Politics: A RaceB4Race Symposium
May 4-7, 2021
Co-sponsored by Brandeis University and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University.
As the first RaceB4Race event to bring classicists into conversation with early modernists and medievalists, this symposium combined scholars working to reconfigure, rehistoricize, and repoliticize the past.
This symposium invited scholars of history, literature, and other disciplines in the premodern eras to consider how the past frames the politics of race, how the politics of the past have influenced race in our disciplines, and how the politics of the present intrude upon, expropriate, and capitalize on these trends. In addition, this event focused on how the practices of scholarship and pedagogy engage with the politics of race and the racialization of politics in our disciplines.
RaceB4Race® is brought to life by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in partnership with The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Division of Humanities at Arizona State University. RaceB4Race is underwritten by the Hitz Foundation.
Invited speakers
- Lubaaba Al-Azami (University of Liverpool)
- Roland Betancourt (University of California, Irvine)
- Yujhán Claros (Columbia University)
- Shelley Haley (Hamilton College)
- Joyce Green MacDonald (University of Kentucky)
- Lyra D. Monteiro (Rutgers University)
- Jennifer L. Morgan (New York University)
- Stacey Murrell (Brown University)
- Shyama Rajendran (Krea University)
- Patrice Rankine (University of Richmond)
- Jared Rodriguez (University of Alabama)
- Scott Stevens (Syracuse University)
Download the program
Keynote conversation: Ibram X. Kendi
RaceB4Race: A Conversation with Ibram X. Kendi on Stamped from the Beginning
Co-sponsored by Wellesley College
This conversation with Ibram X. Kendi will focus on his work on Stamped from the Beginning. In conversation with Ayanna Thompson, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the RaceB4Race Executive Board, Professor Kendi will discuss the long, premodern histories of race and racism. As the keynote conversation for the RaceB4Race Politics symposium, this event will ask questions about how racist ideas developed and became deeply rooted in our political culture.
Buy Ibram X. Kendi's books here.
You may watch the recorded conversation here.
Schedule
10:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT
Race, White Supremacy, and Field Politics
Introductory remarks
Shelley Haley - "Re-imagining Classics: Audre Lorde Was Right"
Scott Stevens - "Early Modern Indigenous Chronologies"
Jared Rodriguez - “Anti-Blackness, Medieval Studies, and Other Religions of Latin Christian Coloniality”
Q&A moderated by Dan-El Padilla Peralta
2:00 pm – 3:00pm EDT
Coffee talk: Online Safety with Dorothy Kim
10:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT
White Heritage Politics
Lubaaba Al-Azami - "Remembering Hans Sloane: Decolonial Disruptions to Archival Violence"
Lyra D. Monteiro - "What’s in a Column? Liberation Archaeology and Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy"
Shyama Rajendran - "The Politics of Language: Vernacularity and Racialization, Past and Present"
Q&A moderated by Urvashi Chakravarty* (updated from original schedule)
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EDT
Coffee talk: Collaborating and Organizing Across Disciplines with Joel Christensen, Dorothy Kim, and Ayanna Thompson
5:00 pm EDT - Pre-recorded conversation release on YouTube
RaceB4Race: A Conversation with Ibram X. Kendi on Stamped from the Beginning
10:00 am – 11:00 am EDT
Coffee talk: Parenting while Teaching and Researching with Patricia Akhimie
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT
White Supremacy and Reception
Roland Betancourt - "The Far Right’s Whitewashed Byzantium"
Joyce Green MacDonald - "Finding Black Women in Shakespeare"
Patrice Rankine - "Pre-Racial Fantasies: Locating Antiquity and the American Stage at the fin de siècle"
Q&A moderated by Cord J. Whitaker
10:00 am – 11:00 am EDT
Coffee talk: Publishing Articles on Race with David Sterling Brown
3:00 pm – 5:15 pm EDT
Race, Gender, and the Politics of Intersectionality
Yujhán Claros - "Biology, Gender, Color, and the Racialization of Politics at Imperial Athens"
Jennifer L. Morgan - "Race and Reckoning—Slavery, Kinship and the Marketplace"
Stacey Murrell - "Black in Iberia: On Concubinage, Race, and Belonging"
Q&A moderated by Dorothy Kim
Closing remarks