Departmental Lecture Series
Comparative Thinking in the Age of Black Lives Matter
During 2021 and 2022, the Department of Comparative Literature at UCLA will host a lecture series dedicated to “Comparative Thinking in the Age of Black Lives Matter.” Inspired by the protests that rose up in the wake of the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the series is dedicated to thinking through the global implications of the persistence of anti-Blackness and the potential of antiracist social movements. Comparative thinking is an essential component of antiracist and decolonial theory, yet it must also engage with the specific challenges of anti-Blackness. We are especially interested in exploring how we, as scholars of comparative literature and culture, can continue decolonizing our curricula and institutions in light of the BLM moment. Throughout the series, we will hear from scholars at different stages of their careers who are addressing the entanglement of cultural production, colonial legacies, and racist structures across fields, national contexts, and historical periods.
PAST lectures
- May 18, 2021 at 6:30 PM PST: Adrián I. P-Flores, UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative Literature
- Title: “Traversing Suicide: The Unthought of Blackness in the Suicidological Imagination”
- Co-sponsored with the Department of Comparative Literature’s Program in Experimental Critical Theory
- November 4, 2021 from 12:30-1:30 PM PST: Ayesha Ramachandran, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University
Upcoming lectures
- April 14, 2022 at 12:00 PM PST: Dr. Angela Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, UC Santa Cruz
- Title: “International Solidarity in the Era of Black Lives Matter and Justice for Palestine”
- Co-sponsored with the Department of Comparative Literature’s Edward W. Said Professorship and Annual Lecture series