Annual Mattson-New York Times Lecture with Dr. J.T. Roane

All are welcome to the 2023 Annual Mattson-New York Times Lecture with Dr. J.T. Roane on Thursday, March 2, as he discusses his new book, Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place. This lecture will take place in-person at Hannaford Hall in the Abromson Center on the University of Southern Maine Portland campus from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM.

In his book, author Dr. Roane shows how working-class Black communities cultivated two interdependent modes of insurgent assembly—dark agoras—in twentieth century Philadelphia. He investigates the ways they transposed rural imaginaries about and practices of place as part of their spatial resistances and efforts to contour industrial neighborhoods. In acts that ranged from the mundane acts of refashioning intimate spaces to expressly confrontational and liberatory efforts to transform the city’s social and ecological arrangement, these communities challenged the imposition of Progressive and post-Progressive visions for urban order seeking to enclose or displace them. Roane shows how Black communities built a significant if underappreciated terrain of geographic struggle shaping Philadelphia between the Great Migration and Black Power. This fascinating book will help readers appreciate the importance of Black spatial imaginaries and worldmaking in shaping matters of urban place and politics.

This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be served at the event opening.

Dr. J.T. Roane is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Geography and Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University. He is also a 2022-2023 Social Science Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. Roane is also at work on an experimental short film titled Plot with support from the Crossroads Project at Princeton University.