How does retrieving the ornamental logic of Orientalism impact how we think about race, personhood, and modernism? In her talk, Professor Anne Cheng will explore the meeting of violence and beauty and ask what kind of life subsists as broken or superfluous things. Through a series of readings of literary, legal, and visual texts, her talk will isolate instances of dark, miraculous moments when ornaments become flesh. 

What I Am Thinking About Now: Vanessa Fabien, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Africana Studies and the Cogut Center for the Humanities

Ron Suskind's book,  A Hope in the Unseen, has, for two decades, moved many to focus on issues of race and class inequality. The story follows Cedric Jennings, a young black honor student at Washington, D.C.'s Ballou High School, as he manages a bewildering array of intellectual and social challenges during his freshman year at Brown University.

CSREA invites you to engage in an informal conversation with Professor Richard Tapia (Rice University) over lunch. This discussion presents an opportunity to learn more about his experiences as a researcher in the computational and mathematical sciences, and discuss challenges faced by underrepresented minorities in STEM fields.

Please RSVP by Friday, 4/10 at 5pm if you would like to attend: [email protected]

How do historians write about race? Ellen Wu (History, Indiana University) will discuss her research trajectory for "The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority" (Princeton, 2014), including the pitfalls and promises of taking on a ubiquitous topic. The conversation will also consider strategies for emerging race scholars to consider when writing about race for a general audience.

See also:

Today the reigning perception of Asians in the United States is that of the “model minority”: naturally smart and hardworking, socio-economically mobile, quiet, and unlike other peoples of color for these very reasons. Observers often attribute the putative “success” of Asian Americans to “culture.” By excavating the origins of the “model minority” image in the 1940s-60s, historian Ellen Wu explains that it is an invented fiction rather than timeless truth.

See also: 

What I Am Thinking About Now: Stefano Bloch, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Urban Studies Program and Cogut Center for the Humanities

"Deeply Superficial Reflections on Life as a Tagger"

Professor Stefano Bloch examines the (re)development of the contemporary city by focusing on illicit contributions to the making of place by members of urban-based subcultures. As he will discuss, this research forces him to reflect on his own experiences as a once-prolific graffiti writer and why he rejects commonplace defenses of graffiti as "art".

CSREA Faculty Grants are designed to support the synergistic development of intellectual community and research on campus by funding and staffing campus based events or supporting research focused working groups. We invite Brown University faculty and researchers to submit proposals that focus on issues of race, ethnicity and/or indigeneity in the United States. Projects with U.S. related transnational dimensions are also invited.

Prof. Marcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh. His books and essays have been published in fourteen languages. His most recent work is Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail (Beacon Press, 2014). He is producer of the prize-winning documentary film Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of the Rebels (2014), directed by Tony Buba.

RSVPs are required for this event. Please email [email protected] to attend.