Deva Woodly Lecture

Politics scholar Dr. Deva R. Woodly, in conversation with Liberal Studies professor Dr. Kaia Shivers, will discuss The Politics of Futurity. Drawing on popular discourse, topics will include the potential for change within the structural relations of race, coloniality, and Indigeneity. This is an NYU Women Lead and Liberal Studies Global Lecture Series event, hosted by Liberal Studies and the Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation.

Deva R. Woodly is an Associate Professor of Politics at the New School. A former fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study (2012-2013), she is the author of Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements (Oxford 2021) and The Politics of Common Sense: How Social Movements Use Public Discourse to Change Politics and Win Acceptance (Oxford 2015). Her research covers a variety of topics, from media & communication, to social movements, race and imagination, and political understandings of economics. In each case, she focuses on the impacts of public discourse on the political understandings of social and economic issues as well as how those common understandings change democratic practice and public policy. Her process of inquiry is inductive, moving from concrete, real-world conditions to the conceptual implications of those realities. In all cases, she centers the perspective of ordinary citizens and political challengers with an eye toward how the demos impacts political action and shapes political possibilities.