Author, scholar Ersula Ore will discuss state-sanctioned racial violence


LAWRENCE — A winner of the Rhetoric Society of America Book Award will bring further insight to ongoing conversations at the University of Kansas and beyond about how to respond to state-sanctioned racial violences in the era of #BlackLivesMatter.

Ersula Ore

Ersula Ore, the 2021 John F. Eberhardt Memorial Lecturer in KU’s Department of English, will present a virtual talk titled “Sandy’s ‘Black Looks’: Countertemporal Postures and the Reclamation of Time” at 4 p.m. April 13.

Taking Sandra Bland’s 2015 arrest as a point of departure, Ore will discuss how misogynoir arrests, takes up time and depletes the lived time of Black women. It will consider the ways civility discourse manifests temporally as capture in the lives of Black women and how the countertemporal orientation of “black looks” enacts a Black feminist declaration to reclaim time in pursuit of a more just future.

Ore is an associate professor of African and African American studies at Arizona State University. Her research in race and communication interrogates the power of anti-Black violence in the U.S. and the resistance strategies employed to resist it. As a critical race rhetorician, she draws on scholarship in Black feminist theory, rhetorical theory, anti-Blackness and racialized violence. Her 2019 award-winning book, “Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric & American Identity,” examines lynching as a rhetorical strategy and material practice interwoven with the formation of America’s national identity. Ore’s more recent work focuses on the concept of civility, which she argues is a racist articulation of the past that expresses desire for a particular kind of “ordered” present and future.

Ore is currently co-editing a collection interrogating equity discourse and institutionalized performative allyship in higher education. Her most recent publications can be found in Women’s Studies in Communication, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Pedagogy, Present Tense and the edited collection Rhetorics of Whiteness: Postracial Hauntings in Popular Culture, Social Media, and Education (2017), which won the 2018 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC)’s Outstanding Book Award. Ore was also the recipient of the 2018-2019 CCCC Outstanding Mentor Award.

Ore’s talk is sponsored by the KU Department of English. Those interested in attending may register for the talk to receive the webinar Zoom link and passcode.

Tue, 04/06/2021

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Pritha Prasad

Media Contacts

Pritha Prasad

Department of English