Latitudes
The Latitudes Working Group is coordinated and funded by the Department of English.
Housed at Penn English, Latitudes is a graduate reading group that examines discourses of race, coloniality, empire, and globalization across time and space. We provide an encouraging forum for intellectual exchange across a vast range of disciplines, including literature, anthropology, history, economics, sociology, and gender and sexuality studies. Every year, Latitudes welcomes critics, writers, artists, and filmmakers from the region and beyond to present and discuss their new work. In addition to faculty from Penn, past speakers have included Neferti Tadiar, Saree Makdisi, Yogita Goyal, and film directors Grace Lee Boggs (American Revolution: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs) and Sanjay Kak (Red Ant Dream). We also warmly invite English graduate students in their dissertating stage to use the forum as a workshop for their research in progress. Alongside our speaker series, we host a more informal reading group. In Spring 2025, we will be discussing a number of Palestinian writings and films.
LATITUDES Graduate Reading Group for Empire, Race, Postcolonialism, Transnationalism, & Globalization |
Should you wish to join our mailing list or have any questions or comments, please contact our coordinators: |
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In Spring 2021, Latitudes launched a companion publication, Longitudes, an online forum for graduate students to publish short, peer-reviewed responses to our speakers and co-sponsored events. Please visit Longitudes for the latest posts by our members, an archive of our past events, and submission guidelines should you wish to write a post.
Upcoming Events
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Reading Series: Selections from Edward Said's The Question of Palestine (1979)
February 19, 2025 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm -
Book Launch: Ugliness by Moshtari Hilal
March 3, 2025 - 5:00pm to 7:00pm -
Reading Series: Elia Suleiman's Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) and Selections from Walid Khalidi's All That Remains (1992)
March 5, 2025 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm -
Reading Series: Jumama Manna's Blessed Blessed Oblivion (2010) and A Magical Substance Flows Through Me (2016)
March 20, 2025 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm -
Reading Series: Wissam Rafeedie's The Trinity of Fundamentals (2023)
March 26, 2025 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm -
Reading Series: Wissam Rafeedie's The Trinity of Fundamentals (2023)
April 9, 2025 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm
Past Events
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Work in progress talk, “Nelson Mandela, Ruth First, and the Law of ‘Properly Controlled Violence.'"
Nicholas Matlin, Postdoctoral Lecturer, NYUJanuary 22, 2015 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm -
Postcards from Tora Bora (2007) film screening
Conversation with the filmmaker, Wazhmah Osman.December 2, 2014 - 6:00pm to 8:00pm -
Contrapuntal Environmentalisms
Jennifer Wenzel, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia UniversityNovember 18, 2014 - 6:00pm to 7:00pm -
Rahul Mukherjee, Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Cinema Studies Program, and Television and New Media Studies.
October 7, 2014 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm -
Forcing Sex: Violent Contestations over South African Masculinities
Professor Amanda Lock Swarr (University of Washington)April 7, 2014 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm -
The Cambridge Companion to Nelson Mandela, ed. Rita Barnard (2014)
A joint discussion session with LatitudesApril 1, 2014 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm -
Panel Discussion on the Philadelphia Youth Curfew Law
Featuring Philadelphia Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, Penn Social Policy Professor T.J. Ghose, and Penn State Ph.D. Candidate Vanessa Massaro. Van Pelt Library, Room 223, Meyerson Conference Room. RecJanuary 20, 2014 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm -
Work-in-Progress talk
December 9, 2013 - 5:00pm to 6:00pm -
Screening of Red Ant Dream with Director Sanjay Kak
December 5, 2013 - 4:30pm to 6:30pm -
Screening of American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs with Director Grace Lee
November 18, 2013 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm