Book Talk | Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery
Join the Institute for Public Knowledge on Wednesday, October 30 (5:30-7:00 PM) for a book talk with Andrew Ross, Tommaso Bardelli, and Aiyuba Thomas. They will discuss their book Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery with Chenjerai Kumanyika and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu.
Andrew Ross is a social activist and Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU, where he also directs the Prison Research Lab. A contributor to the Guardian, the New York Times, The Nation, and Al Jazeera, he is the author or editor of more than twenty-five books, including, most recently, Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality.
Tommaso Bardelli is a Research Fellow at the NYU Prison Education Program Research Lab, where he conducts research on mass incarceration, financial debt, and their intersections. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Yale University.
Aiyuba Thomas is a recent MA graduate from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and a justice impacted affiliate of the NYU Prison Research Lab. He is currently the project manager for “Movements Against Mass Incarceration,” an archival oral history project at Columbia University.
Chenjerai Kumanyika is an Assistant Professor of Journalism at New York University. Alongside his scholarship and teaching, disciplinary service on the intersections of social justice and media, Kumanyika specializes in using narrative non-fiction audio journalism to critique the ideology of American historical myths about issues such as race, the Civil War, and policing. He has written in scholarly venues such as Popular Music & Society, Popular Communication, The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture, as well as public venues such as The Intercept, Transom, NPR Codeswitch, All Things Considered, Invisibilia, and VICE. Kumanyika is also the co-creator, co-executive producer, and co-host of Uncivil, Gimlet Media’s podcast on the Civil War and he is the collaborator for Scene on Radio’s influential Season 2 “Seeing White,” and Season 4 on the history of American democracy.
Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu is Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. She is the author or editor of five books, most recently, Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (Duke UP, 2021), which was honored with multiple awards, including the R.R. Hawkins Award, presented by the Association of American Publishers, the PROSE Award for Excellence in the Humanities, as well as a Victor Turner Prize from the American Anthropology Association.