Date of Lecture: October 19, 2017
About the Speaker: Silvio Torres-Saillant is professor of English and dean in humanities at Syracuse University, and author of “An Intellectual History of the Caribbean,” New Directions on the Americas Series (Palgrave, 2006). A prolific scholar and social commentator, Torres-Saillant works on Caribbean literature, comparative poetics, ethnic American literature, Latino texts, diasporas and migration studies, intellectual histories, and the place of race as a factor of modernity stemming from the colonial transaction led by the Christian West.
About the Lecture: Torres-Saillent offers the opening keynote address for the conference, "Rethinking the Afropolitan: The Ethics of Black Atlantic Masculinities on Display." He argues the idea that we are racialized beings emerged just 400 years ago and is not normal in the context of human history.