Organized by Suzanne Schmidt (English), Sooja Kelsey (English), Simon Trujillo (English), Christian Ravela (English), Jed Murr (English), Kathleen Boyd (English), Pacharee Sudhinaraset (English), Jason Morse (English)

The Race/Knowledge Project is dedicated to ruminating on the contemporary status of race within what is increasingly understood as the “global” university. The contours of this year-long research program include public lectures, roundtables, study groups, and a symposium centered on how “anti-racist praxis” might negotiate the discourses of the colorblind, multicultural university, which most often work to, at best, delimit and, at worst, disallow conversations about race/racism even as the university is a site for the (re)production and contestation of racial meanings. In order to understand the complex interplay of specific global and racial histories of Seattle and the University of Washington, our project is designed to move in and between domains, bodies of work, and spatial scales. In order to plot new concepts of “anti-racist praxis,” our trajectory moves back and forth between the university and other publics; between the global/national and the local; between the work of academic, artist, and activist intellectuals. The events are designed to build upon one another so that, as the year progresses, those involved will garner multiple ways of thinkning about “anti-racist praxis” ranging from a nationally-recognized academic scholar to lesser-known public artist intellectuals and culminating in an event that brings together local individuals and groups interested in pursuing an “anti-racist praxis.”