Perspectives Reading Group
CLEAR co-sponsors a reading group every academic year. The Perspectives Reading Group serves as an informal setting where students and professors can examine issues of concern or importance to marginalized groups, focusing on a particular issue or demographic group at each meeting.
Perspectives Archive
October
Book Discussion: Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
Discussion led by Professor Mario Barnes.
March
Book Discussion: Nadia Kim, Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA.
Discussion led by Professor Stephen Lee and Dr. Gregg Macey.
February
Book Discussion: Devon Carbado, Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment.
April
Author Meets Readers: Sahar Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom.
Comments by Professors Mario Barnes and Rachel Moran. Discussion moderated by Professor Dana Lee.
Book Discussion: James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.
Dicussion led by Professor Mehrsa Baradaran.
September
Book Discussion: Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do.
Discussion led by Professor Kaaryn Gustafson.
November
Book Discussion: Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be and Antiracist.
Discussion led by James Lamb.
January
Book Discussion: Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race.
Discussion led by Professor Mehrsa Baradaran.
February
Book Discussion: Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution.
Dicussion led by Professor Kaaryn Gustafson, with Professors Jessica Millward and Damien Sojoyner as discussants.
September
Film Screening: The Chinese Exclusion Act directed by Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu.
Discussion led by Professor Kaaryn Gustafson and Professor Judy Wu.
October
Book Discussion: City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 by Kelly Lytle Hernández.
Book Discussion: Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble.
November
Book Discussion: Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism by Iyko Day and The War Against Chinese Restaurants by Gabriel J. Chin & John Ormonde.
January
Author Meets Readers: Sherally Munshi, "Immigration and the Imperial" from The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities.
February
Book Discussion: Jeanne Theoharis, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.
March
Book Discussion: Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear. Discussion led by Professor Jonathan Glater.
September
Book Discussion: Evicted by Matthew Desmond.
Discussion led by Professor Mario Barnes.
January
Book Discussion: We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Discussion led by Professor Kaaryn Gustafson.
Book Discussion: Chokehold: Policing Black Men by Paul Butler.
Discussion led by Professor Mario Barnes.
February
Author Meets Readers: Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands by Julian Lim.
September
Cultural Appropriation and Language Sensitivity.
Facilitated by BLSA, LLSA, NALSA, and APALSA board members with short readings from each.
October
Book Discussion: Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics by Marie Gottschalk.
Discussion led by Professor Jennifer Chacón.
November
Book Discussion: Forked by Saru Jayaraman.
Discussion led by Professor Stephen Lee.
January
Author Meets Readers: The Enigma of Diversity:The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice by Ellen Berrey.
Discussion led by Professor Mario Barnes.
February
Book Discussion: The Legacy of Conquest by Patricia Nelson Limerick.
Discussion led by Professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow.
March
Book Discussion: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor.
Discussion led by Professor Funmi Arewa.
Book Discussion: Failed Promises by David M. Konisky.
Discussion led by Professor Suma Peesapati.
April
Book Discussion: The Two Faces of American Freedom by Aziz Rana.
Discussion led by Professor Seth Davis.
September
Book Discussion: Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship by Charles R. Epp, Steven Maynard-Moody and Donald P. Haider-Markel.
Discussion led by Prof. Mario Barnes.
October
Book Discussion: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Discussion led by Prof. Kaaryn Gustafson
Book Discussion: The Alchemy of Race and Rights by Patricia J. Williams. Discussion led by Prof. Jonathan Glater.
November
Author Meets Readers: Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts.
Book Discussion: The Round House by Louise Erdrich.
Discussion led by Prof. Seth Davis.
January
Film Discussion: American Denial by Llewellyn Smith, Christine Herbes-Sommers, Kelly Thomson.
Book Discussion: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Discussion led by Prof. Funmi Arewa.
February
Author Meets Readers: Normal Life by Dean Spade
Dean Spade, Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law, discussed the newly revised and expanded edition of the book, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (Duke University Press, 2015).
Perspectives Afternoon at the Theater: Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris
Robert Cohen Theatre, UC Irvine UCI School of the Arts production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, followed by a post-show discussion.
Discussion on Social Movements with Hamid Khan of Los Angeles Community Action Network.
Discussion led by Prof. Song Richardson.
March
Book Discussion: The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee.
Discussion led by Profs. Catherine Fisk and Summer Kim.
April
Discussion: “Reparations in the U.S.: Redressing Historical Injustices through Contemporary Law”.
Discussion led by students Jamila Benkato and Lauren Lystrup.
September
Book Discussion: Hate Thy Neighbor: Move-In Violence and the Persistence of Racial Segregation in American Housing by Jeannine Bell.
Discussion led by Prof. Mario Barnes.
October
Book Discussion: The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden by Lisa Park.
Discussion led by Prof. Kaaryn Gustafson.
November
Book Discussion: This Indian Country: American Indian Activists
and the Place They Made by Frederick E. Hoxie.
Discussion led by Prof. Seth Davis.
January
Covering, 111 YALE L.J. 769 (2002) by Kenji Yoshino.
Masculinity as Prison, 99 Cal. L. REV. 1309 (2011) by Russell Robinson.
Student-led discussion.
February
Book Discussion: Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream by Suzanne Mettler.
Discussion led by Prof. Jonathan Glater.
March
Book Discussion: Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell.
Discussion led by Prof. Michele Goodwin.
April
Book Discussion: Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process by Robert M. Cover.
Discussion led by Prof. Sameer Ashar
October
Book Discussion: Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America by Devon W. Carbado and Mitu Gulati.
Discussion led by Prof. Jonathan Glater.
November
Book Discussion: Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration and Identity by Tomás R. Jiménez.
Discussion led by Prof. Jennifer Chacón.
January
Book Discussion: Racing to Justice: Transforming Our Conceptions of Self
and Other to Build an Inclusive Society by john a. powell.
Discussion led by Prof. Mario Barnes.
February
Book Discussion: Twelve Years A Slave by Solomon Northup.
Discussion led by Prof. Olufunmilayo Arewa.
March
Book Discussion: Undoing Border Imperialism by Harsha Walia.
Discussion led by Prof. Sameer Ashar.
April
Author Meets Readers: Immigration Outside the Law by Hiroshi Motomura.
Discussion led by Prof. Stephen Lee.
January
Book Discussion: Representing the Race: The Making of the Civil Rights Lawyer by Kenneth Mack.
Discussion led by Prof. Mario Barnes.
February
Book Discussion: Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality by Robert Bullard.
Discussion led by Prof. Carrie Menkel-Meadow.
March
Book Discussion: Conflicting Commitments: The Politics of Enforcing Immigrant Worker Rights in San Jose and Houston by Shannon Gleeson.
Discussion led by Prof. Stephen Lee.
April
Book Discussion: Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, edited by Muhs, Nieman, Gonzalez, and Harris.
Discussion led by Prof. Jennifer Chacón.
January
Book Discussion: Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy by Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom, and Victor Narro.
Discussion led by Profs. Catherine Fisk and Sameer Ashar.
February
Book Discussion: Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism by Derrick Bell.
Discussion led by Prof. Mario Barnes.
March
Book Discussion: Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race by Laura Gomez.
Discussion led by Prof. Jennifer Chacón.
April
Book Discussion: And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice by Derrick Bell.
Discussion led by Prof. Jonathan Glater.
January
Book Discussion: Covering by Kenji Yoshino.
Discussion led by Prof. Carrie Menkel-Meadow.
February
Book Discussion: Racism without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla Silva.
Discussion led by Prof. Trina Jones.
March
Book Discussion: Maid in the U.S.A. by Mary Romero.
Discussion led by Profs. Mario Barnes and Jennifer Chacón.
April
Book Discussion: Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting by Vijay Prashad.
Discussion led by Prof. Stephen Lee.