Skip to main content

Events

Report from Occupied Territory: Gender and Carceral Power in Long 1970s New York

General Programming

dateOctober 16, 2026 timeFriday, 10:00am EDT locationRiverside Church
RSVP

  • This event is at capacity. Sign up for the waitlist for a chance to attend.

Cosponsors
  • The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
  • The Radio in the Orchard Initiative at Columbia University
  • Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
  • Division of Humanities
Organizer
  • Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender
Contact
email address [email protected]
Notes
  • Free and open to the public
  • Registration required.
  • Image Credit/Caption: Vergara, Camilo J, Photographer. Tiemann Place at Broadway, Harlem. United States, Manhattan, Harlem, New York, New York State, 1973.

This one-day symposium considers the carceral logics and infrastructures of New York City and honors the 60th anniversary of James Baldwin’s blistering Nation essay “A Report From Occupied Territory,” which elucidated the political conditions for Black residents of Harlem following the 1964 killing of a 15-year-old Black teenager by an off-duty white policeman. This symposium examines the long 1970s as a period of contingency and a time of dramatic contestation about the yet-uncertain future of punishment in America, a future that was tethered to major transformations in culture, political economy, and gender, race, and sexual politics.

Featuring Eman Abdelhadi (University of Chicago), Bench Ansfield (Temple University), Orisanmi Burton (CUNY Graduate Center), Christina Hanhardt (University of Maryland), LaShawn Harris (Michigan State University), Peter L'Official (Bard College), and independent scholar M.E. O'Brien.

Introductions and moderation by Manan Ahmed, Natasha Lightfoot, Kimberly Phillips-Fein, and Shana Redmond. Organized by Jack Halberstam and Sarah Haley.

If you require accommodations, please reach out to [email protected] by October 12, 2026.