Tuesday, April 22, 2025
12:00 - 2:00 pm
650 Social Sciences Building, Berkeley, CA 94720
Join Darieck Scott and Ianna Hawkins Owen in conversation about Darieck’s new novel, The-Dream Slaves, and nar j. castle’s chapbook, Side Conversations. Lunch will be provided.
Darieck Scott earned his Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University, and an M.A. in African American Studies and a J.D. from Yale. Before coming to UC Berkeley he taught in the English departments of the University of Texas at Austin, and UC Santa Barbara. His teaching and research interests include: 20th and 21st century African American literature; creative writing; queer theory, and LGBTQ studies; race, gender and sexuality in fantasy, science fiction, and comic books. Scott is the author of Keeping It Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics (NYU Press, 2022), which won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Studies, and was also a Finalist for the 2023 Locus Award for Nonfiction. Scott is also the author of the novels Hex (2007) and Traitor to the Race (1995).
Ianna Hawkins Owen, he/none, is an advanced assistant professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley. Owen’s first monograph, Ordinary Failure: Diaspora’s Limits & Longings, is under contract with Duke University Press. Owen has held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, & he recently received a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Award to support his second book project, This Time Without Feeling: Reading Black Asexual Affects. Prior to joining the faculty of GWS in 2024, Owen held a UC President’s Postdoc in English & faculty appointments at Williams College & Boston University.