The Department of Critical Race and Political Economy hosts an annual lecture in honor of activist and alum, Barbara Smith ’69, whose unparalleled legacy of Black feminist writings and scholarship has inspired generations of students and professors at Mount Holyoke College.

This year's lecture will be delivered by Jasbir K. Puar, Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia, Extraordinary Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, and Professor Emerita at Rutgers University where she was faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department for 23 years.

Puar is the author of the award-winning books: The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017), which has been translated into Spanish and is forthcoming in Portuguese, and Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007), available in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and re-issued as an expanded version for its tenth anniversary (2017). Her articles have been published in journals such as Social Text and South Atlantic Quarterly, mainstream venues such as Al-Jazeera and The Guardian, and translated into more than 20 languages.