Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Saltwater Apprenticeship: Black Being Beyond the Human”

As part of the Fall 2019 Intra-Disciplinary Seminar series, Alexis Pauline Gumbs delivers a free, public lecture. Gumbs is an experienced Black feminist scholar and poet and an inexperienced marine mammal in apprenticeship. During this talk, she will invite us into her depth work on the salt water within us, inspired by the breathing, kinship and survival practices of whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, walruses and other marine mammals. In the time of rising oceans, Gumbs asks us to reconsider our relationship to float, wake, emotional intelligence and subtle adaptation. Our time together will include reading from Gumbs’s work, an interactive oracle offering towards your own adaptation.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the author Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity; M Archive: After the End of the World; and the forthcoming Dub: Finding Ceremony (Duke University Press, 2016, 2018, 2020). She is the co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) and Creative Writing Editor of Feminist Studies. Alexis and her partner Sangodare are the founders of the Mobile Homecoming Trust Living Library and Archive of Generations of Black Queer Brilliance in Durham, North Carolina.

The Fall 2019 IDS Lecture Series at The Cooper Union is organized by Leslie Hewitt and Omar Berrada. The IDS Public Lecture Series is part of the Robert Lehman Visiting Artist Program at The Cooper Union. We are grateful for major funding and support from the Robert Lehman Foundation for the series. The IDS Public Lecture Series is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.