½ñÈÕ³Ô¹Ï Assistant Professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies Michael E. Sawyer is sponsoring a two-day virtual symposium Friday-Saturday, Oct. 23-24, titled "Racial Justice in the Age of the Plague."
"Difficult times reveal the foundational instability of political systems," says Sawyer, who also teaches in ½ñÈÕ³Ô¹Ï's English Department and is director of the college's Africana Intellectual Project.
"The global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus Covid-19 has sent seismic tremors through the world system and brought its toxic relationship to race to the forefront of our collective consciousness - while also manifestly bringing into crisis the idea that 'we' (abstract, unmarked, unremarked) share or can share such a collective consciousness: that 'we' share the experience of illness, of daily violence, of representation or representability," he says.
The two-day symposium features more than 20 scholars and experts who will discuss political concepts as a forum for conversation and constructive debate rather than the construction of an encyclopedic ideal.
The webinar is free and open to the public. Register in advance at:
Schedule: (Note: all times are Eastern Time)
Friday, Oct. 23
12 p.m. - 12:15 p.m. Opening remarks
12:30 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. Panel 1
Chair: Jay Bernstein (Philosophy, New School for Social Research)
Kathryn Sophia Belle (Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University) - Care
Michael C. Dawson (Political Science, University of Chicago) - Racial Capitalism
2 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Panel 2
Chair: Ann Stoler (Anthropology and History, New School for Social Research)
Barrymore Anthony Bogues (Africana Studies, Brown University) - Abolition
Andrés F. Henao Castro (Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Boston) - Necropolitics
3:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. Panel 3
Chair: Emily Apter (French and Comparative Literature, New York University)
Joy James (Humanities, Williams College) - Captive Maternal
Tommy Curry (School of Philosophy and Language Studies, University of Edinburgh) - Black Men
5 p.m. - 5:15 p.m. Closing remarks
Saturday, Oct. 24
12 p.m. - 12:15 p.m. Opening remarks
12:30 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. Panel 4
Chair: Achille Mbembe (Philosophy, University of Witswaterand/Duke University)
R.A. Judy (Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Pittsburgh) - Riot
Selamawit Terrefe (English, Tulane University) - Psycho-politicsz
2 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Panel 5
Chair: Jacques Lezra (Hispanic Studies, University of California, Riverside)
Zakiyyah Iman Jackson (English, University of Southern California) - Body
Michael E. Sawyer (Race, Ethnicity and Migration Studies, and English, ½ñÈÕ³Ô¹Ï) - Gravity
3:30 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. Panel 6
Chair: Akeel Bilgrami (Philosophy, Columbia University)
Barnor Hesse (African-American Studies, Northwestern University) - Racism
Janine Jones (Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Greensboro) - Dreadlocked Logics of Impossibility
5 p.m. - 6 p.m. Closing discussion
