Kathryn Smith Pyle

Kathryn Smith Pyle has been invited to present a workshop based on her project SISTERS at the 3rd Biennial Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center (DDNRC) conference: University of Maryland, College Park, October 17-19. 

The presentation at the conference will be an interactive workshop format. The first film in the workshop, “Never About Race” will be shown, and participants will use a discussion board in real time to invite comments and explore the issues raised in the film. Participants will then break into small groups that will use the comments, along with additional internet resources, to discover inclusive campus models and how to apply what they learn to their own institution. 

Pyle has also invited one of the characters in the film, Khortlan Patterson Becton, to co-facilitate the workshop with her. Becton has experience in curriculum development and discussion facilitation related to race issues and has become a valued resource for ideas and feedback on the project. 

The grant will go towards registration, transportation, and meals for Pyle and Becton, as well as an honorarium for Becton and Zein Nakhoda, a education consultant Pyle is working with for this presentation.

Kathryn will produce SISTERS, a short, character-based documentary film and audience engagement project about campus-based social groups in colleges and universities. Educators, student activists, and civil rights advocates in the Delaware Valley will advise on the project’s content and help develop screening events for their constituencies. Screening-discussion events will be organized for classes (e.g. race or gender studies); for professional educators (e.g. a Diversity Officers workshop); and for civil society groups (e.g. ACLU meetings).

Kathryn will create a dynamic website in order to further the social change work of two films she produced. Farm Labor are two short documentaries that feature farmers and immigrant workers and tells stories of immigration reform, small family farms and sustainable models of seasonal farm labor.  Kathryn sees her audience as congress members and local policymakers because of their critical importance in the immigration reform legislation debate.