This talk will discuss the theory, method, and material of “cross-cultural Harlem.” How can we remain alive to the grief of the political moment while also developing interpretive approaches that offer hope? Professor Shukla will begin to answer that question by exploring Harlem as a space for encounters among those of different backgrounds, producing important dialogues between Blackness and other forms of peoplehood, and their associated territories. The particular examples she considers involve a legendary exchange between Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X and the performance of a Bangladeshi comedian and playwright Alaudin Ullah. These occasions, she shall argue, produce their own dilemmas about encounter, in terms of both reading practices and affects of projection, identification and solidarity. Ultimately, this presentation proposes values of openness for our interdisciplinary enterprise.

Cosponsored by Africana Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Literatures in English, and the South Asia Program

We strive to make all our programming accessible to everyone. For accommodation requests, please email aasp@cornell.edu as soon as possible.

Sandhya Shukla is Professor of English and Chair of American Studies at the University of Virginia, where she is also an affiliate faculty member of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies. Her most recent work is Cross-Cultural Harlem: Reimagining Race and Place (Columbia University Press, 2024). She is also the author of India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England (Princeton University Press), and a co-editor of Imagining Our Americas: Toward a Transnational Frame (Duke University Press). Her work has appeared in publications such as American Quarterly, symploke, and Annual Review of Anthropology, as well as the news-oriented The Conversation.