S2E8: The Legacy of Andaiye: A Conversation with Alissa Trotz and Nicole Burrowes

In this episode, guest host Dr. Nicole Burrowes (Rutgers University) talks with Dr. Alissa Trotz (University of Toronto) about the legacy of Guyanese Black radical feminist organizer and thinker Andaiye. Andaiye was a long time activist and social critic who helped to organize the Working People's Alliance (WPA)and was a founding member of Read Thread. In April 2020, Trotz and Andaiye published a new collection of Andaiye's essays with Pluto Press: The Point is to Change the World. This intimate conversation explore Andaiye's legacy, the stakes of Black political struggle and gender rights, and the genealogy of Black organizing against racism and sexism in Guyana. Alissa Trotz is Professor of Caribbean Studies at New College and Director of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. She is also affiliate faculty at the Dame Nita Barrow Institute of Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados.  Her research explores social reproduction,  neoliberalisation & feminist activisms; coloniality, racial formations, gendered difference and violence; transnational migration and diaspora. She is editor of the anthology The Point Is to Change the World: Selected Writings by Andaiye (Pluto Press Black Critique Series , 2020: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341279/the-point-is-to-change-the-world/). Her current research examines diaspora, indigeneity and extractivism in colonial Guyana. She is editor of “In the Diaspora,” a weekly newspaper column in the Guyanese daily, Stabroek News: https://inthecaribbeandiaspora.wordpress.com/about/; http://www.stabroeknews.com/category/features/in-the-diaspora/ Nicole Burrowes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University. Her research interests include social justice movements, comparative histories of racialization and colonialism, Black Internationalism, and the politics of solidarity. Her current book project, Seeds of Solidarity: African-Indian Relations and the 1935 Labor Rebellions in British Guiana, explores the historical possibility of a movement forged at the edge of empire in the midst of environmental, political and economic crises. Embedded in Caribbean feminist epistemologies, her work continues the tradition of proposing a framework for solidarity that gains power from recognizing, understanding and incorporating difference into struggle.In 2020, she was awarded two fellowships to support her research agenda: the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation’s Career Enhancement Fellowship.

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