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X-WR-CALNAME:Bernd Lambert Memorial Lecture with Aisha Beliso-De Jesús
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Eastern Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260812T093557Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_49958113377781
DTSTART:20250926T190000Z
DTEND:20250926T203000Z
DESCRIPTION:Excited Delirium: Race\, Police Violence\, and the Invention of
  a Disease\n\nAbstract:  This lecture examines the emergence and afterlive
 s of “excited delirium” as a fabricated medical category used to justi
 fy and legitimate police violence\, particularly against Black and Latine 
 men in the United States. Tracing its origins in racial eugenics\, forensi
 c pathology\, and Cold War medical imaginaries\, I analyze how this diagno
 stic invention circulated across legal\, biomedical\, and policing infrast
 ructures to operate as a technology of racial governance. Grounded in ethn
 ographic fieldwork with police communities\, archival research\, and Afro-
 Latiné spiritual methodologies\, the talk calls attention to the ways sci
 entific authority is mobilized to medicalize state violence and construct 
 the racialized body as inherently pathological. I consider how spirits\, h
 auntings\, and ritual epistemologies push against the epistemic violence o
 f Western biomedicine\, offering alternative ethical and cosmological fram
 es through which to understand accountability\, mourning\, and repair in t
 he wake of police killings.\n\nAisha M. Beliso-De Jesús is Olden Street P
 rofessor of American Studies at Princeton University.\n\nAisha M. Beliso-D
 e Jesús is a cultural and social anthropologist who has conducted ethnogr
 aphic research with Santería practitioners in Cuba and the United States\
 , and police officers and communities of color affected by police violence
  in the United States. Her recent monograph\, Excited Delirium: Race\, Pol
 ice Violence and the Invention of a Disease (Duke University Press\, 2024)
  examines the medicalization of police violence. Beliso-De Jesús unravels
  how “excited delirium syndrome\,” a fabricated medical diagnosis\, ha
 s been used to justify and erase police violence against Black and Brown c
 ommunities\, where she exposes the inextricable ties to the criminalizatio
 n of Afro-Latiné religions. Her co-edited volume\, The Anthropology of Wh
 ite Supremacy: A Reader (Princeton University Press\, 2025)\, brings toget
 her anthropologists from across the globe to interrogate and dismantle the
  colonial\, political\, and economic structures of white supremacy\, analy
 zing it as a global phenomenon.\n\nBeliso-De Jesús’s work contributes t
 o Afro-Latiné and transnational American Studies\, studies of policing an
 d militarization\, anthropology of the African diaspora\, religious studie
 s\, and transnational feminist theory. Her first book\, Electric Santería
 : Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion (Columbia Univer
 sity Press\, 2015)\, won the 2016 Albert J. Raboteau Award for the Best Bo
 ok in Africana Religions. She is currently completing a book\, Zombie Patr
 ol: Policing African Diaspora Religions which examines the criminalization
  of Black and Latiné religions\, issues of animal sacrifice\, policing\, 
 race and the constitutional question of religious freedom in the United St
 ates. Beliso-De Jesús has also spearheaded ethnographic research on polic
 e use of force in New Orleans\, LA funded by the National Science Foundati
 on.\n\nHer academic publications include articles in American Anthropologi
 st\, American Ethnologist\, Cultural Anthropology\, Signs\, the Journal of
  Africana Religions\, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion\, an
 d the Annual Review of Anthropology. She came to Princeton after eight yea
 rs at Harvard Divinity School where she was professor of African American 
 Religions and a member of the Cuba Policy Committee at the David Rockefell
 er Center for Latin American Studies\, a faculty associate of the Weatherh
 ead Center for International Affairs\, and on the executive board of the S
 afra Center for Ethics. Beliso-De Jesús is the co-founder and co-director
  of the Center on Transnational Policing (CTP) at Princeton University\, a
 nd Editor-In-Chief of Transforming Anthropology\, the flagship journal for
  the Association of Black Anthropologists. For over twenty years\, she has
  worked with numerous grassroots\, public policy\, substance abuse\, and o
 ther nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area advocating soci
 al justice issues\, teen-parent support\, alternative healing approaches\,
  and empowerment strategies for youth of color.\n\nThe Bernd Lambert Memor
 ial Lecture Series\, inaugurated in 2017\, was established by the Cornell 
 University Department of Anthropology in honor of one of its distinguished
  emeriti\, Bernd Lambert. A transnational refugee from the Holocaust and a
 n ethnographer of the Pacific Islands\, Lambert joined the Cornell faculty
  in 1964 and is remembered for his kind and generous presence. For over 50
  years\, his research and teaching ranged widely from issues of kinship\, 
 adoption\, and social organization to myth and symbol. The Lambert lecture
 s honor Prof. Lambert’s legacy by bringing similarly broad-minded schola
 rs to the Cornell campus. Past lecturers have included Didier Fassin\, Mic
 helle Murphy\, Lee D. Baker\, Alessandro Duranti\, Hugh Raffles\, Sharika 
 Thiranagama\, and Yael Navaro.
LOCATION:AD White House\, The Guerlac Room
SUMMARY:Bernd Lambert Memorial Lecture with Aisha Beliso-De Jesús
URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.cornell.edu/event/berndlambert-memorial-lectur
 e-with-aisha-beliso-de-jesus
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
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