Two Full Days of a Coastal Faculty Retreat for BIPOC and BIPOC-WOC Rockaway Beach, Oregon

Two Full Days of a Coastal Faculty Retreat for BIPOC and BIPOC-WOC

Rockaway Beach, Oregon

August 18 and August 19, 2022

Cost of Attendance: $1200

A small group of six participants will spend two full days at Oregon’s beautiful Rockaway Beach, (only 1.5 hours away from Portland) in a house overlooking the ocean and the famous Twin Rocks and with a gorgeous deck to engage in some trauma-informed guided workshops. In the retreat, co-facilitated by faculty, writers, and professionals trained in understanding various manifestations of trauma and institutional betrayals we will immerse ourselves in deep discussions, meaningful writing, and thoughtful reflections on academic trauma, micro-aggressions, betrayals, and healing. The co-facilitators will use anti-racist and justice-oriented approaches to the workshops and the goal of the retreat will be to focus on academic well-being and wellness by building some intentional community and coalition building to break through the isolation of experiencing academic trauma in the academy.
There will also be a BIPOC-WOC guest attorney present who will offer valuable wisdom in terms of navigating the complaint process and the legal terrain using an anti-racist and racial justice lens.

Lunch and light refreshments will be included and we will set aside some time to take a stroll on the beach (weather permitting).

Retreat Day 1: August 18, 2022

10:30am – 5pm (includes lunch)

Writing and Reflecting on Academic Trauma, and Strategies for Coping and Healing.
Co-Lead by Janice Lee and Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. It is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature. –Thich Nhat Hanh

Identity is the factoring out and performative denial of our own perceptual immersion or entanglement with forces that generate and undo the boundaries with which we mark ourselves as different from others. – Bayo Akomolafe

How do different bodies and worlds articulate each other, or, how do we learn to be affected? How might writing, both private and public open up space while processing trauma or grief?

In the first segment of this workshop will explore how the presence of unresolved corporeal history and the impossibility of articulation or expression lead to new encounters in language, and encourage you to imagine new futures that don’t depend on replicating the energies of the systems we seek to dismantle or the patterns we seek to heal from. We will investigate and reframe our relationships with our trauma, imagine identity and being through the lens of assemblage and permeability, and explore new and porous ways of working towards individual and collective healing through writing prompts, guided meditation, and personal medicine work.

In the second segment of the workshop (post lunch) we will have some deep and honest conversations about locating the sites and various manifestations of our academic traumas and betrayals. By sharing our own stories and identifying our common struggles, we will work towards processing some fundamental questions. How do we protect ourselves? How do we strategize to move forward in ways that are meaningful for us? How do we build coalitions and acts of resilience that allow us to break through our isolations and heal? We will also discuss some opportunities and venues for public writing and publishing.

Retreat Day 2: August 19, 2022

10:30am – 3pm (includes lunch)

Confronting White Supremacy and White Fragility in Predominantly White Institutions (PWI): Understanding Your Trauma and Preparing for Backlashes.
Co-Lead by Andrea Redeau and Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt 

Institutional and systemic racism is not only intricately woven into the fabric of higher education, but repeated and prolonged experiences of racism and microaggressions manifests into trauma for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC and BIPOC-WOC) faculty and staff. Such traumas often lead to mental and physical health implications for various BIPOC faculty and staff.

In this small and intimate workshop co-led by a trained BIPOC therapist we will not only engage in discussing how repeated and harmful exposures to colonized disciplines, microaggressions, tokenization, and micro-invalidation impacts us, but using a trauma-informed lens, the co-facilitators will unpack how to recognize these harmful impacts of racism and differential treatments on BIPOC faculty and staff. We will build on the guided discussions and sensorial writing to identify sites of traumas, and will learn to employ practical, effective tools to avoid and interrupt them, as well as process and heal from them by incorporating evidence-based tools for resilience and post-traumatic growth. The goal of this workshop will be to build a community of practice and academic well-being and to enhance the quality of life and sense of belongingness for BIPOC faculty and staff.

Bios of the Co-facilitators:

Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt (she/her) is the Edith Green Distinguished Professor at Linfield University in Oregon where she teaches in the English Department and also co-coordinates the Critical Ethnic Studies Program. She is the author of the monograph, The Postcolonial Citizen: The Intellectual Migrant and is also the lead editor of Civility, Free Speech and Academic Freedom in Higher Education: Faculty on the Margins. As a public intellectual Dutt-Ballerstadt writes frequently about the state of marginalized faculty in various national publications along authoring scholarly articles on the intersections of critical race theory, decolonization and transnational feminism. She also mentors both students and BIPOC/BIWOC faculty to navigate various barrier in higher education and is invited frequently to lead workshops and give lectures specifically centering marginalized faculty and faculty of color. Dutt-Ballerstadt also serves as the editor for Inside Higher Ed’s column “Conditionally Accepted,” a column for marginalized faculty in higher education and is also the co-editor for “The Corporate University” in Truthout.

In 2021 she founded Academic Trauma in Higher Ed and leads various national level workshops centering BIPOC faculty and staff.

Andrea Redeau, MA, LPC, CADC-I, is a licensed mental therapist, drug and alcohol counselor and clinical supervisor for those seeking supervision in the state of Oregon. She currently stands as a newly appointed board member on the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists, fostering representation in all aspects of the mental health field.
Her practice Uniquely You Counseling, LLC primarily serves BIPOC individuals and those desiring to explore the intersectionality between race, privilege and presenting mental health conditions. Andrea strives to use a lens of equity and social justice, ensuring that all clients are served from a place of understanding and healing. Through levity and a little humor, Andrea is focused on providing education in a collaborative and inviting approach.

Janice Lee (she/they) is a Korean American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 7 books of fiction, creative nonfiction & poetry: KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021), and Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022). A roundtable, unanimous dreamers chime in, a collaborative novel co-authored with Brenda Iijima, is also forthcoming in 2022 from Meekling Press. An essay (co-authored with Jared Woodland) is featured in the recently released 4K restoration of Sátántangó (dir. Béla Tarr) from Arbelos Films. She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the Korean concept of han, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? Incorporating shamanic and energetic healing, she teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing and writing, and practices in several lineages, including the medicine tradition of the Q’ero, Zen Buddhism (in the tradition of Plum Village and Thich Nhat Hanh), plant & animal medicine, and Korean shamanic ritual (Muism). She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.

Traveling and Accommodation in Rockaway Beach and surrounding areas:

You can easily travel to Rockaway Beach from Portland, OR to attend this two-day workshop or decide to stay at the coast overnight or longer (at your own expense) in Rockaway Beach or the surrounding coastal towns of Nehalem, Bay City, Garibaldi, Manzanita, Cannon Beach and Oceanside. Each of these beautiful towns are located within 20 – 40 minutes driving distance to Rockaway Beach.

If you decide to stay at the coast and rent a house, feel free to contact Meredith Lodging, Oregon Beach Vacations or Vacasa to locate a property that will suit your needs. You can also use airnbnb to search for your accommodation needs. There are also several hotels available in Rockaway and the surrounding areas. If you need any assistance, please contact me at academictrauma@gmail.com

Please contact me at academictrauma.gmail.com if you are interested in the retreat and I will provide you details about costs to attend the retreat, payment options and can help you with your accommodation needs. I will offer a few spots on a sliding scale for those experiencing hardships but are interested in joining the workshop.

Cancellation Policy:
For any reason if the retreat is cancelled due to Covid related reasons or due to the retreat being under-enrolled, you will receive a full refund