I’m a
Speaker
Activist, Scholar & Filmmaker
Mission Statement
I imagine that most of us struggle to find language that helps us move from the fear of offending by our unconscious bias to a understanding of the lifelong journey of unlearning. Language and definitions are impacted by our lived experience. Learning how to asks a question is as important as listening to each other. A key tool in this work is to understand that our location to any topic shifts thereby, changing our interactions to any given engagement. Three keys in my work is to help people understand the system of representation on the personal, structural and institutional. I specialize in helping us begin where we are providing tools and insight that help to open up space in the work to grow.
“I had the distinct honor to witness Dr.Sullivan’s brilliance and hard-won wisdom during their Performing Identity & Engendering Resistance exhibition and conversation when I was the moderator of this groundbreaking event. Dr. Sullivan’s life work links theoretical, expressive, and personal narratives to help move us beyond binary thinking and mindsets.”
Denise Boston, PhD, RDT Howard County Equity and Restorative Practices Manager
BIO
Dr. Sé Sullivan, writer/director/producer, is a scholar-educator born and raised in unceded Tongva Territory known as Santa Monica, California, and is a survivor of conversion therapy who has taught in the discipline of Sociology & Gender and Women’s Studies across public and private universities in California. Sé has been on the frontlines of LGBTQ+ activism since the 1980s, surviving and organizing through the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the lesbian sex wars, and our current era of trans awareness. As a non-binary Irish-American Settler, Sé’s artistic work and speaking engagements, includes gallery installations and public talks, foregrounds questions of history, gender, and assimilation. Their Art Exhibition engages the public at a visceral level through audio reenactments of conversion therapy sessions that are accompanied by images from their childhood. Sé may be the only person who survived these experimental therapies at UCLA who has gained access to the official transcripts of these sessions.
