The Whitney J Oates Fellow in the Humanities and Department of English Graduate Workshop with Kirsten Silva Gruesz. 

In light of recent controversy with the novel American Dirt – which received criticism that it did everything from performing “brownface” to being “opportunistic” and “appropriative” – we convene with Dr. Kirsten Gruesz to think critically about the political uses of sympathy, about racialized representation, and about narrative as a vexed form of testimony. 

Come with your thoughts on American Dirt and how we might, in our studies in graduate school and beyond, approach the vexed genre of narrative in an ethical and nuanced manner.

 Lunch will be served.