27. April 2025

Juneteenth Lecture with Kinohi Nishikawa: What Comes before the Haunting? Juneteenth Lecture with Kinohi Nishikawa: What Comes before the Haunting?

Tony Morrison's Late Style in 'A Mercy'

The afterlife of slavery is one of the most powerful heuristics guiding the study of the social, historical, political, and cultural effects of transatlantic slavery in the Americas. Coined by the scholar and critic Saidiya Hartman, who herself builds on the work of Hazel V. Carby and Hortense Spillers, the afterlife of slavery identifies the ways in which American civic and popular culture, public and private life, are haunted by the traumas not only of chattel slavery but also of the unfinished project of abolition. Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) is routinely cited as both an inspiration for and exemplum of this interpretive lens. However, over twenty years after the publication of the novel, Morrison grappled with the question of whether one could imagine life outside the parameters of what would come to be known as the afterlife of slavery. In A Mercy (2008), we see Morrison fabulating social intimacy and social conflict beyond, which is to say before, a predetermined fate. This lecture assesses the compatibility of this fictional project with the afterlife of slavery, with special attention to records showing how Morrison guided the publication of her book.

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Professor Kinohi Nishikawa

Kinohi Nishikawa teaches African American Literature and Culture at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. He is the author of Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018. The author of numerous essays, articles, and chapters in African American book history, bibliography, and print culture studies, Nishikawa's most recent publications have appeared in ASAP/Journal, American Literary History, and Novel: A Forum on Fiction. He is currently at work on the edited collection Sites of Memory: Toni Morrison and the Archive (with Autumn M. Womack) and on a monograph, Black Paratext: Reading African American Literature by Design.

About Juneteenth

Juneteenth is a holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans; it is observed annually on June 19. The date marks the anniversary of the proclamation of freedom for slaves in Texas in 1865. The name Juneteenth is the blending of the words "June" and "nineteenth". It was first recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law.

We cordially invite you to join us for a reception after the lecture and discussion.

Please register by June 10, 2025. See below for details.

This event will be held in English.

Speaker: Kinohi Nishikawa¹ Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA

Date and Time: June 17, 2025, 6:00-7:30pm, followed by a reception

Venue: Bonner Universitätsforum, Heussallee 18-24, 53113 Bonn

Registration: Please register by June 10, 2025 via Amerikahaus – Eventbrite² for in-person attendance. If you would like to join us online, please contact Jan Hörber (events@dependency.uni-bonn.de).

This event is a cooperation between: Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, North American Studies Program at the University of Bonn³, Amerikahaus NRW, ⁴organized by Luvena Kopp⁵ (BCDSS) and Prof. Dr. Pia Wiegmink⁶ (BCDSS).

Professor Kinohi Nishikawa

About Juneteenth

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