Cultural Studies Program

The Critical Ethnic Studies Symposium brought together IU faculty from across the Humanities interested in this emergent method, which takes up the mantle of the decolonial, antiracist, and other global liberationist movements that enabled the creation of Ethnic Studies and that continue to inform its political and intellectual projects. Keynote speakers Brandon Manning of Arizona and A. Naomi Paik from UIUC challenged the masculinist notion of racial progress and the rights-based paradigms within which traditional anti-racist movements have staked their claims by examining, respectively, satire and self-erasure in Black popular culture and prison camps in U.S. history and the question of sanctuary for undocumented immigrants today. The day ended with a performance by New York-based DJ Rob Swift, whose artistic practice invites the embodied investments this field enables.  The organizers hope to host a similar gathering next year.