WILLIAMSTOWN -- Neil Roberts, assistant professor of Africana studies and faculty af filiate in political science at Willi ams College, has guest edited a symposium in the jour nal Theory & Event, published in September by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
The symposium features eight essays on what Roberts calls the Trayvon Martin event.
"An event," Roberts ex plained in the news release announcing the symposium, "differs from a tragedy. A tragedy entails a plot, set of actions, and conclusion, often foreclosed and backward-looking. An event is an occurrence mutually reinforced by past actions and future outlooks, conversations, and prog nos tications on what we must do to decipher its meaning in its wake. The shooting of 17-year-old Martin is no different."
Roberts clusters the essays into three groups. The first, he explains, explores issues of publicity, racial violence, jurisprudence, and the rationalizations of acts conducted by private citizens. The second delves into existential questions of race, and the third examines what is required for transformation in American race relations to occur.
Essays include "Deadly Force and Public Reason," by Anna Marie Smith, professor of government at Cornell University; "Trayvon Martin, Intersectionality, and the Politics of Disgust," by Ange-Marie Hancock, associate professor of political science and gender studies at the University of Southern Cali fornia; and "Stuff
"My core assumption in the paper," Reinhardt said in the news release, "is that white supremacy continues to be a fundamental political fact in the U.S., albeit one whose form has mutated in such a way that most white people deny, and probably do not believe, that it continues."
The symposium is available online at Project Muse, a database of academic journals, and can be accessed at: http://muse. jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/toc/tae.15.3.html.
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