Lecture: AK Thompson: Illumination, Reflection, Premonition
“Illumination, Reflection, Premonition: Movement-Based Strategies to Bring the Present into a Critical State”
11. Jan
Campus | Central Building | C40.704
11 January 2024, 6:00 bis 7:30 pm
How can recollections and invocations of past struggles inform contemporary campaigns against injustice? Drawing on material from his book Premonitions and following the insights of Walter Benjamin, movement-based scholar AK Thompson highlights the promise of a political approach founded on images.
AK Thompson is a movement-based scholar and an award-winning educator. Currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, Massachusetts), his research draws on critical theory to examine how social movements become sites of racial and cultural contestation. Thompson is the author and editor of numerous books, including, most recently, Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt. His work has appeared in journals including Social Movement Studies, Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association. Alongside these scholarly contributions, he has also been featured in popular venues like Boston Review and the Los Angeles Review of Books.