NWACC MLK Memorial Lecture: “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Civil Disobedience: Myth, History” | Jan. 26
- WHEN/WHERE: Tuesday, Jan. 26th, 12-1:15 pm via Zoom
- Email Matt Evans at mevans8@nwacc.edu for Zoom information
- LECTURER: Dr. Alexander Livingston, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Government at Cornel University.
- ABOUT LECTURE: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is celebrated as an icon of civil disobedience and the idea of good protest in American political culture. How does the reality of King’s evolving reflections on the philosophy and strategy of nonviolent direct action compare to the myth that has come to surround it? Alexander Livingston’s lecture examines King’s contemporary legacy for contemporary protest politics from two competing perspectives: its ideological deployment by conservatives and liberals to delimit the boundaries of appropriate protest, and the evolution of King’s own thinking about the purpose of civil disobedience in the final years of his life. By charting the way a certain myth of the meaning of civil disobedience in the Civil Rights era came to displace reality, this lecture suggests how we might recover philosophical insights from King today to challenge familiar discourses about the purpose of protest, the boundaries of civility, and the meaning of nonviolence.
· This lecture is sponsored by the Division of Communication and Arts, the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the Honors Program at NWACC.
- SPEAKER BIO: Alexander Livingston is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Government. His research examines protest, social movements, and religion and politics with an area focus on American political thought. He teaches courses on civil disobedience, theories of democracy, political violence and nonviolence, contemporary political theory, and the history of political thought. His first book, Damn Great Empires! William James and the Politics of Pragmatism (Oxford University Press, 2016), examines William James’s role in debates about U.S. imperialism at the turn of the century to show how pragmatism developed as a political response to crises of authority and sovereignty driving the expansion of American global power. His current book project, Necessary Trouble, looks at the theory and practice of civil disobedience in the long civil rights movement, and their afterlives in contemporary political culture. Livingston’s research has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including the American Political Science Review, Political Theory, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and Contemporary Political Theory, as well as numerous edited volumes. His public writing has appeared in Jacobin Magazine and Boston Review. Before coming to Cornell, he was a Social Science and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.
With Care,
Matt Evans, PhD
Professor of Political Science
Department of Social Sciences
https://www.nwacc.edu/web/social_sciences
Interim Service Learning Coordinator, Co-advisor, NWACC Model United Nations
Northwest Arkansas Community College
1 College Drive, Bentonville, AR 72712
(479) 619-4284 (ph) — mevans8@nwacc.edu
Office Location: Burns Hall Room 2227
Secretary, Arkansas Political Science Association