CORVALLIS, Ore. — Political theorist Adom Getachew will deliver the final lecture of Oregon State University’s 2020-21 Cabildos Lecture Series at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 28.

Her remote lecture, “‘Common Spectacle of the Race’: Garveyism’s Visual Politics of Founding,” is free and open to all via Zoom. To register, go to http://beav.es/JjV.

Getachew’s presentation will discuss the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). In July 1920, a month before the association’s first annual convention, co-founder Marcus Garvey announced, “We are a new people, born out of a new day and a new circumstance.” He argued the convention was a political founding akin to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Getachew will examine UNIA’s conception of political founding with particular attention to the central role of images, theatricality and performance.

Getachew is the Neubauer Family assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where her research focuses on the history of political thought, theories of race and empire and postcolonial political theory, especially the intellectual and political histories of Africa and the Caribbean. She is the author of “Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination” and holds a joint Ph.D. in political science and African-American studies from Yale University.

The Cabildos Lecture Series was established to listen to Black voices, foreground cutting-edge scholarship, contextualize U.S. history in an African Diaspora context and highlight the links between academic research and activism.

The series is sponsored by the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts and the Aberbach History Program Support Fund.

College of Liberal Arts

About the OSU College of Liberal Arts: The College of Liberal Arts includes the fine and performing arts, humanities and social sciences, making it one of the largest and most diverse colleges at OSU. The college's research and instructional faculty members contribute to the education of all university students and provide national and international leadership, creativity and scholarship in their academic disciplines.

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Erin Sneller, [email protected]

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Marisa Chappell, [email protected]  

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