Focal Point Dialogues in History: Conversations on Black life, race, and antiblackness in history with Prof. Nyasha Mboti and Prof. Steve Zipperstein

The History Department’s Colloquium Committee warmly invites you to attend this year’s FOCAL POINT Dialogues in History series. Inspired by the History Department’s Statement on the George Floyd Uprising and its invocation to understand and interrogate our racialized past and the investments of disciplinary history within it, the series brings together History faculty and graduate students to engage in a dialogue on Black life, race, and antiblackness in history.

For our FOCAL POINT Dialogues in History series this year, the Colloquium Committee, after careful discussion, has decided to invite both Professor Steve Zipperstein and Professor Nyasha Mboti (Professor of Communication at the University of the Free State) to join us and have a dialogue with us on April 12 1-3PM at the McCune Conference Room.

Professor Zipperstein will talk about the important Waco/Branch Davidian standoff on its 30th anniversary. This talk will discuss how Waco (and a prior episode at Ruby Ridge, Idaho) laid the groundwork for the dangerous rise of anti-government white nationalism in the United States, leading to the January 2021 Trump-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Professor Mboti will talk about his new book, Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto, Vol. 1 (2023). The book utilizes the notion of “apartheid” as a paradigm and theoretical framework. It argues that apartheid is not quite what we were told or what we thought. Instead, seen from the experience and point of view of the oppressed, apartheid has astonishing virulence, prevalence, persistence, and undetectability. Apartheid Studies, in a word, is an interdisciplinary invitation to study how oppression, inequality, injustice, and harm persist, and what to do about it.

Steve and Nyasha will each talk for 30 minutes, and they will then engage in a conversation with each other and comment on each other’s talk for 15-20 minutes. Steve and Nyasha address antiblackness from different perspectives and positionalities, which will also greatly deepen our understanding of this issue. We will then open the floor and invite questions and comments from the audience.

Our department has purchased 34 PDF copies of Apartheid Studies, which have been made available on a Box folder. Graduate students: please contact Prof. Zheng if you want a copy of the book. Africa World Press has graciously agreed to share this book with interested graduate students.