Conference | Narratives of Debt

The Oikos working group at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge and the Unpayable Debt working group at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference present “Narratives of Debt”, a one-day conference on the ways that people and groups have grappled with and against various forms of indebtedness. The morning session will feature speakers working on the ongoing Puerto Rican debt crisis from a number of disciplinary perspectives. The afternoon session will focus on how different kinds of debt are folded into relations of intimacy, kinship, and everyday interactions.

10AM-Noon: The Puerto Rican Debt Crisis

Yarimar Bonilla (Associate Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers)
Puerto Rico’s American Dream: Contemporary Narratives of Debt and Crisis

Huascar Robles (Journalist and Documentary Photographer)
The Echoes of Silence: Development, Debt, and Santurce

Sarah Molinari (Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center)
Contesting “Debt” Relations: Narratives and Activism During Puerto Rico’s Crisis

Miguel Luciano (Independent Artist)
Ride or Die

Moderated by: Frances Negrón-Muntaner (Professor and Co-Director of Unpayable Debt Working Group, Columbia)

2PM-4PM: Debt and Intimacy

Michael Ralph (Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU)
Commercial Affiliations

Gustav Peebles (Associate Professor of Anthropology, The New School)
Debtors’ Sanctuaries and the Sovereign Exception

Liv Yarrow (Professor of Classics, Brooklyn College, CUNY)
Private Debt and Public Foreign Policy, 51-50 BCE

Amina El-Annan (Assistant Professor of English, Baruch College, CUNY)
Dreamworlds of Debt

Moderated by: Sarah Muir (Director, International Studies Program, City College, CUNY and Co-Director of Unpayable Debt Working Group, Columbia)