Department of social anthropology seminar with Nicholas de Genova

The Department of Social Anthropology has the pleasure to invite you to a seminar with Nicholas De Genova from the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He will present the following paper:


"This New Religion of Whiteness": Some Reflections on Nationalism, Postcoloniality, and the European Question


Abstract
In ways evocatively suggested by W.E.B. Du Bois’ conception of racial whiteness as a new religion, racism and nationalism may be understood to be secular varieties of religion. In this paper, I would like to interrogate the inter-relation of race and nation in light of this proposition. Furthermore, I would like to focus a critical postcolonial lens on the very questions of European nationhood and "European" identity more generally, whereby the postcolonial politics of migration and race may serve to problematize some of the most urgent and dire perplexities of the contemporary European scene.


Bionote
Nicholas De Genova is Reader in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Previously, he taught at Stanford and Columbia Universities, and held visiting professorships or research positions at the Universities of Chicago, Amsterdam, Bern, and Warwick. De Genova is the author of Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and "Illegality" in Mexican Chicago (2005), co-author of Latino Crossings: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and the Politics of Race and Citizenship (2003), editor of Racial Transformations: Latinos and Asians Remaking the United States (2006), and co-editor of The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (2010). He is currently writing a new book, titled The Migrant Metropolis.