Spring 2021 Session 1: Authorizing our own pathways and counterspaces of resilience and healing

Navigating adoption and other displacements in Adulthood

The spring 2021 series will focus on navigating adulthood and constructing a sense of identity. During session 1 we'll be speaking with Dr. Gina Samuels from the University of Chicago about developing an adult identity that incorporates adoption as well as the other important aspects of one's life. Doing family and race through transracial adoption as the person who is adopted means a never-ending negotiation of family, identity, race, and belonging—core elements of basic human development across the life course. But the fact of our adoption often causes ambiguous losses and degrees of disconnections from information, relationships, and places core to these processes of development. This keynote will explore the many ways in which pathways of resilience and healing are often articulated for us and in turn, invalidate, distort, or harm our own developmental capacities and needs into adulthood. This keynote will both challenge monolithic assumptions about what is “healthy” or “normal” and invite listeners to envision pathways and spaces for a more diverse array of possibilities for doing race, family and identity that are located in standpoints of adopted persons’ diverse needs and lived experiences. Dr. Samuels will be joined by fellow adoption researchers April Curtis and Tim Monti-Wohlpart who will provide insight on the keynote based on their years of experience improving adoption advocacy by influencing policy and legislature.

Dr. Gina Samuels
April Curtis
Tim Monti-Wohlpart