Adolph Reed, Jr. & Kenneth W. Warren - "Black Studies, Cultural Politics, and the Evasion of Inequality" - Cedric Johnson
Adolph Reed, Jr. and Kenneth W. Warren will discuss their book Black Studies, Cultural Politics, and the Evasion of Inequality: The Farce this Time. They will be joined in conversation by Cedric Johnson. A Q&A and book signing will follow the discussion.
At the Co-op
About the Book: These historically grounded essays by Adolph Reed, Jr. and Kenneth W. Warren incorporate essential historical, contemporary, and literary perspectives on Black cultural criticism to explore the full portrait of racial injustice and inequality in America.
Taking up such topics as the evolving politics of New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina and novels by Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead, this book engages with the Black Radical Tradition, Afropessimism, antiblackness, race reductionism, and other key theories and concepts in contemporary Black studies. Challenging the prevailing assertion that longstanding white animus against nonwhite peoples sufficiently and adequately explains deepening injustice, past injustice or present inequality, the essays argue that such thinking fails to fully explain America’s past and leaves us ill-equipped to handle the continuing challenges in the present.
Tracing black cultural criticism across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, this book will appeal to students, scholars and researchers of Black studies, race and ethnic studies, and contemporary and black American literature.
About the Authors: Reed is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts. His books include Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era and The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives.
Warren is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. His books include What Was African American Literature? and So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism.
About the Interlocutor: Cedric Johnson is Professor of Black Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His books include The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now(Verso, 2022) and Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics
Related Titles
These historically grounded essays by Adolph Reed, Jr. and Kenneth W. Warren incorporate essential historical, contemporary and literary perspectives on Black cultural criticism to explore the full portrait of racial injustice and inequality in America.