Niagara University Launches Speaker Series Focused on Literary Criticism and Social Justice

Emerging and established scholars will be featured as part of Niagara University's new Literature and Social Justice Speaker Series, which launches this fall. The series is intended to facilitate discussions on how humanistic inquiry, specifically literary criticism, can contribute to social justice. The focus of the first two talks will be on the issue of disability.

"This series will complement other initiatives at Niagara University around social justice, such as the recent opening of the Vincentian Center for Justice and the grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the development of a new Vincentian social justice minor," said series organizer Dr. Ajitpaul Mangat, assistant professor of English.

Dr. James Kyung-Jin Lee, professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, will be the inaugural speaker. His presentation takes place on Monday, Sept. 16, in Glynn Hall Room 405/406/407 on the Niagara University campus. At 1:30 p.m., Dr. Lee will discuss his award-winning book, "Pedagogies of Woundedness," followed by a presentation entitled, "A Winter Coat in the Summer: Mental Illness and the Event Horizon of Asian America" at 3 p.m. The event, which is free and open to the public, starts with a meet-and-greet at 12:30 p.m.

Dr. Lee has also served as director of the Center for Medical Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include disability studies, health/medical humanities, illness, memoir, and mental illness. In addition to "Pedagogies of Woundedness," he is the author of "Urban Triage: Race and the Fictions of Multiculturalism." He earned a Master of Divinity from the Claremont School of Theology; a Ph.D. in English, an M.A. in English, and an M.A. in Asian America studies from UCLA; and a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

The second speaker will be Dr. Milo Obourn, professor and chair of women and gender studies and professor of English at SUNY-Brockport, who will discuss their book,"Disabled Futures: A Framework for Radical Inclusion," on Monday, Oct. 7.

Dr. Obourn is also the author of "Reconstituting Americans: Liberal Multiculturalism and Identity Difference in Post-1960s Literature." Their research interests includedisability studies, social identity and cultural citizenship, and gender and sexuality studies. Dr. Obourn holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in English from New York University, and a B.A.in English literature & French language and literature from Tufts University.

The focus of the first two talks in the series also continue work Dr. Mangat has done in developing courses and events that speak to the issue of disability, including the April 2023 "Care in Action" symposium, which brought together academics, students, and community members to discuss ways to address the ongoing "crisis of care." He also teaches two courses on disability and serves as a humanities faculty advisor for the Vincentian social justice minor, assisting faculty in making their classrooms more accessible and their course content more diverse in terms of disability and race.