Convocation with Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a geographer, currently serving as Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She is also a grassroots organizer seeking to transform how people think about criminal justice. One of the world’s preeminent scholars on prisons, punishment and policing, her landmark work is titled Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. A new book, Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition, is expected in February. Dr. Gilmore’s recent publications include “Beyond Bratton” (Policing the Planet, Camp and Heatherton, eds.) and “Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence” (Futures of Black Radicalism, Lubin and Johnson, eds.). She has lectured throughout Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Her honors include multiple awards for public scholarship, anti-racist research and practice, social and environmental justice, and mentorship. She was recently given the Association of American Geographers Lifetime Achievement Award and, along with Angela Davis, the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Cultural Freedom Prize. The title of her presentation is "Meanwhile: Making Abolition Geography." This convocation is part of Carleton's Argument and Inquiry Seminar program and is sponsored by the Class of 1957 Visiting Scholars Fund for Interdisciplinary Studies.