This seminar will explore the theoretical lens of “Abolition Democracy” originally coined by W.E.B. Du Bois and later interpreted by Angela Davis, as a way to think critically about the different struggles for abolition, both historically and in their current context.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Robert Gooding-Williams, Ivan Calaff, Kendall Thomas, and Bernard E. Harcourt read and discuss Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois and Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prison, Torture, and Empire by Angela Davis, and “Envisioning Abolition: Sex, Citizenship, and the Racial Imaginary of the Killing State” by Kendall Thomas

This session will open with a reading by Christopher Wolfe of his personal essay: “The most beautifullest thing in this world.”

Click here to RSVP. The event will also be livestreamed on YouTube.