What is to be Done? Activist Scholarship for a World in Crisis

The 12th Annual American Studies Conference, February 10-11 at Macalester

St. Paul, Minn. – “What is to be Done? Activist Scholarship for a World in Crisis” is the topic keynote speaker Ruth Wilson Gilmore will address at the Twelfth Annual American Studies Conference, 6 p.m., Thursday, February 10, in Alexander G. Hill Ballroom in Kagin Commons, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul. Her talk is free and open to the public.

Gilmore, a professor of geography in the doctoral program in earth and environmental sciences at the City University of New York Graduate Center, is known as an activist as well as an intellectual and is currently president of the American Studies Association (ASA). She examined how political and economic forces produced California’s prison boom in Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007), which was recognized by ASA with its Lora Romero First Book Award. Gilmore’s wide-ranging research interests also include race and gender, labor and social movements, uneven development, and the African Diaspora. She comes to the Graduate Center from the University of Southern California, where she taught courses in race and ethnicity, economic geography, and political geography, was the founding chair of the department of American Studies and Ethnicity, and won the USC-Mellon Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring. She also works regularly with community groups and grassroots organizations and is known for the broad accessibility of her research. She holds a PhD in Economic Geography and Social Theory from Rutgers University. brings internationally renowned scholars to campus to present their work and engage with faculty, staff, students, alumni and Twin Cities’ residents.

Held every February during Black History Month, Macalester’s annual American Studies Conference brings internationally renowned scholars to campus to present their work and engage with faculty, staff, students, alumni and Twin Cities’ residents.

Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,958 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism and civic engagement.