In her essay “The Pandemic is a Portal,” novelist Arundhati Roy writes, the pandemic “unfolding before our eyes ... isn’t new. It is the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years.” She continues, “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” In this first and framing dialogue, the Global Arts + Humanities Society of Fellows will bring scholars together to consider the potential and limitations of human rights to move through the wreckage of anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, ableism and heteropatriarchy to create more livable and equitable futures.
Presenters for Dialogue One
- Iyko Day (Associate Professor, English and Critical Social Thought, Mount Holyoke College)
- Tiffany Lethabo King (Assistant Professor, African-American Studies, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Georgia State University)
- Shui-yin Sharon Yam (Associate Professor, Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies, University of Kentucky)
Moderator
- Treva Lindsey (Associate Professor, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State)
This event is a part of the Society of Fellows Cross-Disciplinary Digital Dialogues series, hosted by the Global Arts and Humanities. To learn more about the events, please visit go.osu.edu/gahdt-cddd.