Tuesday, April 23 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery (1st Floor, 913 S. University Ave.) for the all new Academic Innovation at Michigan for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (AIM for DE&I) Speaker Series. This talk will be the second of four throughout April and May aimed at exploring issues at the intersections of teaching and learning; technology; and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Talk Information:

Augmented Empathy: How can design bring empathy back in an increasingly disconnected world

Come join an interactive storytelling journey to explore identity; how identities are connected to the communities and sub-cultures to which we belong. Whether it evolves out of geography or perception, this is an exploration of the building blocks of augmenting empathy with Bayete Ross Smith.

Bayeté Ross Smith is a photographer and multimedia artist from New York whose collaborative projects Along The Way and Question Bridge: Black Males have shown at the Sundance Film Festival and several others. He is a TED Resident and an embedded media maker with POV/Am Doc and The New York Times, and he has exhibited his work internationally. He is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Bayeté uses photography, video and public installation to investigate the ways we perform our racial, gender and cultural identities through clothing, music and the communities of affinity we choose. He reveals both the pleasure of performing our chosen personas, as well as the dangers of perceiving these personas in others.

All members of the University of Michigan community including faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to attend. Light refreshments will be provided.