In this talk, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the liberating power of the imagination. Deadly systems shaped by white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, and eugenics all emerged from the human imagination, and have real-world, often deadly impacts. To fight harmful systems and create a world in which everyone can thrive, we will have to imagine things differently. Drawing on work that critically examines tech-mediated inequities and engagement with grassroots approaches to viral justice, she offers a pragmatic and poetic approach to worldbuilding that invites each of us to consider the role we play in maintaining or transforming the oppressive status quo.
This is the second of two Tanner Lectures by Ruha Benjamin. For information on the first Tanner Lecture, click here.
Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (2019), Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022), and Imagination: A Manifesto (2024) among other publications. Professor Benjamin is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and in 2024 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship.
Tracy K. Smith is a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and a professor of English and of African and African American Studies in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Professor Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, editor, translator and opera librettist. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-19, during which time she spearheaded American Conversations: Celebrating Poetry in Rural Communities with the Library of Congress, launched the American Public Media podcast The Slowdown, and edited the anthology American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time. The author of five award-winning poetry collections and two critically acclaimed memoirs, Smith is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
Myles Lennon is Dean’s Assistant Professor of Environment and Society and Anthropology at Brown University. He is an environmental anthropologist and a former sustainable energy policy practitioner. His scholarly and teaching interests include the anthropology of energy, the co-production of race and nature, multispecies ethnography, climate justice and environmental justice, science and technology studies, affect theory, and the epistemological politics of climate mitigation efforts.
In collaboration with the Office of the President of Harvard University, the Mahindra Humanities Center hosts annual Tanner Lectures on Human Values. The purpose of the Tanner Lectures is the advancement of scholarly and scientific learning in the field of human values. That purpose embraces the entire range of moral, artistic, intellectual, and spiritual values, both individual and social – the full register of values pertinent to the human condition, interest, behavior, and aspiration.
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is a nonprofit corporation administered at the University of Utah. They are funded by an endowment and other gifts received by the University of Utah from Obert Clark Tanner and Grace Adams Tanner. More information: www.tannerlectures.utah.edu.
LOCATION:John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, Music Building STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20250410T200000Z DTEND:20250410T213000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR