Please join us as the Humanities in the World Postdoctoral Scholars provide brief insights into their research.

Jesse A. Goldberg—“Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice:
Towards Abolitionist Literary Studies”
This talk will be a brief overview of Dr. Goldberg’s current book project, Abolition Time, which argues that Black Atlantic literatures of slavery articulate abolitionist theories of justice which exceed periodization in direct opposition to the ordering grammar of law’s linear, progressive temporality.

Merle Eisenberg—“Pandemics and the Collapse of Society”
Historical pandemics have increasingly become a key driver of historical change, with those deeper in the past now with the power to cause the fracturing and even the collapse of societies. This talk briefly explores where this idea comes from and how it shapes our reactions to disease, including COVID-19.

Belén Noroña, Just Transformations Scholar—“Indigenous Epistemologies and Decolonial Education”
In collaboration with Indigenous people, I analyze extractive activities such as oil-extraction from a decolonial perspective. This perspective incorporates Indigenous voices as theory in its own right. I am also developing educational methodologies to help students better understand our participation in resource extraction as the base of the capitalist economy.

Rebekah McCallum, Just Transformations Scholar—“Indian Activists and Black American Activists: Rights, Independence, and Labor, 1900–1960s”
From the early twentieth-century through the 1960s, Indian activists and Black American activists made significant personal and professional connections for what they deemed to be parallel struggles for civil rights in the United States, independence for India, and workers’ rights globally. These activists used both sociopolitical and literary avenues to articulate similarities and divergences in thought and practice.