Call for Volunteers: Humanities Marilyn Hudson Brave Conversations Project
Jed Locquiao (Assistant Professor, School of Teaching and Learning) is serving on the Humanities ND Marilyn Hudson Brave Conversations Project community advisory committee for Fargo and is looking for people to join the effort.
The Brave Conversations Project builds community through conversation. Today’s leading thinkers take center stage, offering a thought-provoking presentation followed by authentic, moderator-led discussion in small groups. Attendees explore new ideas and meet interesting people. This program is offered in-person and live-streamed online.
HND hosted a pilot program in Fargo in March 2022, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eli Saslow in a presentation and discussion on the rise of white nationalism in America. You can view the recording of this event here: https://vimeo.com/710529224/477a5ef1f8
The next Brave Conversation will feature American mortician Caitlin Doughty. She will speak about her experience with death at the Avalon Event Center in Fargo on Thursday April 20, 2023 from 7-9 p.m. This event is hosted by Humanities North Dakota and sponsored by The Consensus Council.
Caitlin Doughty is a mortician, advocate, and bête noire of the traditional funeral industry. In 2011 she founded the funeral reform collective The Order of the Good Death, which has spawned the death positive movement. Her educational webseries “Ask a Mortician” has been viewed almost 200 million times and all three of her books Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? were New York Times bestsellers. She owns a funeral home, Clarity Funerals, in Los Angeles.
The systemic problems in the funeral industry are obvious to anyone who has worked within it. Families are kept distant from the process, which itself is too expensive and negatively impactful on the environment. These issues led Caitlin to enter the advocacy space, founding the nonprofit death acceptance and funeral reform collective The Order of the Good Death, writing books, and creating videos and documentaries under the title Ask a Mortician.
Please consider helping as a table facilitator or a general volunteer for the event!
For more information about the event, please visit:
And register here as a table facilitator or volunteer:
Please share any questions to jed.locquiao@mnstate.edu