We are pleased to invite you to the second lecture of the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2023/2024 Fall semester
Christopher Harris
(University of California)
New Forms/Known Rivers
This is an online event.
Thursday, November 16, 2023
at 5:15 p.m.
You can get 3 OZN points for participating in this event.
Where?
ONLINE, via ZOOM
https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/94269378969
What?
When #BlackLivesMatter emerged in 2013, it animated the most consequential Black-led mobilization since the civil rights and Black power era. Today, the hashtag turned rallying cry is but one expression of a radical reorientation toward Black politics, protest, and political thought. To Build a Black Future examines the spirit and significance of this insurgency, offering a revelatory account of a new political culture—responsive to pain, suffused with joy, and premised on care—emerging from the centuries-long arc of Black rebellion, a tradition that traces back to the Black slave. Drawing on his own experiences as an activist and organizer, Christopher Paul Harris takes readers inside the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) to chart the propulsive trajectory of Black politics and thought from the Middle Passage to the present historical moment. Carefully attending to the social forces that produce Black struggle and the contradictions that arise within it, Harris illustrates how M4BL gives voice to an abolitionist praxis that bridges the past, present, and future, outlining a political project at once directed inward to the Black community while issuing an outward challenge to the world. Essential reading for the age of #BlackLivesMatter, this visionary and provocative book reveals how the radical politics of joy, pain, and care, in sharp contrast to liberal political thought, can build a Black future that transcends ideology and pushes the boundaries of our political imagination.
Who?
Christopher Paul Harris is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global and International Studies at University of California, Irvine. His research interests range from Black political thought, culture, aesthetics, and social movements to broader questions concerning the possibility of revolutionary transformation in the 21st century. Advancing an abolitionist critique of the capitalist world-system, his work aims to understand the political lives, thought, and cultures of the Black diaspora and the underlying social forces that shape them. To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care, is his first book.
