St.Clair Drake Memorial Lecture featuring author Junot Díaz

The Department of African & African American Studies at Stanford University proudly presents the Annual St. Clair Drake Memorial Lecture featuring renowned author Junot Díaz, who will be delivering this year's thought-provoking lecture titled, "Notes From a Book of the Dead."

About Junot Díaz:
Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, Junot Díaz is the acclaimed author of Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008 Pulitzer Prize winner), and This Is How You Lose Her. A MacArthur fellow and a professor at MIT, Díaz has received numerous accolades, including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN/Malamud Award.

Lecture Abstract:

In our anti-democratic socially mediated conjuncture where the act of listening has eroded to the point of near-extinction, what is learned when those of us living under conditions of Pattersonian social death attempt to super-listen to the actual dead through the (undead) medium of literature — a super-listening that evokes Donald Davidson’s concept of radical interpretation. What is made possible with such deep dead communions, and what is not?

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