Gayatri Spivak at the American Academy
In her Richard von Weizsäcker Lecture at the American Academy, on October 17, 2017, Columbia University professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak discussed the great African American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois in the diversity of his positions—from the American “Negro” to global communism and Pan-Africanism, with reference to his literary and autobiographical works. Following the lecture, Spivak spent time speaking with the audience during an informal reception.
On October 18, Spivak spoke at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin’s Audimax, where she delivered the Distinguished W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture, offering a new reading of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, a pioneering study of the societal role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War. Spivak’s readings were in the context of the largest sectors of the electorate in Africa and Asia today, and their relationship with Du Bois’s struggles as they developed out of recognizable German contexts, Antonio Gramsci’s invocation of the production of the subaltern intellectual, and Tillie Olsen’s background in Rosa Luxemburg’s Mass Strike.
You can watch the video of Spivak’s Academy lecture below the photo gallery.
Share This
The Fall 2022 Program
The Spring 2022 Program
William Drozdiak on Emmanuel Macron and the Future of Europe
The US Midterm Elections
The 2021-22 Berlin Journal
The Global Triangle Project
On May 5, 2017, the Richard C. Holbrooke Forum hosted a workshop entitled The Global…
Remembering Berthold Leibinger (1930-2018)
Ben Rhodes on the Two American Stories
The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities
Remembering John C. Kornblum (1943 – 2023)
The 2023-24 Berlin Journal
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Gala
The Winter 2019 Program
The Fall 2018 Program
As the fellowship program of the American Academy in Berlin celebrates its twentieth anniversary, our…
The Spring 2024 Program
Remembering Madeleine Albright (1937−2022)
Inaugurating the Max Beckmann Distinguished Visitorship
In April 2017, the American Academy in Berlin inaugurates the Max Beckmann Distinguished Visitorship honoring…
Max Beckmann Talk with Arthur Jafa
“Beyond the Lecture” Podcast with Claudia Rankine
A Centennial Birthday
Next Generation
What was like to be the first black person at an all-white private school in…
The 2020-21 Berlin Journal
Katholisches Schulzentrum Edith Stein
On the afternoon of Friday, April 13, 2018, American Academy president Michael P. Steinberg visited…
Singing to Glaciers
Welcoming the Fall 2019 Fellows
The Deutsche Bank Fellowship in Music Composition
The Holbrooke Forum in Estonia
Apply for a 2023-24 Berlin Prize
Museums, Architecture, and Social Engagement
Reception for “Our Man”
Announcing the Carol Kahn Strauss Fellowship in Jewish Studies
Remembering Wolfgang Mayrhuber (1947-2018)
The American Academy in Berlin mourns the passing of Wolfgang Mayrhuber (seen in the above…
Remembering George P. Shultz (1920-2021)
Remembering Vartan Gregorian (1934-2021)
Celebrating Twenty Years of Fellowships
This fall, the American Academy in Berlin is proud to celebrate twenty years of Berlin…
The 2023-24 Berlin Prize Fellows
The 2022-23 Berlin Journal
The Spring 2018 Program
This spring offers a range of timely lecture topics at the American Academy in Berlin,…