Audre Lorde Archives - Public Seminar

Activism

To Build a Black Future

In this excerpt, an introduction to the new Black politics of joy, pain, and care

September 11, 2023 • by Christopher Paul Harris

One of the critical features of the contemporary moment in Black movement, the time of #BlackLivesMatter, is how capacious the definitions of Blackness and, with it, Black radicalism have become....

Education

I Want to Know Who I Am At Work When I Am Not Under Duress

Riffs on Boundaries, Protection, and Inspiration

April 28, 2022 • by Gina Athena Ulysse

Survival is not guaranteed. In between the invitation to participate in this special issue and sitting down to write, bell hooks and Valerie Boyd joined the realm of ancestors. When Black women in the academy die, Black women in the academy take notice. ...

I Want to Know Who I Am At Work When I Am Not Under Duress

Literature

The Best Books I Read in 2021

And why I liked them

December 15, 2021 • by Claire Potter

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—buying books for other people that you want to read yourself! And on that note, here are the best ones I read last year. All links are to IndieBound to gently nudge you to buy from independent bookstores. Fiction It’s a tie between Douglas Stuart’s ...

Activism

An American Reckoning

The fire this time

June 4, 2020 • by Deva Woodly

In 1844, James Russell Lowell penned the anti-slavery poem “The Present Crisis” in response to the political tumult leading up to the Civil War. Inspired by Lowell’s poem, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called its official magazine The Crisis, with W. E. B. Du Bois as ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Five

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

June 4, 2020 • by Benjamin Bernard, Jonathon Catlin, Benjamin P. Davis, Jodi Dean, Shannon Hoff, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Zein Murib, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Rocío Zambrana

This is the final seminar of the "Sentencing the Present" series. For previous seminars, see part one, part two, part three and part four. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In ...

Exiles on 12th Street

Kicking and Screaming: Stonewall at 50

Exiles on 12th Street: Episode Three

June 28, 2019 • by Claire Potter

This is the third episode in Public Seminar’s podcast, Exiles on 12th Street. If you like it, go to iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe. The Stonewall riots that took place in New York in June 1969 are widely credited with catalyzing the modern LGBT+ civil rights movement. Join us as ...

Feature

A Primary Moral Position

Black feminism and self possession

February 23, 2018 • by Christopher Lebron

Race/isms Book Forum is a new series aimed at bringing established and emerging voices together in conversation around recent work that critically engages our world’s racial scripts, past and present. The structure of the forum is straightforward. We invite three to four thinkers to grapple with a book, highlighting a section ...