This event is part of the GRSJ Noted Scholars Lecture Series, and is co-presented with the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Education, the Public Humanities Hub, and the Equity and Inclusion Office.
In The Long Emancipation, Dr. Rinaldo Walcott posits that Black people globally live in the time of emancipation and that emancipation is definitely not freedom. This talk tackles the question, ‘What is (Black) freedom?’.
In dialogue with Dr. Peter James Hudson, Dr. Walcott will survey a range of recent events to begin to make sense of Black non-freedom, including present initiatives in Canadian postsecondary settings, such as programs designed to increase numbers of Black faculty.
Dr. Rinaldo Walcott is Professor and Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies, University at Buffalo. He is a writer and critic. His research is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender and sexuality with interests in nations, nationalisms, multiculturalism, policy and education broadly defined. As an interdisciplinary Black Studies scholar, Dr. Walcott has published in a wide range of venues on everything from literature to film, to theatre to music to policy. His articles have appeared in scholarly journals and books, as well as popular venues like newspapers and magazines and media online sources. He often comments on black cultural life for radio and TV.
Dr. Walcott has edited or co-edited multiple works including Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism (Insomniac, 2000). Dr. Walcott is the author of Black Like Who: Writing Black Canada (Insomniac Press, 1997 with a second revised edition in 2003). He is also the author of Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora and Black Studies (Insomniac Press, 2016) and co-author of Black Life: Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom (Arbeiter Ring, 2019). In 2021, Dr. Walcott published The Long Emancipation: Moving Towards Freedom (Duke University Press) and On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition (Biblioasis) which was nominated for the Heritage Toronto Book Award, longlisted for the Toronto Book Awards, a Globe and Mail Book of the Year, and listed in CBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2021.
Dr. Peter James Hudson is Associate Professor, Department of Geography, UBC. Deploying the methodologies and literatures of Black Studies, political economy, and history, his research examines the long histories of Black dispossession under capitalism, and of Black resistance to capitalist dispossession.
