Michelle Wright’s lecture, “ Middle Passage Blackness and its Discontents: The Age of Barack Obama”, explores the narrative of middle passage blackness as a point of departure for what it means to be black in America. She also proposes a Post WWII epistemology to use as a lens for reading contemporary Black Diasporic experiences. Dr. Wright further considers blackness and what it means today and suggests ways to read Barack Obama, not only as a president, performing his identity but as a bi-racial person in contemporary America and the world.

Recorded Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at Lincoln Park Public Library Auditorium.