Please join us on Wednesday, March 21, at 12pm-1pm for a "What I Am Thinking About Now" presentation by Juliet Hooker, Professor of Political Science at Brown University, titled "Black Grief/White Grievance: Loss and Contemporary US Racial Politics." 

After Ferguson in 2014, the visibility of protests against police violence resulted in much analysis of black protest, while the phenomenon of white rage was left largely unexamined until Donald Trump's surprising 2016 presidential victory. This essay reframes the problem of contemporary racial politics as the politicization of white grievance. I draw on the notion that the political imagination of white citizens has not been shaped by loss to argue that in moments when white privilege is in crisis because white dominance is threatened, white grievance is mobilized politically in order to counter perceived "gains" - both material and symbolic - by people of color. It is thus necessary to theorize the kinds of political practices and imaginations wrought by the absence of political loss. 

RSVP: [email protected]

"What I Am Thinking About Now" is an on-going informal workshop/seminar series to which faculty and graduate students are invited to present and discuss recently published work and work in progress. All are invited to attend and participate.