A book talk with Robert Vitalis (University of Pennsylvania)
Thursday, February 23, 201712:15 PMRoom 1447UCLA School of Law
Vitalis explores the racist underpinnings and practices of International Relations as it first emerged in the United States. The discipline was established first and foremost to analyze interracial relations and the sustenance of white supremacy. At the same time, he brings to light the contributions of a group of extraordinary African American scholars, the “Howard School of international relations theory”: Alain Locke, Ralph Bunche, E. Franklin Frazier, Rayford Logan, Merze Tate, and Eric Williams, who challenged the discipline’s racist premises and imperial imperatives between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century.
Robert Vitalis (PhD, MIT) teaches political science at the University of Pennsylvania. The London Guardian named his America's Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier, a book of the year in 2006. His new book, White World Order, Black Power Politics (Cornell University Press, 2015) moves away from the Middle East to explore the unwritten history of racism and imperialism in American disciplinary international relations and the recovery of its critical “Howard School” tradition. It was awarded the 2016 Sussex International Theory Prize.
Cost : Free and open to the public
Sponsor(s): Burkle Center for International Relations, Center for Near Eastern Studies, Bunche Center for African American Studies, International & Comparative Law Program (ICLP) at UCLA School of Law, Critical Race Studies Program (CRS) at UCLA School of Law