Jodi A. Byrd is an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and associate professor of Literatures in English at Cornell University, where they also hold affiliations with American Studies, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, LGBT Studies, and Performance and Media Arts. They are the author of Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism as well as a number of recent articles in Indigenous feminisms, video game studies, Indigenous queer studies, and settler colonial studies.
This talk engages in a conversation about how we understand catastrophe in the present from the multiple catastrophes that began with European arrival to the Americas with conquest and transatlantic slavery as intertwined projects. Discussing theories of racial capitalism in conversation with Black fungibility through Tiffany Lethabo King and Sylvia Wynter, the talk will historicize catastrophe through Southeastern American Indian (specifically my own Chickasaw) histories with Hernando De Soto.
NOTE: Those interested in this lecture may also consider attending Byrd's workshop earlier the same day.
This event is sponsored by the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme