Brooklyn College Welcomes Lisa Lowe, Ph.D., as Its 2021–2022 Hess Scholar in Residence

Oct. 22, 2021

Lisa Lowe, Ph.D., 2021-2022 Hess Scholar-in-Residence

Professor of American Studies at Yale University will headline discussions on the Asian-American experience, legacies of settler colonialism, slavery, and empire in the contemporary United States.

Lisa Lowe, Ph.D., and Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies at Yale University, and an affiliate faculty in the programs of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, will serve as Brooklyn College’s 2021–2022 Hess Scholar-in-Residence.

In a free, online event open to the public, Lowe will present a keynote lecture as part of this series on Oct. 28 at 5 p.m. “The Colonial Present” will consider the legacies of settler colonialism, slavery, and empire in the contemporary United States, and the endurance of anticolonial struggles. Lowe will address the conflicts between given national history and what that account suppresses, and responds to Cedric Robinson’s call for a relationship to history that “resurrects events which have systematically been made to vanish from our intellectual consciousness,” to transform how we understand our political present.

An interdisciplinary scholar whose work is concerned with the study of race, immigration, capitalism, and colonialism, Lowe is the author of Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Cornell University Press, 1991), Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 1996), and The Intimacies of Four Continents (Duke University Press, 2015), and the co-editor of The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital (Duke University Press, 1997) and New Formations, New Questions: Asian American Studies, a special issue of positions: east asia cultures critique 5:2 (Fall 1997). Lowe’s teaching interests include Asian American studies and critical race and ethnic studies, colonialism and U.S. empire, and cultures of globalization.

The Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence Program, established by Brooklyn College, is supported by the Robert L. Hess Fund. The program serves as a permanent tribute to the scholarly commitment of Robert L. Hess, exemplified during his tenure as president of Brooklyn College. It represents the ideal of the educated individual—knowledgeable, thoughtful, inquiring, alive to the shared purposes and concerns lining all intellectual pursuits. More particularly, it evokes the scholarly and academic virtues embodied in the curriculum at Brooklyn College.

Hess Scholar-in-Residence Program events will run from Oct. 25 to 28. Visit our website for the full program of events and registration links.

More About the Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence Program

The purpose of the program is to invite to the campus each year a distinguished individual representative of an academic discipline at the college, with the selection of such scholars being rotated through the disciplines. The distinction of the scholars in residence is based on their accomplishments and stature, not on their affiliation; they may be drawn from the academy, from the professions, or from public life. They must be able to speak to issues of their disciplines as well as significant issues of concern to the entire Brooklyn College community.

The scholar in residence engages in a variety of activities appropriate to the discipline, whether public lectures, performances, master classes, or guest lectures in undergraduate courses; participates in panels or symposia; and meets informally and socially with students, faculty, alums, and friends of Brooklyn College.