Events

The Gates Lecture, established in 2012 and administered by the Department of African American Studies at Yale, is endowed in the spirit of excellence that Professor Gates ('73) brought to the Yale community, particularly in African American Studies, during his years of undergraduate study and while on the faculty. The Gates Lectureship is made possible through the generous support of Daniel and Joanna S. Rose.

David Scott asserts that his work, especially since Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality (1999) and Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (2004), has been concerned with the reconceptualization of the way scholars think the story of the colonial past for the postcolonial present. This has involved a variety of kinds of inquiry (taking the Caribbean as  his principal “field” of engagement), into tradition and generations, friendship and dialogue, self-determination and sovereignty, tragedy and temporality, and transitional justice and liberalism. Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice (2014) and  Stuart Hall’s Voice: Intimations of an Ethics of Receptive Generosity (2017) are varying instantiations of these preoccupations. Scott is currently working on a biography of Stuart Hall, as well as a study of slavery, evil, and repair. He continues to edit Small Axe, and direct the Small AxeProject, which is involved in a number of special initiatives around visual, translation, literary, and historiographical issues.

(Source: Yale University)