Upcoming Events 2009-2010
Public Lecture
Pauline Epistle or Telling the Man? White Talk, Black Talk, and the Slap of Translation in Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
Jonathan Rieder, Professor of Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University
Monday, January 18, 2010, 4:30 p.m.
Location: McCormick 101
Jonathan Rieder is professor of Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University where he teaches courses on contemporary American culture and politics, the sociology of culture, and American pluralism and race relations. He also directs the Barnard Program on Civic Engagement. He previously taught at Yale and Swarthmore.
His widely reviewed, recent book, The Word of the Lord is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harvard University Press, 2008), was hailed as "absolutely brilliant" by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "the best anatomy of King's verbal imagination yet," (Scott Saul, The Nation), and "arguably the most creative book about King to date" (Michael Long, Christian Century). His article "I'm Going to be a Negro Tonight: Martin Luther King, Jr., Barack Obama and Postracial Paradoxes" appeared in the summer 2009 issue of The Michigan Review. His "Too Black or Not Black Enough?: Final Thoughts on Beer Summits and Postracial Paradoxes," recently appeared in The Huffington Post.
Rieder is currently writing a book about the transformation of rhythm and blues into soul music. The editor of The Fractious Nation: Unity and Division in the Contemporary United States (University of California Press), he is the author of Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism. As a former contributing editor at The New Republic he wrote a series of cover stories on racial conflict in New York City. From 1995 to 2001 he was founding co-editor of CommonQuest: The Magazine of Black-Jewish Relations. He has been awarded fellowships by the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the National Humanities Center.
Conference: "Too Cute: American Style and the New Asian Cool"
Wednesday and Thursday, March 3 - 4, 2010
Prospect House, Princeton University
Keynote Address in McCormick 101, 4:30 p.m. on March 3
Conference Organizer: Anne Anlin Cheng, Associate Chair, Department of English
A conference schedule will be posted as it becomes available.
Margot Canaday Book Reading: The Straight State
Join Us for a Book Reading from
The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America
Thursday, October 8, 2009, 4:30 p.m.
Prospect House
5:00 p.m. Reading by Margot Canaday
RSVP to mkilleen@princeton.edu or 609-258-4710
The book is available at Labyrinth Books on Nassau Street.
University Constitution Day Lecture 2009: George Kateb, Hendrik Hartog, Kim Lane Scheppele, and Deborah Pearlstein (from left to right)
University Constitution Day Lecture: How Small Emergencies Undermine Big Constitutional Principles
Monday, September 21, 4:30 p.m.
Friend Center, Room 101
Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and University Center for Human Values and George W. Crawford Visiting Professor of Law, Yale Law School
With Comments By:
Deborah Pearlstein, Associate Research Scholar, Woodrow Wilson School and Visiting Faculty Fellow, University of Pennsylvania Law School
George Kateb, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Emeritus
The lecture is presented by the Program in American Studies, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, the Program in Law and Public Affairs, and the Office of the Provost.
Emergency declarations - even the small emergency declarations - have the effect of temporarily changing the balance of constitutional power in order to meet a pressing need. But if emergencies happen often enough and cavalierly enough, the exception becomes the rule. This system of emergency action is now part and parcel of what the Constitution has come to mean - that Congress can set up a system of stand-by presidential authority to act without going back to the Congress for explicit permission in the event the president feels that something extraordinary should be done. Those of us who care about the Constitution's promise of normal non-emergency government may wonder about the wisdom of statutes and court decisions that have permitted ever-increasing powers to be wielded by an ever-more-powerful President. We have become complacent about emergency government. When confronted with a new situation - whether transnational terrorism after September 11 or unprecedented crowds in Washington DC for a presidential inauguration - we should first try to adapt our normal legal procedures to handle the new situations rather than creating the shortcuts and workarounds of emergency powers.