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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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