Every Wednesday from February 2023 until March 2023

Taking the purpose of the virtual reading group directly from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, “the endeavor is to recover the insurgent ground” (Hartman xiv) of the lives excavated by the text and author’s use of close narration. While reading the text, participants will be invited to consider their own waywardness and what kinds of documents might constitute the fragments of their own existences. We will work together to uncover the fugitive imperatives of the wayward and “learn from what they know.”

For those interested in attending, there is no need to have read the book to join for the introductory meeting on Wednesday, February 15th! The reading schedule will be posted to our community events calendar after the first reading group session. To receive the Zoom meeting link for all sessions, register for the first session (the meeting link will be the same for all sessions).

Solidarity copies are available at no cost for those who need them—use promo code “solidarity” at the Eventbrite checkout (valid only until 2/23/23)!

Saidiya Hartman, B. A., Wesleyan University (1984); Ph.D., Yale University (1992). Hartman's major fields of interest are African American and American literature and cultural history, slavery, law and literature, and performance studies. She is on the editorial board of Callaloo (Johns Hopkins University Press). She has been a Fulbright, Rockefeller, Whitney Oates, and University of California President's Fellow. She is the author of Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth Century America and Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. She has published essays on photography, film and feminism. She is beginning a new project on photography and ethics.

Ash Williams is an anti-carceral and reproductive justice organizer. He received his BA in Philosophy from UNC Charlotte in 2015 and his MA in Ethics and Applied Philosophy from UNC Charlotte in 2016. For the last five years, Ash has been vigorously fighting to expand abortion access by funding abortions and training other people to become abortion doulas.

Live transcription is available through Zoom, and sessions are not recorded for privacy reasons.

Reading Schedule:
Week 2: Pages 1-120 (read through An Atlas of the Wayward)
Week 3: Pages 123-191 (read through 1909. 601 West 61st Street. A New Colony of Colored People)
Week 4: Pages 193-256 (read through The Anarchy of Colored Girls Assembled in a Riotous Manner)
Week 5: Pages 257-349 (read through The Chorus Opens the Way)