Jeffrey C. Goldfarb & Claire Potter
#CHARLOTTESVILLE is the first in a series to be published by Public Seminar Books, an initiative that expands the digital Public Seminar vision to re-imagine and re-constitute the relationship between academic life and the broader public. Knowing that organized, critical perspectives were needed after the events of August 11 and 12, we responded to the urgency of the moment by re-editing essays published over the course of fall 2017, and soliciting several new essays. The horrors of racism vividly and tragically appeared in a particular place, at a particular time, as events of the day, but understanding what happened there then requires confronting enduring problems of the human condition.
We will continue to experiment with content, form, and publishing styles, as we reaffirm and expand the project of the New School for Social Research, and test the limits of what twenty-first century publishing can look like. The mission of Public Seminar informs the inquiries here: “confronting the pressing issues of the day and the fundamental problems of the human condition, in open, critical, and challenging ways.” This volume is an invitation to continue observing, thinking about, and acting against the legacies of slavery and racism in Charlottesville, in Virginia, in the United States, and far beyond.
—Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Claire Potter, series editors