An Americanist renowned for her analyses of the social and racial issues that run through the history of the United States, Sylvie Laurent goes back to the origins of the Great Discoveries, to identify the perverse nature of the political model invented with the discovery of America in 1492: a “racial capitalism”, traces of which have remained in the country’s political culture. With just a few months to go before the American elections, this is a major contribution to understanding the deep-seated motivations of an electorate haunted by a sense of identity dispossession. A meeting moderated by Olivier Pascal-Moussellard (Télérama), followed by a signing of Capital et race. Histoire d’une hydre moderne (Seuil).

About the speaker: 

Sylvie Laurent wrote her dissertation in American literature at Paris IV on “the poor white man in the American novel”, under the supervision of Pierre-Yves Pétillon. She holds a doctorate in English studies and is a lecturer at Sciences-Po Paris, where she teaches the political and literary history of African Americans. A Fulbright fellow at Harvard University in 2005-2006, she worked in the Graduate Seminar of the Department of African and African-American Studies under the direction of Werner Sollors and Henry Louis Gates Jr. In autumn 2009-2010, she was invited to join Harvard’s African-American Studies and Research Laboratory, the WEB Du Bois Institute, where she is now a non-resident fellow until 2012. Holder of an agrégation in history, a master’s degree in modern literature and a DEA in English studies, she taught for five years in a lycée in a sensitive urban zone in the Oise region.

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