Co-authors Janet Neary and Tanya Agathocleous will discuss their forthcoming book, Misalliance: Abolition, Race-Caste Comparison, and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity, and the process of collaborating and forging connections across genre, period, and field. Misalliance traces what they call Afro-Asian cross-referencing from the rise of abolitionism in the U.S. and the birth of the anti-caste movement in India in the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, when explicit Afro-Asian dialogues and gestures of solidarity emerged in the form of conferences and experimental periodicals. The study, divided into three parts, examines a wide range of genres—including periodicals, pamphlets, novels, poetry, essays, conference proceedings, and case law—to chart a literary history of antiracist, anti-caste, and anti-imperial organizing based in transnational comparison that spans continents and decades. 

Sponsored by the Department of English, The Graduate School and the Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities Program.