Kenneth Bailey (Founder and Co-Director, ds4si) and Judith Leemann (Ecologies of Thought Lead, ds4si & Professor, Fine Arts 3D, MassArt) of The Design Studio for Social Intervention join as Visiting Fellows at Northeastern University’s Arts & Humanities Social Action Lab, in a collaboration with Kris Manjapra, Stearns Professor of History and Global Studies.

Coming together around the provocation, “For the Vibrancy of Needs,” the residency encompasses StudyLabs and public events for faculty, students, community, and staff,  in a cross- and anti-disciplinary inquiry into theories and embodiments of justice rooted in experiences of common need. Drawing diversely on aesthetics, somatics, design methodologies, art-making, close reading, counter-archiving, and activism, the inquiry sites itself precisely at the border of the university and the community in which it is embedded, with an aim to transforming and re-imagining the relations this border tries to fix.

Joy James is Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities at Williams College. She is the author of Resisting State Violence; Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics, Transcending the Talented Tenth and Seeking the Beloved Community. James has published numerous articles on: political theory, police, prison and slavery abolition; radicalizing feminisms; diasporic anti-black racism; and US politics; and writes on the Captive Maternal through the lens of “The Womb of Western Theory.” Creator of the digital Harriet Tubman Literary Circle at UT Austin https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/7828, James is editor of The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings; Imprisoned Intellectuals;Warfare in the American Homeland; The Angela Y. Davis Reader; and co-editor of the Black Feminist Reader. James’s most recent books include: In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love and New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the Afterlife of Erica Garner.