Upcoming Visitors and Speakers

2025 Distinguished Visiting Speaker

Professor Christina Sharpe

Join award winning author and professor, Christina Sharpe from from October 1 - 3 for a series of events.

Christina Sharpe is a writer, Professor, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto. Sharpe is the author of Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects (2010), In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016), and Ordinary Notes (2023)—winner of the Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize in Nonfiction and the Hodler Prize, and finalist for The National Book Award in Nonfiction, The National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction, the LATimes Current Interest Book Award, and the James Tait Black Prize in Biography. Ordinary Notes was also named a Best Book of the Year by: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, NPR, New York Magazine, and Granta, among others. In April 2024, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in Nonfiction and was named a Guggenheim Fellow. In May, she received the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize for the Sciences and Humanities. Sharpe is currently working on What Could a Vessel Be? (FSG/Knopf, Canada 2025) and Black. Still. Life. (Duke 2027). Her writing has appeared in many artist catalogues and journals including Frieze, Paris Review, Harpers, BOMB Magazine, and The Funambulist.

Wednesday, October 1

"Extraordinary Ordinary Notes": A conversation between Professor Christina Sharpe, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities and Professor Michael Bucknor, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Global Studies and Decolonial Practice

Along with the metaphysical and material import of this superb meditation on Black lives, Sharpe’s creative crafting of this award-winning work will come into critical focus through this lunchtime reading and interview.

Location: Henderson Hall (Rutherford Library South 1-17)
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Registration: This event is open to everyone and registration is not required

Thursday, October 2

Meet and Greet with Professor Christina Sharpe

An informal meet and greet specifically for undergraduate students to engage with and learn from Professor Sharpe.

Location: Salter Reading Room, Humanities Centre 3-95
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Registration: This event is open to undergraduate students from all departments. Attendees must register in advance.

Town/Gown Lecture: "Refusing Necrotopia (What Could a Vessel Be?)"

In this talk, Professor Christina Sharpe shares fresh perspectives from her forthcoming book What Could a Vessel Be?.

Location: CCIS L1-140
Time: 6:30 - 9:00 p.m.
Registration: This event is open to everyone. Please register in advance.

Friday, October 3

Graduate Seminar with Professor Christina Sharpe

Location: Will be shared with registered participants
Time: 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Registration: This event is open to graduate students from all departments. Registration is required to attend.

Event Collaborators:
Distinguished Visitor Fund, KIAS, CRC, CLC and the Canadian Society of Continental Philosophy Conference

Additional Support Provided By:
Audreys Books
Edmonton LitFest
Department of English and Film Studies, U of A
Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, U of A
Department of Philosophy, U of A
Department of Political Science, U of A
The Feminist Research Speaker Series of the Department of Women and Gender Studies, U of A
Professor Kim Q. Hall

Previous visitors & speakers:

Distinguished Visitor Dr. David Chariandy, February 2024

Distinguished Visitors New Red Order, March 2023

Distinguished Visitor Dr. Rebecca Comay, March 2022

Distinguished Visitor Dr. John Borrows, March 2021

Distinguished Visitor Dr. Lisa Gitelman, March 2018

Distinguished Visitor Dr. Julia Reinhard Lupton, October 2016