Incubating Imagination
Possibilities & Practices Toward Liberatory Learning
Friday, March 7, 6pm
TUC MainStreet Cinema
In the 2025 Taft Research Center keynote, Ruha Benjamin takes us into the liberating power of the imagination. Deadly systems shaped by the school to prison pipeline, ableism, digital surveillance, and eugenics emerged from the human imagination, and have real-world impacts. To fight oppressive systems and create a world that works for all of us, we will have to imagine things differently. Ruha Benjamin will show us how educators, artists, technologists, and more are experimenting with new ways of thinking and tackling seemingly intractable problems. Let’s explore the possibilities and practices required to imagine and create more just and habitable worlds of learning and being.
REGISTER HERE
Ruha Benjamin is the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founding director of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab, and award-winning author of Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, and she recently released her fourth book, Imagination: A Manifesto. Ruha is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar Award, the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton, and in 2024 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship.
We will distribute 50 free copies of Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want and Imagination: A Manifesto to attendees at the following events (while supplies last):
Critical Walk: In Conversation with Viral Justice
February 1, 12:30–1:30pm, RSVP
co-sponsored with School of Environment & Sustainability
Black FUTURE Month Uncommon Read-In with Cassandra Jones
February 3, 10, 17 & 24, 12:30–2pm, Taft Research Center
co-sponsored with Africana Studies
Feminist Forum x Viral Justice
February 21, 3:30–5pm, 4614 French Hall West
co-sponsored with Womenʼs, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Monsterhearts x Imagination: A Manifesto
March 5 & 12, 4–6pm, Taft Research Center