On Monday, October 5th, USG hosted an Environmental Justice Dinner and Dialogue event, led by Dr. Darryl Hood. During the lecture, the Professor talked about disparate health outcomes in vulnerable census tracts, with Covid-19 related health results in Columbus. First, the definition of environmental justice community was given, stated as “a community where the population is disproportionality affected by environmental hazards, and… consequently suffers disparate health outcomes as a result of those hazards.” Continuing from here, he went onto mention what a few of those hazards were and described how they can have an impact on the individual. However, instead of just researching and letting it be, Dr. Hood and the faculty at the College of Public Health is working to engage with the community in order to resolve these issues and create healthier outcomes. More specifically, this plan is known as Enriching Environmental Endeavors via e-Equity, Education and Empowerment, or rather, E^6. In this plan, residents from the Mt. Vernon community in Columbus will be enrolled in an E^6 two-year, observational study. In this study, the benefit of a mobile health clinic’s ability towards improving overall health, and an educational strategy implemented to lessen the COVID-19 developmental decline in kindergarten children (hoping to improve reading outcomes), will be measured. In this way, Dr. Hood hopes to be able to observe and connect with the community from a much closer space, while also working to educate, advocate, and empower residents of high-risk communities which are located on the vulnerable census track. Overall, I am really interested in this research and hope that it will go a long way in cancelling out the disproportion that exists.

On Monday, September 28th, I attend the session “Lectures in Musicology,” by Professor Alex E. Chavez. On this day, he shared his research about Latina/o expressive culture in everyday life as displayed through music, language, and performances. Not only that, but he took this knowledge and connected it to larger social concerns such as race, and life across physical and cultural boundaries. The main focus of this lecture was about migrant lives and how their music is laced with themes of crossing the border. The lecture opened with Professor Chavez sharing beautiful, and rather lively music from San Ciro, San Luis Potosí. He spoke of how during the performance, an audience member would usually go up to the artists, and request a saludado. A saludado is, in essence, an improvised greeting which is meant to make biological/geographical connections. Within the music, there is often an overall theme of the journey, which is enhanced by implications of longing, inequity, and death. Between the U.S. and Mexico border specifically, there is a politicized and transcendental plane of music, where imagination built from sound invokes present or unoccupied places. Through mentions of different locations, the poetry is bridging as it combines two cultures and allows for at least imagination if not touch. The distance between the singer and the audience is narrowed in this way, and allows for a crossing of the geographical distance between people and places. One point that really stood out to me is when the professor claimed that sound is as material as it is immaterial since it travels with energy, and is therefore linked with space, constantly in motion, and lacks boundaries. Overall, I really enjoyed the lecture, especially due to the importance placed on music and its ability to build connections despite distances.