Events
Emma McNally. Image courtesy of the artist.
May 2
5:30 - 7:00 pm @UWI Cave Hill Campus
Keynote Conversation: Anti-Colonial Feminist Approaches to Debt, Development, and Rebelry
The workshop continues our Co-Lab’s goals of fostering intellectual collaboration among scholars, artists, and activists in the Global South on topics urgent to the capitalist crises of our time. This time we consider the deadly economic triad (trade + finance + extractivism) that has prevailed from the apex of Western imperialism to 20th and 21st century projects of development. In particular, we are interested in mapping the critical tools and methods of an anticolonial feminist analysis that address the economic, social and ecological devastation that the above triad causes, and consider the many past and present forms of dissent to the colonial contours of the global economy by the political and corporate elites, and radical and progressive movements and forces of opposition.
May 2-3
@UWI Cave Hill Campus
Spring 2026 Workshop: Debt & Development
Workshop: Anti-Colonial Feminist Approaches to Debt, Development, and Rebelry
Upcoming Events
October 9
5:00 - 7:00 pm @NYU
Cameron Rowland Public Artist Talk
As Sylvia Wynter describes, unmarked black burial grounds have functioned as a point of connection to the "permanent future" and the "historical life of the group."' As Wynter writes of the provision grounds where slaves grew their own food, the burial plot was also "an area of experience which reinvented and therefore perpetuated an alternative world view, an alternative consciousness to that of the plantation. This world view was marginalized by the plantation but never destroyed. In relation to the plot, the slave lived in a society partly created as an adjunct to the market, partly as an end in itself."
This talk will expand on the social, political, and economic context related to a series of works which challenge the presumed absence of unmarked black burial grounds. The talk takes the form of a sourcebook of thought that has shaped these works.
Cameron Rowland lives and works in New York. Their work is grounded in the black radical antagonism of property. Rowland’s work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Dia Art Foundation, Beacon; Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Galerie Buchholz, Cologne, Germany; Établissement d'en face, Brussels; Artists Space, New York and Essex Street / Maxwell Graham, New York.
October 2
5:00 - 7:00 pm @NYU
CRACS Co-Lab community welcome back event
Let's gather, touch base about some of our upcoming activities and plans for this academic year, and celebrate new work from our brilliant colleagues that speak to the central themes of our collective interest in critical racial anti colonial study.
We will be discussing a chapter from Helga Tawil-Souri's new, co-edited book Producing Palestine: The Creative Production of Palestine Through Contemporary Media. Helga will present briefly on this new work, and we will discuss both her book and Vasuki Nesiah's new piece "Academic Freedom on Trial" to get us started for this troubled academic year.
October 9-12
South Bronx
International Indigenous Hip-Hop Fest 2025
The International Indigenous Hip-Hop Festival (IIHHF) is an intentional act of cultural reclamation, revitalization, and climate action, creating a dialogue with hip-hop’s birthplace in the Bronx and sparking an exchange of knowledge, strategies, and cultural expressions among Indigenous artists and urban communities worldwide. Through hip-hop, the festival will foster a dialogue of resistance, solidarity, and creative cultivation—addressing urgent contemporary issues such as cultural sovereignty, climate justice, and contradictions inherent in both hip-hop and Indigenous contexts, while remaining rooted in hip-hop’s essence as a political, resilient, and community-driven movement.
November 6
5:00 - 6:30 pm @NYU
Book Talk: Decolonizing Afghanistan
The first comprehensive volume to explore the impact of empire on Afghanistan's past and present, it features cross-disciplinary, ground-up perspectives on colonial projects in Afghanistan and paths to decolonial futures. With a particular focus on the US intervention that began in 2001, the collection marks a decolonial turn in Afghanistan and American studies.
This event will feature contributors speaking on topics from media, developmentalism, and funding practices to anthropological approaches to US military tactics and autoethnographic work on indigeneity and migration.
December 4
6:00 - 7:30 pm @NYU
Work-in-Progress Meeting
We will hold a meeting dedicated to works-in-progress, focusing primarily on themes of authoritarianism, movements, media, and culture. Those interested in presenting are invited to share their work for discussion.
March 31
6:00 - 7:30 pm @Francis Kite Club
Indigenomicon: Indigenous Relationality in the Grind of Video Games
We are co-sponsoring Jodi Byrd’s talk as part of the 2026 NYU LeBoff Public Lecture, hosted by the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication.
In Indigenomicon, Jodi A. Byrd brings video game studies into conversation with Indigenous, Black, and queer thought to examine how games encode settler colonial structures. The talk also analyzes how gameplay can both obscure and reveal histories of dispossession while opening possibilities for resisting Indigenous erasure.
Jodi A. Byrd is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and professor of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Their first book, The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), received the 2013 Best First Book of the Year Award from the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. Byrd co-edited Colonial Racial Capitalism with Susan Koshy, Lisa Marie Cacho, and Brian Jefferson (Duke University Press, 2022), and co-edits the Northwestern University Press’ "Critical Insurgencies" series with Michelle Wright. Their book, Indigenomicon: American Indians, Video Games, and the Structures of Dispossession, was recently released by Duke University Press in November 2025. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, they were a professor in Literatures in English at Cornell University.
February 5
5:00 - 6:30 pm @NYU
Work-in-Progress Meeting
We will hold a meeting dedicated to works-in-progress, focusing on the work of our presenters: Shari-Lee Carter, Toussaint Nothias, and Shirine Saad.
March 26
6:00 - 7:30 pm @NYU
Work-in-Progress Meeting
We will hold a meeting dedicated to works-in-progress, focusing on the work of our presenters: Luisa Marinho, Nathalia Carneiro, Diane Lima, and Lee Xie.
April 10
6:30 - 8:30 pm @NYU
Feminist Media Making: Film Screening and Discussion
Join us for the New York City premiere of Miles Away, the first documentary produced by the rural feminist media organization Khabar Lahariya in India. The screening will be followed by a discussion on anti-caste feminist media making with Khabar Lahariya co-founders Disha Mullick and Kavita Bundelkhandi, in conversation with Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Director of Equality Labs.
The discussion will also highlight the release of the new collective biography, The Good Reporter, which explores the experiences and work of Khabar Lahariya’s journalists.
Free and open to the public.
Registration required.
April 16
6:00 - 7:30 pm @NYU & online
Public Lecture: Fumi Okiji
Glück Singer
"I've been thinking about gardenias. In the Lady's hair. Browning in the Lady's hair. I've been thinking about the music we call jazz as a sustained study of going-under. What if the song, the standard, is not just layer upon layer of contribution, but perhaps more compellingly, for us, at this time, some sort of agitated comfort in decline? This talk brings together Walter Benjamin, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Betty Carter to ask what sort of politics might emerge when our earthly comportment is oriented by happiness rather than preservation."
Fumi Okiji is Associate Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. She arrived at the academy by way of the London jazz scene and draws on sound practices to inform her writing. Okiji works across black study, critical theory, and sound and music studies. Her most recent book is Billie’s Bent Elbow: Exorbitance, Intimacy and a Nonsensuous Standard (Stanford University Press, 2025).
Past Events
November 1
5:00 - 7:00 pm @NYU
CRACS Co-Lab community kick-off event
Let's gather, touch base about some of our upcoming activities and plans for this academic year, and celebrate new work from three of our brilliant colleagues that speak to the central themes of our collective interest in critical racial anti colonial study.
We will pre-circulate a chapter/episode each from new books by Vasuki Nesiah (International Conflict Feminism: Theory, Practice, Challenges), and Chenjerai Kumanyika’s blockbuster podcast (Empire City). Our hope is that you will have read/listened to these in advance of our event, so that short informal presentations by Vasuki, Sonali and Chenjerai will be followed by lively discussion along the lines of our reading group from last academic year.
The event is open to NYU and CRACs affiliated members, please RSVP to attend.
November 7
Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry & the Center for the Critical Study of the Health
UC Berkeley (CA)
After It’s All Said: Reading Art as Confrontation
Denise Ferreira da Silva will launch the Project A Counter-Imaginary in Authoritarian Times, of which More-than-Perfect: Explorations of Black T/Senses of the Future is part.
Throwing blacklight onto works and practices of the contemporary art stage, Denise Ferreira da Silva comments on radical interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean that reflect on past and current political events through the lens of refusal.
November 15
7:00 pm
The Tramway
Glasgow (UK)
More-Than-Perfect @ Arika Episode 11
Conversation with Arissana Pataxó, Denise Ferrreira da Silva, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Geni Núñez
As part of Denise’s project More-Than-Perfect, this evolving conversation brings together influential figures thinking through Blackness and Indigeneity to ask:
What if we took seriously the possibility that this world, as we know it, may be coming to an end? We dread the loss of this world, but have we begun to imagine the one to come?
February 6
5:00 - 7:00 pm
CRACS Co-Lab Study Group: Now, what?! Confronting Authoritarianism
Join NYU’s CRACS Co-Lab on February 6th, for the first event under our Mellon's More-than-Perfect project, in which we will gather to think through the current authoritarian moment. The discussion will be guided by a set of recently published short texts, in which thinkers and activists reflect on the rising tide of new fascism in the global South and beyond. Please email us to register and receive the exact location and reading materials.
Judith Butler, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Marta Segarra: New political imaginaries
The philosophers Judith Butler, Denise Ferreira da Silva, and Marta Segarra explore the transformative potential of political imagination in times of crisis. How might we reimagine political horizons in a world marked by inequalities and global tensions? Political imagination, understood as the creative process of thinking about possible collective futures, is essential for expressing criticism, activating political desires, and bringing about joint actions that disrupt inherited frameworks of thought and open up more inclusive, transformative spaces.
February 10
6:30 - 8:00 pm CET
CCCB Barcelona (Spain)
January 30
5:00 - 7:00 pm
NYU King Juan Carlos Center
NYU
Film Screening: Prisoner No. 626710 is Present
On September 13, 2020, Umar Khalid, a charismatic student leader who recently completed his PhD at India’s prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, was arrested under the draconian UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act)—a law that designates individuals as terrorists and allows the Indian state to imprison people without due process. His crime? As an Indian Muslim, he had dared to protest against the new citizenship law that the Indian state was trying to impose on its people.
Using found footage of his past speeches along with a forensic analysis of how he was framed by the right-wing, Hindu nationalist media, Umar Khalid’s close friends, Banojyotsna Lahiri and Shuddhabrata Sengupta, reconstruct the chronology of events that led to his tragic imprisonment. It has been over 1,400 days since Umar Khalid was arrested. He and his friends still await a fair hearing in court.
The film screening will be followed by a discussion with award-winning film-maker, Lalit Vachani and Middle East Eye journalist, Azad Essa.
May 2
5:00 - 7:00 pm
Institute of Human Development and Social Change (IHDSC)
196 Mercer St, 8th floor
Tina Post Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression
Join NYU’s CRACS Co-Lab on May 2nd, for the seminar of Prof. Tina Post, the first Visiting Fellow of our Mellon's More-than-Perfect project. Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acquires distinctive meanings in concert with blackness, Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression tracks instances and meanings of deadpan—a vaudeville term meaning “dead face”—across literature, theater, visual and performance art, and the performance of self in everyday life. Through this varied archive, Post reveals how deadpan aesthetics function in and between opacity and fugitivity, minimalism and saturation, excess and insensibility. Tina Post reveals that the performance of purposeful withholding is a critical tool in the work of black culture makers, intervening in the persistent framing of African American aesthetics as colorful, loud, humorous, and excessive. Please email us to register and receive the reading materials.
Tina Post is Associate Professor of English and Theater and Performance Studies, and an associate member of Art History and the Department of Visual Arts, at the University of Chicago. Her scholarly articles have appeared in ASAP/Journal, Modern Drama, TDR, International Review of African American Art (IRAAA), and the edited collection Race and Performance after Repetition. Her creative work can be found in Imagined Theaters, Stone Canoe, The Appendix, and Portable Gray.
May 8
5:00 - 7:00 pm
NYU
Now, what?! Confronting Authoritarianism: Respect for Reality
Visiting Scholar Henrike Kohpeiß will guide the next More-Than-Perfect study group Now, what?! Confronting Authoritarianism: Respect for Reality.
In his investigation of “Mourning and Melancholia“, Freud grapples with the meaning of loss for the individual psyche. Loss, he holds, is an experience that essentially disorients the subject in its relationship with the world and it poses a challenge to regain orientation in it. “Respect for Reality“, Freud says, is what the individual must find in order to continue its life without remaining stuck in a melancholic trap. Freuds proposal has been discussed in order to measure the impact of ecological losses on human communities by considering their relation to land and environment. Confronting Freuds essay with Axelle Kareras critical study on Blackness and the Anthropocene, the question shifts: How to make sense of losses when necropolitical regimes of coloniality have always already rendered entire areas as well as racialized lives as disposable, as lost by default? And how is it possible to respond to these realities of destruction when they are being obscured within infrastructures of unfeeling?
Please email us to register and receive the exact location and reading materials.
Henrike Kohpeiß is a philosopher and postdoctoral researcher at the research center “Affective Societies” at Free University of Berlin an the author of the book Bourgeois Coldness (divided publishing).
CRACS Co-Lab community kick-off event 2024
