THE RACIAL GENEALOGY OF EXCELLENCE
a lecture by Roderick A. Ferguson
Read a review of this talk!
September 14, Wednesday
6 to 7:30 pm
Roderick A. Ferguson, American Studies, University of Minnesota
This talk reads the Open Admissions movement at City College through June Jordan’s 1969 essay “Black Studies: Bringing Back the Person.” In that essay, Jordan discusses how the opposition to Open Admissions mobilized discourses of “standards” and “excellence” to cast that movement as one that would bring the College to “the trough of mediocrity.” Jordan’s essay locates the discourse of standards and excellence within the racial genealogies of slavery and colonialism. The talk uses that framing to contextualize the coalitions between African American and Puerto Rican Students. It then uses Jordan’s framing and that historic coalition as a way to rebut post-marxist histories of the American Academy and specifically, those histories’ evacuation of concerns around race, migration, sexuality and empire.
Department of Social and Cultural Analysis
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor
at Bowery and 5th Street
This event is free and open to the public. Venue is wheelchair accessible.
For more information, please contact the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at 212-992-9650.
Co-sponsored by the NYU Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program/Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.
