Reading Black Reconstruction Today

Wednesday, September 18, 12:00 - 2:00 pm

820 Social Sciences Building, Social Science Matrix

We stumble through 2024 in search of new political coordinates. Long gone is the myth of the end of history, and today we instead confront sharp questions about the fraught tangle of race, class, and gender. Explosive struggles against racist police brutality and colonial domination worldwide remind us that the work of the past remains largely unfinished. Our moment needs urgent decoding, and we have no Rosetta Stone better suited to the task than W.E.B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction. This presentation, the product of a forthcoming collective volume on Du Bois' text, provides a broad overview of what it means to read Black Reconstruction alongside ongoing abolitionist and anticolonial struggles today.

Lunch refreshments will be provided. The Matrix is wheelchair accessible via the east entrance of Social Sciences Building and Elevator 2, which goes directly to the 8th floor.

Geo Maher is an abolitionist educator, organizer, and writer based in Philadelphia. He has taught previously at the University of Pennsylvania, Vassar College, Drexel University, San Quentin State Pr*son, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas, and has held visiting positions at the CUNY Graduate Center, the Decolonizing Humanities Project at the College of William & Mary, NYU’s Hemispheric Institute, and the Institute of Social Research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

He is the author of five books: (2013); (2016); (2017); (2021); and (2022); and co-editor of the Duke University Press book series .

If you require an accommodation for effective communication or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Barbara Montano at [email protected] or 510-664-4324 with as much advance notice as possible.

Host or Publisher Black Studies Collaboratory