May 2024
Filmed at the Tamiment Library, NYU
Jordan T. Camp sat down with Elizabeth Robinson to talk about media, Cedric J. Robinson, and the Black radical archive for our Curating Conversations series in anticipation of Archives Unbound: 50 Years of Hope, Resistance, and Rebellion, a conference in celebration of Elizabeth and Cedric Robinson at UC Santa Barbara at the end of May.
Saturday, December 2, 2023
A conference at UC Berkeley co-hosted by the Trinity Social Justice Initiative, the Department of Geography and Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley, and the International Gramsci Society
Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci developed his spatio-historical method of conjunctural analysis during the rise of fascism in Italy. He sought to understand the relations among political, economic, ideological, and military forces that were giving rise to this emergent movement and regime. Gramsci’s conjunctural analysis has become newly relevant to our own moment. Our conjuncture has been marked by multiple colliding crises, from relentless racism and vigilantism, gender violence, climate chaos, social polarization, structural unemployment, mass migration, resurgent militarism, the rise of the far right across the world, and a crisis of hegemony and for capitalism on a global scale. The challenge for scholars at present is to comprehend Gramsci’s conjunctural analysis in his own time while also “translating” his insights to confront the crises of our own.
This one-day, in-person symposium, hosted by the International Gramsci Society, the Trinity Social Justice Institute, The Townsend Center for the Humanities, and the UC Berkeley Department of Geography considers historical, spatial, and theoretical provocations posed by the Gramscian tradition in order to advance political and social theory for the present. In dialogue with scholars from across the disciplines, we will consider how we might produce spaces for conjunctural analysis and theoretical production adequate to the current conjuncture.
9:30am | Welcome
9:45am – 11:00am | Panel 1—Gramsci’s Relevance
11:00am – 11:30am | Break
11:30am – 12:30pm | Panel 2—Borders, Migration, and Uneven Development in the Mediterranean
12:30pm – 1:30pm | Lunch
1:30pm – 2:45pm | Panel 3—Geographies of Racial Capitalism and Imperialism
Jennifer Casolo delivered her presentation remotely, which you can watch below.
2:45pm – 3:00pm | Break
3:00pm – 4:15pm | Panel 4—Law, the State, and Social Movements
**Due to technical difficulties, the video for this panel is not available.**
4:15pm – 4:30pm | Break
4:30pm – 5:45pm | Panel 5—Reading Gramsci in the South
**Due to technical difficulties, the video for this panel is not available.**
6:00pm | Reception
Education Must Be Defended
Keynote Lecture by Anthony Bogues
Friday, March 3, 2023
4-6:30 p.m.
Rittenberg Lounge, Mather Hall, Trinity College and online
Hosted by the Trinity Social Justice Initiative and the Smart Cities Lab, Trinity College, and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University
In the 1960s and 70s global anticolonial revolutionary thinkers were in open revolt against nationalist-driven racist attacks. Adjoining the major political campaigns of their day, they formed critical collaborative spaces of research, writing, and thinking. Participants included radical thinkers working outside the academy as well as those who considered themselves “in but not of” it. These included Cedric Robinson and Ambalavaner Sivanandan at the Institute of Race Relations in London, Sylvia Wynter at Atlanta’s Institute of the Black World, and Walter Rodney at Tanzania’s University of Dar es Salaam. The legacy of this generation informs this event, “Education Must Be Defended.”
This one-day conference, organized by the Social Justice Initiative and the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, considers the spatial, institutional, and pedagogical provocations posed by this tradition for the present day. Inspired by an earlier generation of radical intellectuals we will think together about how we might hold critical space for research and pedagogy amidst multiple colliding crises at present.
Image: A Black Students Union leader addresses a crowd of demonstrators in December 1968. Credit: Associated Press.
Convening at NYU Law School
December 1, 2022
The inaugural Dismantling Racial Capitalism convening at NYU, hosted by Urban Democracy Lab, Center for Race, Inequality and the Law, the Action Lab, and the Initiative for Community Power at NYU Law, aspired to create space to develop and sharpen our understanding of racial capitalism, how it functions, its horrific consequences, and, most importantly, how we can challenge and dismantle it. Academics, organizers, policy-makers, students and change-makers came together for a deeply-rooted examination of how racial capitalism drives inequality, exploitation, and destruction, and how we can catalyze change. Details here.
EVENT HELD ON FRIDAY, MAY 6, 2022, IN AUSTIN ARTS CENTER AND VIA ZOOM.
This conversation is also available to view on the Trinity website here.
Mike Davis reads from his book-in-progress, Star Spangled Leviathan: An Economic History of American Nationalism. Also available to view on the Trinity website here.
Diana Aldrete and Christina Heatherton, “Invisible Suffering,” Austin Arts Center at Trinity College, November 9, 2021. Also available to view on Trinity website here.
Jack Norton and Jordan T. Camp, “No One is Watching: Jail Expansion in Upstate NY,” Austin Arts Center at Trinity College, November 3, 2021. Also available to view on Trinity website here.
Rachel Herzing and Jordan T. Camp, “How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement Against Imprisonment,” Austin Arts Center at Trinity College, October 27, 2021. Also available to view on Trinity website here.
