A Feminist Reading of “Precarious Life:” U.S. Health and Housing Crises in Historical Literature Keynote speaker: Dr. Stephanie Rountree, University of North Georgia - April 16

Dr. Stephanie Rountree’s presentation centers Black and postcolonial feminisms to consider historical U.S. literature depicting public health and housing crises. She explores two narratives spanning time and place: Charles Chesnutt’s “Po’ Sandy” (1888), depicting a self-emancipated Black man’s struggle to survive unhoused in North Carolina; and, Louise Erdrich’s Four Souls (2004), following an Ojibwe woman’s journey to Minnesota to avenge both her stolen homeland and the life of her stillborn child, both lost to the effects of settler colonialism. 

Applying Judith Butler’s theory in Precarious Life, Rountree illustrates how such literature makes “grievable” those marginalized human lives lost in U.S. empire’s ceaseless pursuit of profit, expansion and power. Reading these narratives through intersectional feminisms, Rountree demonstrates their power to make visible how the histories of racial enslavement and settler colonialism that founded the nation still linger in systems that render housing unattainable, healthcare unaffordable, food access insecure, and human life ever vulnerable across 250 years of national history.

This event will take place on Wednesday, April 16, in the Pat Peterson Museum Education Room from 5 until 6 p.m. A reception will follow in Heritage Hall.