Pembroke Seminar “In the Afterlives and Aftermaths of Ruin” Lecture by Habiba Ibrahim, Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Professor Ibrahim will ask the question: what is Black childhood? More precisely, what is Black childhood when it is separated from Black children and lives a double, untimely life as a refuge from what Jack Halberstam has called the “straight time” of maturity, or the national time of electoral politics? Ibrahim’s lecture tarries with the two-ness of Black gendered childhood’s relation to timeliness and untimeliness. This two-part structure of ideological contestation is evident in the recently heightened significance of Black girlhood, seen in Black feminist historiographical projects and social justice movements on one hand, and the appropriation of Black girlhood’s radical potential on the other. 

Free and open to the public.

Event accessibility information: To bypass stairs, visitors may enter via the automatic doors at the rear of the building, where there is a wheelchair-accessible elevator.