History Retold

Scholar Saidiya Hartman has been telling the untold stories of Black lives. Facing the void left by centuries of historiography that ignored and obliterated the voices, minds and bodies of Black people, Hartman developed a method of “critical fabulation”, in which she combines historical and archival research with critical theory and fictional narrative. With her work, she has attested the strength of imagination to challenge and upturn the dominance of white academic voices and viewpoints. This will be a unique opportunity to hear her influential thoughts on our past-present.

Saidiya Hartman is a writer and academic focusing on African American studies. She is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York.

Photography: Renato Cruz Santos