The Center for the Humanities

This series seeks to reinstate Lois Elaine Griffith essential role as a founder, and honor Griffith’s stewardship of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe’s archive.
Hear from Griffith and Lost & Found editor and archival collaborator Joseph Anthony Cáceres, Ph.D., as they share their journey.

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Since its inception in 1973, this Puerto Rican cultural center has been a site where artists from the Nuyorican and Black arts movements have come to share their work, voices, histories, talents, and language on its stage. Join Griffith, Cáceres and friends for an evening of readings, presentations and conversation. The event will be introduced by Ammiel Alcalay and followed by a book signing.

Among the questions this conference asks is, how is desire formed by the systems, memories, and material conditions through which value is produced, circulated, and lived? How does desire shape our understanding of value itself?

Join us for the English Student Association (ESA) conference, What We Desire: Critical Perspectives on Beauty, Pleasure and Value on Friday, May 1, 2026 at the CUNY Graduate Center, featuring a keynote lecture “May Day Underground: On Festivity and Revolt” from Professor Jospeh Albernaz (Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University).

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In this interactive event, we hope to indulge in Gauri’s talk on the process of writing Mother Wound and Lina’s workshop on taking your manuscript from draft to published. Bring your imaginations and curiosities!

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Join us for an afternoon of talks and performances in conjunction with the exhibition Sovereign Acts III at The James Gallery. Register in bio or upcoming events highlight.

Wed, Apr 15, 2026
4:00 PM–8:00 PM
Proshansky Auditorium,


The exhibition explores the relationship between nineteenth century performing “Indians” and contemporary performance art. Indigenous artists have taken up this nineteenth-century history to create self-representations in photography, performance, video, and installation that challenge ideas of normative and static identity. The artists turn to a range of aesthetic strategies, including re-enactment, remixing, memorialization, mimicry, parody, masquerade, and portraiture, underscoring the interdisciplinary nature of Indigenous art.

Speakers and performers include: Demian DinéYahzi’, Alan Michelson, Kent Monkman, Wanda Nanibush, Joseph Pierce, Jolene Rickard, and others.

What a beautiful night, full of games and food and laughter! For more photos, and more about this gorgeous, free education tool, see our website at link in bio and past events highlight.

We recently gathered for “La lotería Niuyorkina: An exploration of the city’s Linguistic Landscape,” an event launching an educational board game La lotería Niuyorkina (bingo-like), created by a LAILaC student, Diana Higuera, alongside the illustrations of a Queens College junior student, Mateo Oldenburg.

This pedagogical game/toolkit is available and accessible to all as an Open Educational Resource and was originally funded by the CUNY Adjunct Incubator Award in 2025, and developed for Spanish and Latinx studies adjunct instructors who juggle teaching multiple classes in the CUNY system. The game is made up of 24 cards depicting characters, places, and objects representing the Latinx communities in New York City.

What a beautiful night, full of games and food and laughter! For more photos, and more about this gorgeous, free education tool, see our website at link in bio or past events highlight.

We recently gathered for “La lotería Niuyorkina: An exploration of the city’s Linguistic Landscape,” an event launching an educational board game La lotería Niuyorkina (bingo-like), created by a LAILaC student, Diana Higuera, alongside the illustrations of a Queens College junior student, Mateo Oldenburg.

This pedagogical game/toolkit is available and accessible to all as an Open Educational Resource and was originally funded by the CUNY Adjunct Incubator Award in 2025, and developed for Spanish and Latinx studies adjunct instructors who juggle teaching multiple classes in the CUNY system. The game is made up of 24 cards depicting characters, places, and objects representing the Latinx communities in New York City.

Student Movements and Social Justice: Histories and Futures Conference ended with two great panels and speakers:

2:45-3:45 — Towards an Abolitionist University: From Cops Off-Campus to Collective Liberation

4:00-5:00 — Pedagogy and Praxis at CUNY: Building the New York Liberation School

Speakers: Vani Kannan, Jorge Matos, and Conor Tomas Reed, facilitated by Lucien Baskin

Ángeles Donoso Macaya kicked off the conference with a moving introduction to our Student Movements and Social Justice: Histories and Futures conference which brings together organizers from university-based organizations working for free education, affordable housing, cops off campus, campus labor, accessible childcare, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, and other struggles, to think, strategize, and build relationships across siloed struggles and disparate geographies.

Robyn C. Spencer-Antoi then gave introductory remarks to our first panel Student Strikes and Fallist Fights: Global Student Movements in History featuring speakers: Ximena Goldman, Philippe Lapointe, and Leigh-Ann Naidoo, facilitated by Robyn C. Spencer-Antoin.

Join us at the CUNY Graduate Center we’ll be here all day!

Full list of panels and presenters is now up on our website (bio or upcoming events highlight) or swipe through to check them out.

Organizers working for free education, affordable housing, cops off campus, campus labor, accessible childcare, BDS, and other struggles.

A gorgeously designed and thoughtfully conceived protect from the CUNY Adjunct Incubator!

“As a result of nearly a year of work, the final product, La Loteria Niuyorkina, is available to all as a pedagogical game/toolkit and Open Educational Resource (OER). I aimed to create a game that adjuncts and graduate students can access through a CUNY Commons page—the game and related materials are available online here as a PDF file, along with five lesson plans and a list of related OER resources, ensuring that students will not have to purchase expensive textbooks to take part in a Spanish course.

Although the game is designed for Spanish as a Heritage Language students, it can also be used by other Spanish and Latinx Studies faculty within the CUNY system. I believe the study of the Linguistic Landscape and common Spanglish words, expressions, and vocabulary helps individuals understand the city’s multiculturality and the context in which LatinX communities have lived for many decades.”

Read more at link in bio or Distributaries highlight!