Dean's Speaker Series
The School of Liberal Arts Dean’s Speaker Series brings prominent scholars, writers, and practitioners in the humanities, fine & performing arts and social sciences to Tulane University to foster an ongoing conversation about the vitality of the liberal arts in addressing topics that matter to society.
Anti-Racism and the Disciplines
Many of the liberal arts disciplines have complicated relationships to structural racism, colonialism, and/or imperialism, which arguably are structured into the “rules” of the disciplines themselves. Scholars working in those disciplines, including those featured in the series, are working to uncover those histories in the effort of thinking about and staging work for the next generation(s) of scholars. Each speaker will give a public talk; they will also meet in a smaller group (usually the next day) with faculty and students for a workshop on anti-racist research and scholarship.
Upcoming Events
Final Symposium: Anti-Racism and the Disciplines
Friday, March 31, 2023
1–6 pm
Rogers Chapel
As a formal close to the Dean’s Speaker Series on the theme of Anti-Racism and the Disciplines, School of Liberal Arts Dean Brian Edwards has invited all previous participants to Tulane’s campus for an all-day symposium of panels and presentations. While addressing and combatting racism is an ongoing uphill battle, this agenda will include critical debates and conversations about the role of racism in numerous liberal arts academic disciplines.
In addition to the cast of participating scholars (names and institutions listed below), the symposium will feature a keynote by American literary critic, Black Feminist scholar and Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor at Vanderbilt University, Hortense J. Spillers, who will also speak on Anti-Racism and Literary Studies.
Symposium Participants:
- Keynote on Literary Studies: Hortense Spillers
Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor Emerita of English, Vanderbilt University - Anthropology: Lee D. Baker
Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, and African and African American Studies, Duke University - Classical Studies: Dan-el Padilla Peralta
Associate Professor of Classics, Princeton University - Communication Studies: Sarah J. Jackson
Presidential Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Media, Inequality and Change Center, University of Pennsylvania - Digital Humanities: Kim Gallon
Associate Professor of Africana Studies, Brown University - Economics: Gary Hoover
Professor of Economics and Executive Director of the Murphy Institute, Tulane University - Philosophy: Lionel McPherson
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University - Sociology: Mary Pattillo
Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of African American Studies, Northwestern University
Supplemental Content:
Past Events
Anti-Racism and Classical Studies
Featuring Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University.
Monday, April 25, 2022, at 6 pm
Dan-el Padilla Peralta is Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University, where he is affiliated with the Programs in Latino Studies and Latin American Studies and the University Center for Human Values. A Dominican by birth and New Yorker by upbringing, he holds degrees from Princeton, Oxford, and Stanford. He is the author of Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League (Penguin, 2015) and Divine Institutions: Religions and Community in the Middle Roman Republic (Princeton University Press, 2020); and he has co-edited Rome, Empire of Plunder: The Dynamics of Cultural Appropriation (Cambridge University Press, 2017). His current projects include a co-authored study of 338 BCE and the origins of Roman imperialism (under contract with Harvard University Press), A People’s History of Rome (under contract with Princeton University Press), a co-edited volume on new approaches to the Middle Roman Republic, and a co-authored book-length essay on race and racism in the disciplinary identity of Classics.
Watch video on Youtube.
Anti-Racism and the Digital Humanities
Featuring Kim Gallon, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.
In conversation with Liz McMahon, Associate Professor of History at Tulane University.
Wednesday, April 13, 2022, at 6 pm
Kim Gallon is Associate Professor Africana Studies at Brown University. Her work investigates the cultural dimensions of the Black Press in the early twentieth century. Gallon earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania, and she holds an MS in Learning and Design Technology from Purdue University. Author of Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press (University of Illinois Press, 2020) and the field-defining article “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities” (in Debates in the Digital Humanities, University of Minnesota Press, 2016). she is also the founder and director of two black digital humanities projects: The Black Press Research Collective and COVID Black: A Taskforce on Black Health and Data. Gallon’s current projects include Technologies of Recovery: Black Digital Humanities, Theory and Praxis (University of Illinois Press), a book about the black digital humanities as a site of resistance and liberation, and Fiction for the Harassed and Frustrated (Johns Hopkins University Press), which examines the role and significance of popular literary expression in the Black Press in the early twentieth century.
Anti-Racism and Philosophy
Featuring Lionel K. McPherson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University.
Tuesday, October 12, 2021, at 6 pm
Lionel K. McPherson received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard University. McPherson’s research focuses on the fields of ethics and political and social philosophy. McPherson has published a number of essays on normativity, the basis and extent of obligations, war and terrorism, and race in venues such as the Journal of American Philosophical Association, Ethics, and the Journal of Philosophy. His first book, The Afterlife of Race, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press (2022).
Anti-Racism and Communication Studies
Featuring Sarah J. Jackson, Presidential Associate Professor and co-director, Media, Inequality & Change Center, University of Pennsylvania.
Thursday, April 29, 2021, at 6 pm
Watch video on Youtube.
Anti-Racism and Anthropology
Featuring Lee D. Baker, Mrs. A. Hehmeyer Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, and African and African American Studies at Duke University.
Tuesday, March 30, 2021, 6 pm
Watch video on Youtube.
Anti-Racism and Sociology
Featuring Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and Chair, Department of African American Studies, Northwestern University.
Tuesday, March 2, 2021, 6 pm
Watch video on Youtube .
Anti-Racism and Economics
Featuring Gary Hoover, Director, Murphy Institute and Professor of Economics, Tulane University.
Thursday, January 28, 2021, 6 pm
Tulane Press Release
Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women: A Reading and Conversation
Featuring E. Patrick Johnson, Carlos Montezuma Professor of African American Studies and Performance Studies, Northwestern University
February 3, 2020, at 6 pm in the Commons in Diboll Gallery
Event Details