St.Clair Drake Memorial Lecture featuring renowned author Junot Díaz

The Department of African & African American Studies at Stanford University presents the Annual St. Clair Drake Memorial Lecture featuring author Junot Diaz, who will be delivering this year's thought-provoking lecture titled, "Notes From a Book of the Dead."

About Junot Diaz:

Junot Díaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey. He is the author of Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize, and This Is How You Lose Her. Díaz has been awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, the 2002 PEN/Malamud Award and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Díaz is a MacArthur fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.   

Lecture Abstract:

In our anti-democratic socially mediated conjuncture where the act of listening has eroded to the point of near-extinction, what is learned when those of us living under conditions of Pattersonian social death attempt to super-listen to the actual dead through the (undead) medium of literature — a super-listening that evokes Donald Davidson’s concept of radical interpretation.  What is made possible with such deep dead communions, and what is not? 

St. Clair Drake Memorial Lecture:

The St. Clair Drake Memorial Lectures are dedicated to the memory of Professor St.Clair Drake, renowned African American anthropologist and educator, and the founding Director of the Program in African & African American Studies at Stanford University.

St. Clair Drake Memorial Lecture presented by the Department of African & African American Studies (DAAAS). Visit our website at aaas.stanford.edu for more information about the department.

Co-sponsored by: Department of English, Stanford Humanities Center, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and Center for the Study of the Novel.