Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice

Rutgers PhD Candidate Kelsey Lizotte examines politics of slavery reparations

For Rutgers University PhD Candidate Kelsey Lizotte, reparations are about far more than a monetary exchange.

Politics of Slave Repatations
Credit: TIFFANY DING / HERALD

At the Center of the Study of Slavery and Justice’s Emerging Scholar lunch series, Lizotte presented her doctoral dissertation, “Rethinking Reparations: A Critical Theory of Black Repair.” She researches in the Division of Global Affairs and is a lecturer in the writing program at Rutgers.

While studying reparations, Lizotte noticed a lack of focus on the history of the reparations movement in both scholarship and more mainstream discourse. In her own research, she seeks to prove that “a successful movement for black reparations today could benefit from a better historical understanding of the past and of intellectual traditions that have informed it and sparked it from the beginning.”

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