Date:
Humanities Center Lunchtime Salon: Race, Caste and the State
The Humanities Center invites interested parties to participate in a lunchtime discussion of sections of Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020). The salon will be held Friday, November 20, from 12:00-1:30PM.
This will be the first of a two-part series of events around the theme of systemic racism and the state. Our second event will be held during the Spring 2021 semester.
Facilitated by Emily Pope-Obeda (History) and John Vilanova (Journalism & Communication/Africana Studies), the sessions will engage with structures such as policy, labor, and citizenship in the active making and codification of race, specifically discussing the ways racial others have been constructed. Participants will be invited to read selections from the book and come prepared to discuss them. We hope to create a discussion-centric space where faculty from a wide range of disciplines can bring their insights to the conversation.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is a major new work of cultural studies produced by Wilkerson, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 and published The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010) to similar acclaim. Caste, which has garnered wide attention, offers incisive and important new ways of theorizing race (and anti-Black racism specifically) in America.
Please register here for the Nov 20th discussion. Once you register, we will send you the pdf of the readings. This event is open to all university community members who are interested.