Author and activist to address ASU community

Arizona State University’s Institute for Humanities Research has announced Black feminist scholar and activist adrienne maree brownbrown prefers her name lowercased. as the 2021 IHR Distinguished Lecturer.

She will present a virtual lecture to ASU and the community at 5:30 p.m. MST, March 25. Her lecture will apply her work on healing, transformative justice and radical imagination to the current issues of our time.

“We were inspired to extend an invitation to adrienne maree brown because of her work and expertise in community organization and engagement,” said institute Assistant Director Liz Grumbach. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of social justice movements over the past year, the institute felt the need to shift its programming priorities to provide support and hope to ASU and Phoenix Valley communities. 

It was important to institute leadership that the 2021 Distinguished Lecturer strengthen that message of hope and empowerment through humanities-based work. 

“brown's work teaches us how to take, as she says in ‘Emergent Strategy,’ ‘tender data’ that we learn about ourselves and our communities in times of crisis and self-reflection to create new futures,” Grumbach said.

“As we seek to understand what has happened and will happen to our world, to our profession, taking cues from poetry, from science fiction, from the natural world and from the history of community organization seems ever more important for the futures that we shape together.”

brown is the author of "Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good" and "Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds" and the co-editor of "Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements," which each provide new perspectives and methods to inspire social justice and create positive change. She is also the co-host of the "How to Survive the End of the World" and "Octavia’s Parables" podcasts.

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Humanities Research, Center for Science and the Imagination, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and Faculty Women of Color Caucus. It is free and open to the public.

Anyone interested in watching the lecture can register at links.asu.edu/ihr_amb.