A Sea of Islands: U.S. Territories in Relation
Cost: Free
June 10 @ 9:00 am – June 11 @ 8:30 pm EDT
Save the date for this 2-day symposium that seeks to bring together scholars, artists, and activists from the inhabited US territories and their diasporas to learn about shared struggles, relational coalitions, and expand networks of solidarity.
For over a century, the U.S. federal government has defined the relationship of U.S. territories to the political, social, and economic structure of the United States. Political relationships established through federal legislation, judicial decisions, and executive decisions continue to contour the lives of populations and the sovereignty of nations rendered subordinate. As fiscal crises, mass outmigrations, health challenges, climate change, and other challenges continue to affect the peoples of U.S. territories, longstanding questions concerning sovereignty, justice, and freedom have remained at the fore.
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June 10, 2026 Line Up
9:00 AM | Doors Open
9:30 AM | Opening Ceremony
Agua, Sol, Y Sereno
2nd Floor Terrace
Join us for the opening ceremony led by Agua, Sol, Y Sereno, a theater collective founded by Pedro Adorno and Cathy Vigo in 1993. Their aesthetic and community work maintains a constant dialouge with social reality and the search for the inner poetics of humankind.
11:00 AM | Plenary
Territorialized Peoples & the Law: Plenary Power, De/Colonization, and the Rights
2nd Floor Auditorium
In this plenary session, we gather experts on the legal and governance challenges that territorialized minorities face in the United States. From questioning the meaning of plenary powers, the constitutional politics of land and housing rights for Indian tribes and U.S. territories, and the histories of decolonial advocacy at the United Nations, this panel will highlight the ways our territorial histories have been shaped by colonial institutions and will allow us to envision ways in which we can catalyze broader coalitions for legal reform and institutional transformation.
2:15 PM | Session 1
Art, Cinema, and Curatorial Practices
2nd Floor Auditorium
In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of artistic and curatorial projects centering commonalities between U.S. Territories and other territorialized minorities. This panel brings together artists, curators, and filmmakers who have been working relationally across the territories to discuss the challenges of creating and curating projects transnationally, as well as the importance of strengthening cultural networks across the territories while fostering a deeper understanding of our shared histories.
Data Inequities & Community Stewardship: Erasure, Resiliency and Black Data
Room 115AB
This panel highlights the ways in which data enables actionable insights and informed decision-making while the lack thereof can cause systemic inequalities, inefficiency, and obscure the reality of vulnerable populations. Presenters will focus on the economic well-being of territorial migrants, how data gaps affect the U.S. territories, the importance of community stewardship in community resiliency planning, and addressing who owns and controls Black historical and cultural data.
4:00 PM | Session 2
Bodies of Knowledge: Archipelagic Feminisms, Politics, and Spirit
2nd Floor Auditorium
This panel explores the ways that feminist theories and praxis challenge colonial representations of islands as isolated, dependent, or peripheral. Presenters will focus on the spiritual practices of Chagossian women, the impact of the U.S. Navy on women’s lives in Vieques, land reclamation in St. John and broader decolonial and anti patriarchal modes of island feminism.
Relational Decolonial Ecologies: Cross-Territorial Strategies for Environmental Justice
Room 115AB
Across the U.S. territories, environmental injustice and political disenfranchisement operate as entangled legacies of colonial governance, ecological vulnerability, democratic exclusion, and economies rooted in extraction. As the inaugural cohort of the Right to Democracy Environment & Democracy Fellows, representing Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, we explore how relational decolonial approaches to solidarity and shared strategy can strengthen decolonial environmental justice.
June 11, 2026 Line Up
10:00 AM | Plenary
Militarization, Resistance, and the Futures of Our Islands
2nd Floor Auditorium
As we consider the re-militarization of the Puerto Rican archipelago, we gather researchers and activists from Vieques, South Korea, Palau, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to discuss the impact the U.S military has had on our islands throughout the years as well as the long histories of resistance and transnational solidarity.
1:00 PM | Session 1
Salt, Soul, Soil: Visualizing Insular and Indigenous Sovereignty
2nd Floor Auditorium
Salt, Soul, Soil: Visualizing Insular and Indigenous Sovereignty is an exhibition and symposium bringing together artists, scholars, administrators, and partner organizations—including universities, museums, libraries, and archives. The multi-site exhibition illuminates the praxis of people and food (nutritional and for the soul), and land(s)/ islands in the Virgin Islands, Guåhan (Guam), the Northern Mariana Islands, and the American Southeast. Guided by Indigenous and Oceanic principles and practices with Black Feminist theories and methods, the curators will create space to engage one another foregrounding shared histories, cultural knowledge, and contemporary challenges shaped by geography and colonial legacies.
Preservation, Self-Determination, and Archival Practices Across our Archipelagoes
Room 115AB
In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of artistic and curatorial projects centering commonalities between U.S. Territories and other territorialized minorities. This panel brings together artists, curators, and filmmakers who have been working relationally across the territories to discuss the challenges of creating and curating projects transnationally, as well as the importance of strengthening cultural networks across the territories while fostering a deeper understanding of our shared histories.
2:45 PM | Session 2
Teaching Across Our Territories: History, Health, and Ecologies
2nd Floor Auditorium
This panel highlights cross-territorial and relational curriculum and educational projects. How can we make complex imperial histories legible to a broader public? How do we ensure our lived experiences, histories, and traditions are taken into account by institutions shaped by imperialism and colonialism. In this panel, researchers and educators from across the territories amplify decolonial pedagogical methodologies that are shaped by deep engagement with community partners and explore connections and ways of building solidarity across our archipelagos.
Across the Political Imagination: Citizenship & Refusal
Room 115AB
The question of citizenship is at the root of many discussions about the U.S. Territories and other nations that have been molded by empire. This panel looks beyond discourses of “equality” and citizenship and instead addresses the complexities of existing between multiple nation states and diasporas. What does it mean to go home? What does it mean to be able to work and live where your own national sovereignty isn’t recognized? Panelists will speak on these issues and more, looking at the specific circumstances of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Marshall Islands, and the Philippines.
Climate Crises, Ecological Endeavors: Strategies, Projects & Interventions
Room 212
In the past 10 years alone, the U.S. territories have been experiencing a higher frequency of devastating disproportionate climate crises. This panel will highlight how communities within the U.S. territories are addressing and combating the effects of climate change with locally rooted solutions.
4:30 PM | Screening
HOMEGROWN: A Part Of/Apart From
2nd Floor Auditorium
Join us for a documentary shorts screening hosted by Chlöe Walters Wallace (Firelight Media) and Andrés Arias Matos (CENTRO) highlighting the Homegrown film series. HOMEGROWN: A Part Of/Apart From is a collection of 8 documentary short films from the U.S. territories, Hawaiʻi, and their diasporic communities. This first-of-its-kind series explores issues of cultural identity, sovereignty, and agency unique to each region as local residents and members of the diaspora grapple with what it means to be “a part of and apart from” the mainland U.S. The series is presented by Firelight Media, Pacific Islanders in Communications, Black Public Media, Latino Public Broadcasting, and PBS, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.