How Race Matters at WCSPP

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Saturday, November 19, 2011 from 9:30 AM – 3:30 PM
The Conference Committee of the Westchester Center is proud to announce our Annual Conference.

The conference is entitled, How Race Matters. It will engage our community in active exploration of the presence and significance of race in clinical work and everyday life. We will take up questions including: What is meant when we speak of race? Of racism? How does racial identification come to matter, and what functions does it serve within the individual and society? What needs are implicated in the construction of racial identity? And how do race matters inform clinical work, even when race does not emerge as an explicit topic of exploration?

Our principal speakers will be Dr. Farhad Dalal and Dr. Melanie Suchet. Both are gifted teachers and dynamic speakers who are strongly committed to fostering open dialogue. Both have written extensively and influentially about race and otherness in clinical work. Our respondent will be Dr. Annabella Bushra, a respected senior member of our faculty who writes and teaches about diversity and otherness.

We will have morning and afternoon sessions with a lunch for those staying for the full day. In the morning session our speakers and respondent will present clinically compelling, challenging papers which they will discuss with each other and the audience. In the afternoon we will meet in groups to consider the morning’s presentations and their clinical implications. The groups will generate questions and commentary that will be shared with the speakers and will become the basis for discussion with the audience at large.

We are especially excited about this conference and look forward to your attendance and participation. We are confident that this year’s conference will be memorable.

Ken Barish, Ph.D.
Ruth Greer, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.
Constance Haslett, Ph.D.
Eric Mendelsohn, Ph.D. (Chair)
Janet Shimer, L.C.S.W.
Michael Wald, Ph.D.