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The Black Studies Project: 50 Years and Counting

The Lionel Trilling Seminar

October 6, 2021

Born in the heat of struggle, the Black Studies movement in the United States looks back now at more than fifty years of curricular development and ahead to a hopeful future at least as long. This year’s Trilling Lecture examines the moment Black Studies is transformed, virtually overnight, from protest on the streets of America into a curricular object—still controversial nonetheless—that has altered the face of humanistic study in the United States. The outcome is both a cause worthy of celebration and the occasion for a cautionary tale.

The Trilling Lecture will be given by Dr. Hortense Spillers, with respondents Rich Blint and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.