MLK Convocation Seminar with Prof. Cristina Beltrán

We are excited to kick-off the week of Martin Luther King, Jr. Convocation events on Monday, February 22, 2021 at 7:00 p.m. with our keynote address by Prof. Cristina Beltrán. We invite you to register and invite your students to do so at your earliest convenience.

Join Prof. Beltrán on Tuesday, February 23, 2021 at 5 p.m. for a seminar style discussion with faculty and staff on her recent work "Brown Girl with a Gun:  Susana Martinez and Intersectionality on the Right". Profs. Sunil Purushotham and Jocelyn Boryczka will facilitate this discussion.  To register, click here. 

Prof. Beltrán’s paper grapples with the particularly timely and under-explored aspects of conservatism, asking:  how does gender and sexuality influence the racial logics available to conservatives of color?  She examines this question through the case of Governor Susana Martinez (NM-R).  Prof. Beltrán argues for attending to the performative, aesthetic, and affective dimensions of identification particularly to the forms of political identification produced through unexpected associations and assemblages that occur across lines of race and gender.

Prof. Beltrán’s paper reflects her idea of multiracial identities that recently appeared in her Washington Post Opinion piece "To Understand Trump's Support, We Must Think in Terms of Multiracial Whiteness."  She digs deeply into these issues in her recent book Cruelty as Citizenship:  How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy that focuses on the question, why are immigrants from Mexico and Latin America such an affectively charged population for political conservatives?

Cristina Beltrán is an associate professor and director of Graduate Studies in the department of Social & Cultural Analysis at New York University. A political theorist by training, her research focuses on modern and contemporary political theory, Latinx and U.S. ethnic/racial politics, feminist and queer theory. She is the author of The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity, which received numerous awards, including the American Political Science Association’s Ralph Bunche Award and the Casa de la Américas prize for the best book on Latinos in the United States.

Her research has also appeared in the journals Political Theory, Aztlán, Politics & Gender, Contemporary Political Theory, Political Research Quarterly, and the Du Bois Review as well as various edited volumes. Along with Elisabeth Anker, she is co-editor of the journal Theory & Event. She also provides occasional political commentary on MSNBC and has appeared on The Beat with Ari Melber, Velshi with Ali Velshi, All In with Chris Hayes, and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.

We look forward to your participation in this seminar-style discussion.  For information and questions, contact Prof. Jocelyn Boryczka at jboryczka@fairfield.edu.