For our November Narrative Medicine Rounds, we are honored to welcome Saidiya Hartman, the author of "Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments," "Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route," and "Scenes of Subjection." Professor Hartman will give a talk on her newest book and continue the discussion with Farah Jasmine Griffin, Professor of English and Comparative Literature and chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department.
A MacArthur Fellow, Saidiya Hartman has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. She has just been appointed to the rank of University Professor, Columbia’s highest academic honor. Professor Hartman received a BA (1984) from Wesleyan University and a PhD (1992) from Yale University.
Prior to joining the faculty of Columbia University, where she is a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Saidiya Hartman was a professor in the Department of English and African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (1992–2006). She is the former director of the Institute for Research on Gender and Sexuality at Columbia University and was a Whitney Oates Fellow at Princeton University (2002), a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library (2016–2017), and a Critical Inquiry Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago (2018). In addition to her books, she has published articles in journals such as South Atlantic Quarterly, Brick, Small Axe, Callaloo, The New Yorker and The Paris Review.
Farah Jasmine Griffin is the William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the inaugural chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University. Professor Griffin has published widely on issues of race and gender, feminism, jazz and cultural politics. Her most recent book is Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II, and her essays and articles have appeared in Essence, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, Harper's Bazaar, Art Forum and elsewhere.
