Annual Black Experiences Lecture
Since its inception, CSREG has organized an Annual Black Experiences Lecture that focuses primarily on the African American Experience and features a prominent scholar from a variety of disciplinary fields. Past speakers at this event have included Angela Davis, Christopher Edley, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Wahneema Lubiano, Tricia Rose and Melissa Harris-Perry to name a few. This lecture series draws an audience consisting of students, faculty, administration and interested community members.
2026–27 Black Experience Lecture
Laboring Under Racism: Black Women, Medical Dispossession, and Obstetric Racism
Thursday, Sept. 10, 7 p.m., ELC Terrace Room
Dána-Ain Davis is Professor of Urban Studies and Anthropology. She is the director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the Graduate Center. Davis has focused her attention on reproduction, race and the technologies that assist in reproduction.
This talk examines obstetric racism through the stories of Bisola, who crawled to her delivery bed after being told to walk while she was in intense labor, and a Haitian woman whose cardiac arrest was met with doctors' laughter. These two stories are placed in conversation with the deeper legacies of Black women’s exploitation, including the women who were experimented on by J. Marion Sims (the father of gynecology) without pain medication.
Drawing on the writing of Frantz Fanon, the talk develops the concept of "medical Dispossession" — the systematic stripping of Black women’s authority over their bodies, pain, and testimony by institutions meant to care for them. It closes by asking what structural, collective justice, rather than individual survival, would require. Part of CSREG's 2026–27 Speaker Series: Care and Justice in Health: Intersections of Race, Gender and Class.
2025-26 Black Experiences Lecture
Fulfilling Dr. King’s Legacy: A Vision for Economic Justice
Thursday, Oct. 2, 2025 5:00 p.m., ELC Terrace Room
Darrick Hamilton, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy, The New School for Social Research
Prof. Hamilton is the Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy, and founding director of The Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Prof. Hamilton’s lecture also serves as the keynote address for the Bucknell Institute for Public Policy’s inaugural public policy conference: “Policy Challenges in a Complex World.”
The right to vote when you’re hungry, or the right to protest when you’re unhoused, is not justice. To ensure people have the necessary resources to thrive, historical, political and economic strategies must be employed. This involves building upon the legacies of the past to achieve economic and racial justice and identifying ways to promote collective progress and racial equity.