Conversation: Sovereignty and The Black Subject

Milton S. F. Curry is Professor of Architecture and Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Engagement at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning. He is founding editor of CriticalProductive Journal and principal of Milton Curry ProjectStudio design consultancy. Curry produces creative work and scholarship on the role of architecture in shaping social consciousness and the intersectional role of race, class, and urban geography embedded in modern and contemporary aesthetic practices in the Americas. He currently leads the curatorial team (USC, Getty, LACMA) producing three exhibitions on the life and work of Paul R. Williams.

Hortense J. Spillers is an American literary critic, Black feminist theorist, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor, and Distinguished Research Professor Emerita in the English Department at Vanderbilt University. Best known for her 1987 essay “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” her published works also include Black, White, and in Color (2003), Comparative American Identities (1991), and Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition (1985), coedited with Marjorie Pryse. In 2013, Spillers founded the A-Line journal, an independent online publication devoted to examination of national and world events through a theoretical lens.