#britt rusert

[fatehbaz]

In the June 2, 1848, edition of Frederick Douglass’s North Star, an article titled “The Telescope and Microscope” appeared [...]. The article was reprinted from [...] a popular collection of sermons by the Scottish Presbyterian minister Thomas Chalmers. Chalmers was a major contributor to nineteenth-century debates about pluralism, or the possible existence of worlds beyond Earth [...]. In Douglass’s excerpt, Chalmers replicates his famous “microscope argument” [...]: just as [...] [there is] the teeming microcosm of life to be found in a single drop of water, so [there might be] masses of life [...] on other planets [...]. Chalmers observes, “In the leaves of every forest, in the flowers of every garden, in the waters of every rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life.” The microscope is able to show us, for the first time in human history, that “within and beneath all that minuteness which the aided eye of man is able to explore, there may be a world of invisible beings, and that, could he draw aside the mysterious veil which shrouds it from our senses, we might behold a theatre of as many wonders as astronomy can unfold.” We might pass by Douglass’s inclusion of “The Telescope and Microscope” as an interesting historical footnote if not for the fact that he reprinted this same article in an 1855 edition of Frederick Douglass’ Paper. In fact, microscopes, telescopes, and other scientific tools and technologies made regular appearances in both the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper, as they did in a number of other black newspapers throughout the antebellum period. The microscope held a particular place of interest for contributors to and editors of African American newspapers. [...] Another column reprinted in the Christian Recorder makes a similar revelation, observing that the microscope reveals one of the most “startling revelations” of contemporary scientific research: Life is everywhere. [...] The focus in both the North Star and the Christian Recorder on a possible “world of invisible beings” detected only through the optic powers of the microscope, [...] bodies that evade everyday vision and surveillance, takes on a special significance in the context of a newspaper published with the express aim of both encouraging escapes from slavery -- acts of strategically escaping visibility -- and gaining visibility and recognition [...].

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All text above by: Britt Rusert. “Delany's Comet: Fugitive Science and the Speculative Imaginary of Emancipation.” American Quarterly. December 2013. [Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[leftofblack]

Left of Black S8:E20: Fugitive Science, Black Freedom and Early African American Culture

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the studio by scholar and author Britt Rusert, author of Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (NYU Press), which Alondra Nelson has called “Groundbreaking Interdisciplinary Scholarship.”  Rusert is Associate Professor of African American Studies in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, returned to Duke University, where she earned a Ph.D. in 2009, as part of the Symposium, Black Women, Black Studies and Knowledge Production. In her book Professor Rusert exposes the influential work of a group of Black writers, artists, and performers who confront and refute scientific racism.

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture

By Britt Rusert.

[profkew]

[Ivy] Wilson observes [in Publishing Blackness] that we may now inhabit a moment in the institutionalizing of African American studies in which scholars and editors no longer need to authorize their lines of inquiry through reference to “an immediate political concern or social movement” (34). Returning to the archive for the “sake of returning to the archive” (34) might then be read as a form of freedom from the disciplinary and disciplining structures that make only particular objects and political imaginaries “proper” to the  eld. But how to return to the archive without reproducing its own institutional knowledges and ideologies? Without buying into the archive’s lure of empirical transparency or its structures of authority and authorization? How to be “in the institution but not of it”? Therein lies the challenge of the archival return in—and beyond—African American studies.

Britt Rusert, “From Black Lit to Black Print: The Return to the Archive in African American Literary Studies From Black Lit to Black Print: The Return to the Archive in African American Literary Studies,” American Quarterly 68:4 (Dec 2016) 1004.

[whatmilesreads]

“In some ways, Du Bois’ commitment to revolution and social justice and social movements of course means he’s always interested in the future,” [Britt Rusert] says.

What a Recently Uncovered Story by W.E.B. Du Bois Tells Us About Afrofuturism | Jane Greenway Carr

[blackgirl-inmedia-blog]

Uncovering 'The Princess Steel' is an important contribution to the evolution of Afrofuturism. 'I think you can read in the story that Du Bois is already understanding something about the social construction of technology,' says Rusert, who teaches from his short fiction and other texts in a graduate seminar on Afrofuturism. 'In some ways, Du Bois’ commitment to revolution and social justice and social movements of course means he’s always interested in the future,' she says. She also believes that 'Du Bois would ask us to think reflexively about what Afrofuturism means. … He would be interested in a kind of critical Afrofuturism, one interested in questions of history with a capital H.'

Britt Rusert, quoted in this important Slate article on how uncovering work by W.E.B. DuBois continues to teach us about the importance of afrofuturism

[dieselfunkblog]

Princeton ROCKS!  Greetings Dieselfunkateers!  I had the honor of touring two amazing student groups from Princeton University.  Our subject was the AMAZING UNVEILING VISIONS show curated by John Jennings and Reynaldo Anderson at the Schomburg Museum.  Each class was led by their illustrious teachers; respectively with class titles, Ruha Benjamin “Black to the Future: Science, Fiction, and Society” and Britt Rusert, "Fantasy in the Hold: Black Fantasy from Equiano to Delany".  I couldn’t have been more impressed by the level of intellectual capacity, social engagement and Artistic curiosity.  Folks, I think we’re gonna be alright!