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Community Conversation: The First Oppressed Other

How Historical Attitudes Towards Childhood Shape Social Hierarchies

By Stacey Patton

Thursday, March 13 | 7:30 p.m.
Wriston Auditorium

About the Talk: Before categories of difference became the primary framework for organizing society in the western world, another system of hierarchy played a foundational role in shaping attitudes towards power and social order: perceptions of childhood. 

Historically, children were often viewed as inherently flawed, in need of correction through strict discipline, labor, and, in some cases, severe punishment. In medieval and early modern Europe, this mindset justified practices such as corporal punishment, forced labor, and even public executions of children, reinforcing a cultural acceptance of control over the most vulnerable. 

As European societies expanded into the Americas, these frameworks influenced emerging systems of social stratification and control. The treatment of children, especially in contexts where discipline and forced labor were routine, helped establish broader ideas about who could be controlled, punished, and deemed less than fully autonomous. Over time, these attitudes informed colonial policies, labor practices, and legal structures that reinforced distinctions between different groups. 

About Dr. Stacey Patton

Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist whose writings have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Chronicle of Higher Education, BBC News, Black Enterprise, NewsOne, and other outlets. She has appeared on CNN, ABC News, MSNBC, Democracy Now, and Fox News. She is also the creator of Spare the Kids, an online portal designed to teach about the harms of physical punishment, and the forthcoming 3D medical animation app, When You Hit Me, which promises to be a game changer for child abuse prevention. For her child advocacy work, Dr. Patton was awarded the 2024 Child Advocacy Award from the American Psychological Association. Dr. Patton is also a research associate at Morgan State University and teaches digital journalism at Howard University.

Kids Give x ACU Fundraiser Dinner

Saturday, March 8 | 6-9 p.m.
Warch 325-Pusey Room

The African Caribbean Union is collaborating with Kids Give to celebrate their 15 anniversary, a milestone marking over a decade of dedicated educational support to children in Sierra Leone.

To celebrate, you’re invited to a special anniversary fundraiser dinner. Our goal is to raise $4,000 to continue providing vital resources and scholarships to help kids in Sierra Leone thrive.

RSVP to Makenzy Dreher by emailing makenzy.s.dreher@lawrence.edu. Dress is business casual.

Tickets will be sold in Warch Campus Center on Monday, March 3 from 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m.

Symphonic Band Concert

Saturday, March 8 | 7:30 p.m.
Memorial Chapel

Directed by Matthew Arau

Featuring the Works of:

  • Grainger – “Gum-Suckers March”
  • LaBarr, arr. Wilson – “Grace Before Sleep
  • Mayhew ’17, arr. Trentadue – “Symphony No. 1 – The Eternal Present”*
  • Schumann – “Chester”
  • Hokoyama – “Beyond”

    *World Premiere

New Music Series: Wet Ink Ensemble

Presents Second Nature by Eric Wubbels

Sunday, March 9 | 7:30 p.m.
Harper Hall

Written for and performed by the Wet Ink Ensemble

  • Erin Lesser: Flutes
  • Ian Antonio: Percussion
  • Eric Wubbels: Keyboards

Second Nature is a new concert-length music and video work from composer/performer and Wet Ink Ensemble Co-Director Eric Wubbels, an artist who “brings meticulous poise to his experimentalism,” and whose music, “with references to many traditions, sounds like nothing by any other composer” (The New York Times).

Written for and developed in long-term collaboration with Wet Ink Ensemble members Erin Lesser and Ian Antonio, Second Nature is an extended meditation on cycles of growth, decay, and regeneration, drawing on ancient, contemporary, and futurist perspectives, instruments, and technologies.

Taking as its genre-ancestor Morton Feldman’s late trios for flute, piano, and percussion, the piece then pivots in a radically different direction, finding meaning and complexity in the particularly loaded contemporary intersection of nature, culture, and technology.

Over the course of more than 70 minutes, Second Nature brings together musical scenarios of the most extreme variety and diversity into a stunningly original synthesis. Movements for traditional instrumental combinations (flute, vibraphone, piano) segue directly into music for computer-controlled cymbals and 3-D printed ultrasonic flute, and passages for analog synthesizer and inside-piano technique are accompanied by homemade (and in one case, home-grown) wind and percussion instruments made from plant, rock, and animal bone materials. Video interludes of the trio performing outdoors at specifically chosen geographical and seasonal locations extend the conceptual and symbolic reach of the piece beyond the concert hall and back into the natural world itself.