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In conversation with Francio Guadeloupe
Social and cultural anthropologist Francio Guadeloupe joins us for a conversation on understanding the black condition and the racialisation of Muslims within the Netherlands and the Dutch Caribbean. Addressing the conviviality and creolization of the Kingdom, Francio explains the harmony and struggle that is present and looks at the changing politics of race.
This conversation was recorded on 7th October 2020
Speaker: Francio Guadeloupe, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Gloria Wekker
Gloria Wekker, author of White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, discusses white innocence and colour-blindness in the Netherlands; reflecting on the country’s relationship with colonialism, its lack of discourse about race, and the importance of intergenerational knowledge exchange. Gloria also looks back on her experiences in the US: the moment she learned she was black, how the prom shaped her understanding of intersectionality, and the significance of having a black female professor for the first time.
This conversation was recorded on 1st October 2020
Speaker: Gloria Wekker, Professor Emeritus at Utrecht University
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Short Takes: Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of deportation to Jamaica
Our latest Short Takes podcast is provided by Luke de Noronha, author of Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of deportation to Jamaica. “An ethnography of deportation, and therefore an ethnography of separation, absence and exile”, Luke talks us through the motivation for his research and its contribution to our collective understanding and shared struggles.
Speaker: Luke de Noronha, Simon Research Fellow at the University of Manchester
Image: Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of deportation to Jamaica (Manchester University Press, 2020)
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Read the transcript for this podcast
In conversation with Dorothy E. Roberts
Acclaimed scholar of race, gender and law, Dorothy E. Roberts discusses the harm and health inequities produced by structural racism, with race correction in medicine disqualifying black people from specialised care, and evident collaboration of doctors and lawyers in promoting juridical ideas about race. Addressing a violent policing system that can be traced back to slave patrols and black codes, Dorothy also explains the need for abolition of the entire policing apparatus in the US.
This conversation was recorded on 28th August 2020
Speaker: Dorothy E. Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, University of Pennsylvania
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Jacob Dlamini
Tamar Garb welcomes Jacob Dlamini for a conversation on the limitations of racialisations and categorisations, the problematic ethnicising of blackness, and understanding the centrality of race while also understanding that race doesn't explain everything. Jacob speaks on his work exploring the role of collaborators during apartheid, and how the traumas of the children of collaborators is important to the context of the traumas of South Africa’s past.
This conversation was recorded on 30th July 2020
Speakers: Tamar Garb, Director of UCL Institute of Advanced Studies and Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art // Jacob Dlamini, Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Gail Lewis
Gail Lewis, psychotherapist and Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE, joins us for a conversation on Britain’s racial formation; speaking across the generational lines; and how music captures life and sustains us. Gail offers her psychoanalysis on black lives ‘mattering’ and how “being present to the aliveness, and the moments of deadening, and the moments of possibility, even in silence, really teaches you something about being ‘with’.”
This conversation was recorded on 13th July 2020
Speaker: Gail Lewis, Visiting Senior Fellow in the Department of Gender Studies at London School of Economics
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with George the Poet
Paul Gilroy is joined by George the Poet, for a conversation on poetry, podcasting and storytelling; looking at how hybridity and sociological thought have impacted George’s process of intuition and priorities in advocating for his community. George also discusses how, moving forward, these priorities are evolving around communication systems, value creation and academia.
This conversation was recorded on 9th July 2020
Speaker: George the Poet, spoken-word artist, poet and podcast host of Have You Heard George’s Podcast?
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Short Takes: An Anthology of Haitian Revolutionary Fictions (Age of Slavery)
Our latest Short Take is provided by Marlene L. Daut, Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the Woodson Institute, historian of Haiti, and an important voice in the burgeoning historical archive of neglected political and cultural dynamics of the Haitian revolution. Here Marlene talks to us about a forthcoming anthology she has co-edited with Grégory Pierrot and Marion Rohrleitner, titled An Anthology of Haitian Revolutionary Fictions (Age of Slavery).
Speaker: Marlene L. Daut, Professor of African Diaspora Studies in the Carter G. Woodson Institute and the Program in American Studies at the University of Virginia
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Read the transcript for this podcast
In conversation with David Theo Goldberg
David Theo Goldberg, Director of the University of California’s Humanities Research Institute, offers his insight about the state of critical thinking around race and racism, and the effacement of historicality in favour of presentism; and responds to the sanction of comparativisms and relationalities as “racism anywhere is not possible to be upheld without racisms elsewhere”.
This conversation was recorded on 8th July 2020
Speaker: David Theo Goldberg, Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Courtenay Griffiths QC
Paul Gilroy is joined by Courtenay Griffiths QC, distinguished criminal defence advocate with 40 years of experience, for a conversation on racism within the criminal justice system and its disproportionate effect on black people, and the need to confront patterns of criminalisation, the hierarchy within institutions and reforming education in relation to this.
This conversation was recorded on 24th June 2020
Speaker: Courtenay Griffiths QC, Barrister, 25 Bedford Row
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Suresh Grover
Suresh Grover, Director of the anti-racist grassroots group The Monitoring Group, joins us to discuss his work and campaigning in the struggle against racism in Britain, the notion of black as a political colour and the vision of an inclusive political culture, and the importance of exposing the lived experiences of black communities in addressing institutional and state racism.
This conversation was recorded on 23rd June 2020
Speaker: Suresh Grover, Director of The Monitoring Group
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Short Takes: James Baldwin’s ‘Little Houses’ and Abel Meeropol’s ‘Strange Fruit’
Robert Reid-Pharr, Professor of African and African American Studies as well as Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University, provides a taster of his eagerly anticipated publication of his major study on James Baldwin. Speaking on Baldwin’s former teacher, Abel Meeropol, writer of Strange Fruit which later became an anthem of the anti-lynching, anti-white supremacist movement, Robert offers a snippet of Baldwin’s young life.
Speaker: Robert Reid-Pharr, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University
Image: James Baldwin taken in Hyde Park, London, 1969, by Allan Warren (This image is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
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Short Takes: How Literature Matters: An Ethical Reading of Black British Women's Writing
This Short Take has been generously provided to us by Suzanne Scafe, co-author of the ground-breaking 1985 book Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain, and known for her involvement in supplementary schooling and the Brixton Black Women's Group. In this episode, Suzanne speaks to us about her new work in process and soon for publication, How Literature Matters: An Ethical Reading of Black British Women's Writing.
Speaker: Suzanne Scafe, author and Visiting Fellow at London South Bank University
Image: Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (Verso Books, 2018)
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Read the transcript for this podcast
In conversation with Nikhil Pal Singh
Nikhil Pal Singh, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History at NYU, talks us through ‘the unfinished struggle for democracy’ and the racialised ordering of systems in the United States; the balance of forces of the right and left; and the voice of corporate multiculturalism and celebrity renunciations of white privilege in response to Black Lives Matter.
This conversation was recorded on 16th June 2020
Speaker: Nikhil Pal Singh, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History, and Faculty Director of the NYU Prison Education Program, New York University
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Achille Mbembe
Achille Mbembe, author, commentator and philosopher, addresses his recent work The Universal Right to Breathe and Brutalisme in the context of the racial disparity of deaths and racially inflicted violence; speaking on the power of witnessing in preventing others from being expropriated of their breath, and the significance of respiration at the beginning and end of life.
This conversation was recorded on 17th June 2020
Speaker: Achille Mbembe, Research Professor at the Wits Institute For Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Patricia J. Williams
Distinguished writer, commentator and American legal scholar Patricia J. Williams joins Paul Gilroy to talk about the legacies of Critical Race Theory, the eugenic character of racialised governance and the current call to defund the police.
This conversation was recorded on 12th June 2020. Apologies for the noise of a smoke alarm in the background.
Speaker: Patricia J. Williams, University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University, Boston
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Gary Younge
Paul Gilroy and Gary Younge, Professor of Sociology at Manchester University and distinguished journalist, reflect on Mark Twain’s reputed words ‘history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes’, the first political memories that shaped them, and the potential in engaging sympathy and humour critically.
This conversation was recorded on 12th June 2020
Speaker: Gary Younge, Professor of Sociology at Manchester University and journalist
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Alondra Nelson
Alondra Nelson, President of the Social Science Research Council in the US and Harold F. Linder Chair in Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, joins us to question who is assumed to be the disposable demographic, and the politics of genetic data and racial biology being used to understand the ‘black body’ during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This conversation was recorded on 8th June 2020
Speaker: Alondra Nelson, President of the Social Science Research Council and Harold F. Linder Chair in Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
In conversation with Ruth Wilson Gilmore
We’re joined by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Professor of Geography in Earth and Environmental Sciences at CUNY, for a conversation on the current crises of Covid-19 and state violence, touching on the desire for learning as a means of activism, the political geography of mobilisation and double consciousness.
This conversation was recorded on 7th June 2020
Speaker: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at CUNY Graduate Center
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Read the transcript for this podcast
Short Takes: Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City
In this episode of Short Takes, we’re joined by Joy White, author of the eagerly anticipated book Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City, published recently by Repeater, and Joy is going to talk a little bit about the arguments in her book and introduce the urgency of this intervention, particularly now in the context for our political culture created by the Covid emergency and racialised police brutality.
Speaker: Joy White, Sociologist, Ethnographer and Researcher
Image: Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City (Repeater, 2020)
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Read the transcript for this podcast
Short Takes: Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question
One of the most amazing publications of the last few years in the broad field of Black Studies and African American Studies has been Bénédicte Boisseron’s book Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question, published by Columbia University Press. In the second of our Short Takes series, Boisseron joins us now to talk about Afro-Dog, and to discuss the places where the study of racism and racialisation intersect with Animal Studies, and why that connection is important for both areas of specialisation in the Humanities.
Speaker: Bénédicte Boisseron, Associate Professor of Afroamerican & African Studies, University of Michigan
Image: Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question (Columbia University Press, 2018)
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Read the transcript for this podcast
Short Takes: In the words of Sarah Parker Remond
Welcome to our Short Takes podcast series! We'll be highlighting important research and conversations around the topics of racism and racialisation, with contributions from academics, activists and cultural practitioners.
In the first of our series, Sirpa Salenius, the biographer of Sarah Parker Remond, and author of An Abolitionist Abroad: Sarah Parker Remond in Cosmopolitan Europe (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), is going to present some elements of Sarah Parker Remond’s life in Europe, and show why we felt it was such a wonderful thing to be able to use Sarah Parker Remond’s name to express the spirit and the character and the direction of the work that our centre is going to conduct in the future.
Please note, this recording uses various pronunciations of Remond's name (Europe-US).
Speaker: Sirpa Salenius, Senior Lecturer at University of Eastern Finland
Image: Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society
Executive producer: Paul Gilroy
Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu
Read the transcript for this podcast
