Racism Archives - Public Seminar

Activism

Against Innocence

Unravelling the myth of the depoliticized child

March 4, 2026 • by Alexandra Magearu

1. In my early twenties, I was captivated by the idea that creative processes can return us to the boundless dreamscapes of our childhood. Only back then, I thought, could we afford to experience the world somatically. Not yet captured by social conventions, our bodies had the potential to become everything. ...

Podcast

Nobody Else Has My Eyes

Episode 53: A conversation with Nell Irvin Painter about her new book, I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays

April 30, 2024 • by Claire Potter

Episode 53: A conversation with Nell Irvin Painter about her new book, I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays...

History

Nature, Wild Girls, and Putting History in a New Environmental Perspective

In her latest book, historian Tiya Miles explores how some marginalized but eminent American women were shaped by the call of the wild

December 4, 2023 • by Brianna Corley

In her latest book, Wild Girls, Harvard historian Tiya Miles is particularly concerned with how the relationship with nature established by several nineteenth-century women—some prominent, some not—helped them flourish outside of conventional gender roles. ...

Nature, Wild Girls, and Putting History in a New Environmental Perspective

Middle East & North Africa

Have We Scholars of Anti-Semitism Failed to Facilitate Empathy for Its Victims?

What we can learn from scholars of anti-Black racism

October 18, 2023 • by Magda Teter

For almost a century, most of us have focused on dissecting anti-Semitic ideas and ideologies. But—with the very important exception of those studying the Holocaust—we have not paid enough attention to the impact these ideas, images, and actions have on Jews as human beings....

Have We Scholars of Anti-Semitism Failed to Facilitate Empathy for Its Victims?

Public Health

After We Wash Our Hands, What Do We Do Next?

The racist structure of international relations condemns countries like Haiti to cycles of epidemics

May 3, 2023 • by Guilberly Louissaint

Guilberly Louissaint writes about the the racist structure of international relations that condemns countries like Haiti to epidemics....

After We Wash Our Hands, What Do We Do Next?

Migration

Held Hostage to One’s Values

On the responsibility to refugees at the Belarusian-Polish border

April 25, 2023 • by Lidia Zessin-Jurek

The Polish-Belarusian border crossing has been, since mid-2021, one of the world’s many border zones where people get sick and die under the watchful eye of the state....

Activism

Future Anterior Witness

Women’s Voices Narrating Black Death

February 16, 2023 • by Julie Beth Napolin

Facebook's censorship of documented violence points to a boundary in public life: death is not meant to be livestreamed....

<strong>Future Anterior Witness</strong>

Democracy

American Democracy in Crisis: Q & A on Tocqueville, Douglass, Dewey, and Arendt

Liberal institutions, abolition democracy, and civic virtue

February 1, 2023 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Juliet Hooker, William Milberg, James Miller and Deva Woodly

If we think about the way that liberalism anchors democracy, it largely relies on rights and institutional design. Just as a descriptive matter, it’s the case that the institutions that have been designed and the regime of rights that has been conceived, including the regime of human rights that has ...

Democracy

Frederick Douglass on Multiracial Democracy

On a universal right to migration and the ideal of “composite nationality”

January 30, 2023 • by Juliet Hooker

Douglass’s conception of multiracial democracy envisioned the political coexistence on egalitarian terms of individuals of “all races and creeds” as fellow citizens. He called for a “composite nationality” anchored in the idea of a universal human right to migration and the political legacy of the Americas as a multiracial continent. ...

Frederick Douglass on Multiracial Democracy

Activism

Interference Archive Traces the History of Racist Policing in America

Defend/Defund, a welcome new exhibit at Interference Archive, through January 29

January 4, 2023 • by Lindsey Scharold

The exhibition is in part a response to George Floyd’s murder, and of Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Philando Castile before him. But its scope is much broader. Hung on just about every wall are posters, newspapers, pamphlets, zines, and even buttons that catalog the long history of negative police ...

Interference Archive Traces the History of Racist Policing in America

Feminism

Our Bodies, Ourselves, Online

Historian and activist Saniya Lee Ghanoui explains how a feminist classic entered the twenty-first century

October 27, 2022 • by Saniya Lee Ghanoui and Claire Potter

When we started, we knew we needed experts from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Women and gender-expansive people from different races brought their own perspectives, personal and expert, and that would help us address racial health disparities. ...

Literature

Introducing the Latest Issue of James Baldwin Review

Honoring Baldwin’s legacy in a new volume of academic research, criticism, and personal essays

October 3, 2022 • by Justin A. Joyce

As we continue to bring together a mixture of scholarship, reviews, and reflections—from a variety of voices—it is our humble aim to continue to grow our readership and expand the legacy and impact of our namesake author’s moving works and searing insights. ...

Racism

Against Innocence

Unravelling the myth of the depoliticized child

Nobody Else Has My Eyes

Episode 53: A conversation with Nell Irvin Painter about her new book, I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays

Nature, Wild Girls, and Putting History in a New Environmental Perspective

In her latest book, historian Tiya Miles explores how some marginalized but eminent American women were shaped by the call of the wild

Have We Scholars of Anti-Semitism Failed to Facilitate Empathy for Its Victims?

What we can learn from scholars of anti-Black racism

After We Wash Our Hands, What Do We Do Next?

The racist structure of international relations condemns countries like Haiti to cycles of epidemics

Held Hostage to One’s Values

On the responsibility to refugees at the Belarusian-Polish border

Future Anterior Witness

Women’s Voices Narrating Black Death

Frederick Douglass on Multiracial Democracy

On a universal right to migration and the ideal of “composite nationality”

Interference Archive Traces the History of Racist Policing in America

Defend/Defund, a welcome new exhibit at Interference Archive, through January 29

Our Bodies, Ourselves, Online

Historian and activist Saniya Lee Ghanoui explains how a feminist classic entered the twenty-first century

Introducing the Latest Issue of James Baldwin Review

Honoring Baldwin’s legacy in a new volume of academic research, criticism, and personal essays

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