“Politically Red”

This seminar is a follow up to the public lecture on February 23rd. “Europe and the Wolf: Militant Economies of Sound in Pere Portabella and Carles Santos” by Sara Nadal-Melsió

In this seminar, Nadal-Melsió will discuss her forthcoming book with co-author Eduardo Cadava. The book’s title plays on the homonym between “red” and “read” and emphasizes the role and place of reading in the political sphere. Focusing on the writings of Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Walter Benjamin, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Fredric Jameson, it demonstrates the way in which their work can be resources for doing political work in the present, and particularly anti-racist work.

Sara Nadal-Melsió is a NYC-based Catalan writer, curator, and teacher. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, SOMA in Mexico City, and New York University. Her essays have appeared in various academic journals, edited volumes, and museum catalogs. She is the co-author of Alrededor de/ Around, and the editor of two special issues on cinema, The Invisible Tradition: Avant-Garde Catalan Cinema under Late Francoism and The Militant Image: Temporal Disturbances of the Political Imagination. She also cocurated a retrospective of Allora & Calzadilla’s work for the Fundació Tápies in Barcelona and has written a book essay about it, as well as edited a companion volume on the Puerto Rican crisis. Her book Europe and the Wolf: Political Variations on a Musical Concept is forthcoming from Zone Books.