March 11, 2025
2:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Cultural Center at Merrill
Join The UCSC Humanities Institute for a one-day conference, “Critical Imagination in Crisis Times,” featuring presentations by:
- Iain Chambers, Former Professor of the Sociology of Cultural Processes, Oriental University, Naples
- Paul Gilroy, Emeritus Professor of Humanities, University College, London
- Vron Ware, Visiting Professor at the Gender Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science
UC Santa Cruz faculty participants include: Jim Clifford (Emeritus Professor, History of Consciousness) Chris Connery (Professor, Literature), Vilashini Cooppan (Professor, Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies), Isaac Julien (Distinguished Professor, Arts and History of Consciousness), Mark Nash (Professor, Arts and History of Consciousness), María Puig de la Bellacasa (Professor, History of Consciousness).
Conference Program:
2:00-2:15 pm Conference Introduction: Isaac Julien and Mark Nash
2:15-3:15 pm Iain Chambers, “From Kassel to Gaza: Art and Critical Testimony” (Moderator, Chris Connery)
3:30-4:30 pm Vron Ware, “Letting the Land Speak” (Moderator, María Puig de la Bellacasa)
4:45-5:45 pm Paul Gilroy, “Political Eschatologies of Mismanaged Decline” (Moderator, Jim Clifford)
5:45-6:30 pm Plenary Discussion: Moderators, Isaac Julien and Mark Nash
Light refreshments will be served throughout the afternoon. The conference will also be live-streamed. Follow this link to join online. Conference presented by Moving Image Lab, The Humanities Institute, and the Center for Cultural Studies. Co-sponsored by the History of Consciousness Department.
Iain Chambers has taught cultural, postcolonial, and Mediterranean studies for many years at the University of Naples, Orientale, and is now an independent researcher. Amongst his recent publications are Postcolonial Interruptions, Unauthorised Modernities (2017), and, with Marta Cariello, The Mediterranean Question (2025). In 2022, he was a member of the artistic collective Jimmie Durham & A Stick in the Forest by the Side of the Road at documenta 15. He writes regularly for the Italian daily il Manifesto.
Paul Gilroy was born in the East End of London in 1956. He is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at University College London where he was founding director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the study of racism and racialisation. Gilroy was previously Professor of American and English at King’s College London, Giddens Professor of Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2005-2012), Charlotte Marian Saden Professor of African American Studies and Sociology at Yale (1999-2005) and Professor of Cultural Studies and Sociology at Goldsmiths College London (1995-1999). He holds honorary doctorates from Goldsmiths College, Sussex University, the University of Liege, the University of Copenhagen, Oxford University and the University of St. Andrews. He is an honorary Fellow of Sussex University and of King’s College, London. In 2014, he was made a Fellow of the British Academy and in 2018 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded Norway’s Holberg Prize in 2019. He writes widely on Art, Music, Literature and Politics. His publications include: Darker than Blue: On The Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Cultures (2010), Black Britain: A Pictorial History (2007), After Empire:Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (2005).
Vron Ware is a London-based writer and photographer, having previously taught geography, sociology and gender studies at universities in the UK and the US. She has written several books on the politics of gender and race, colonial history, national identity, ecological thought and the cultural heritage of war. She gave her first book talk for Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History at UC Santa Cruz in 1992. More recently she has published Return of a Native: Learning from the Land (2022) and co-authored England’s Military Heartland: Preparing for War on Salisbury Plain (2025).
THI Image Credit: Isaac Julien, Western Union Series no. 1 (Cast No Shadow), 2007, Duratrans image in lightbox, Courtesy the artist.