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Kanishka Chowdhury is Professor of English and Director of the American Culture & Difference Program at the University of St. Thomas. His new book, HUMAN RIGHTS DISCOURSE IN THE POST 9/11 AGE, offers a critique of mainstream human rights discourse in the period following 9/11, examining literary works, critical histories, international declarations, government statutes, NGO manifestos, and documentary film. Even as rights discourse points to injustices—related to labor, gender, the citizen’s relationship to the state, or the movement of refugees—it can simultaneously maintain systems of oppression.

Todd Lawrence is Associate Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas and a member of East Side Freedom Library’s Board of Directors. Todd’s teaching and scholarship focuses on African American literature and culture, and he is the author of WHEN THEY BLEW THE LEVEE (2019), an ethnography of the African American community in Pinhook, Missouri, which was destroyed in 2011 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blew up a levee in order to save another city from a flood.

Longtime colleagues, Kanishka and Todd will discuss the argument and implications of Kanishka’s new book, especially in the midst of this crisis in which we find ourselves. Please tune in.