American Research events at Leeds University

Some upcoming seminars / lectures of interest at Leeds University

Wednesday January 27th
Zoe Trodd (University of Nottingham)
Picturing Frederick Douglass: The Most Photographed American of the 19th Century
Grant Room, Michael Sadler Building, 3-5 pm

Zoe Trodd is Professor of American Literature in the Department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham, founding co-director of the Centre for Research in Race and Rights,. Her focus is the history, literature and visual culture of protest movements, especially antislavery. She is the author of many books including American Protest Literature and Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century's Most Photographed American details available here:
http://www.zoetrodd.com/books.html

Thursday February 18th
Julio Decker (University of Sussex)
Imperial Infrastructures: German and American railroads in Namibia and the Philippines
Grant Room, Michael Sadler Building, 5-7 pm

Wednesday March 9th
Gary Gerstle – Race & Resistance Annual Lecture
Race and Nation in the Age of Obama
Michael Sadler Building, room LG19, 6-8 pm

CERS 2016 Lecture in Celebration of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent
Professor Paul C Taylor
Penn State University

Title: Facing Ferguson- Reflecting on Racial Innocence

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown and Darren Wilson met on a street in Ferguson, Missouri. A short time later one of them was dead, the other was mired in controversy, and this town had become an emblem for the complex tangle of issues that roils the politics of racialized states. How do we position ourselves to face these issues productively and intelligently?
I will argue that facing Ferguson means refusing the seductions of racial innocence. I will develop the notion of racial innocence from its roots in the work of James Baldwin, and then draw out some implications for contemporary democratic politics. The main suggestion will be that one form of racial innocence leads to the temptation of despair, and that we can only understand this temptation, and prepare to resist it, by shifting our focus from spectacular violence to persistent vulnerability.
Date: Thursday, 10th March
Place: Room 12.25, Social Sciences Building
Time: 5-7 pm