Join ASA for lunch and a conversation with distinguished scholars Angela Y. Davis and Gina Dent moderated by ASA Past President Ato Quayson. The discussion will engage urgent questions of Africa, liberation, abolition, intellectual life, feminism, global struggle, and the future of critical scholarship in a shifting world.
12:00 – 1:00 PM
Saturday, December 5, 2026
New Orleans Marriott
Tickets: $145 available in the MyASA portal. Be sure to register for the Annual Meeting.
We’d like to extend a special thank you to our generous event sponsors, Stanford’s Department of African and African American Studies and Dr. Steve Howard. Without their support, this event would not be possible.
Luncheon Menu:
– Award winning seafood gumbo with Jazzmen rice
– Louisiana tomato salad with Vidalia, blue cheese, & sherry vinaigrette
– Muffuletta pasta salad with peppers, olives, onions, & Italian meats
– Crescent City greens with cucumbers, tomatoes, croutons, smoked
bacon, blue cheese, & candied nuts served with buttermilk ranch & lemon thyme
vinaigrette dressings (served disaggregated).
– Bronzed Gulf catch fish with crawfish etouffee
– Cajun spiced skirt steak with smothered peppers and onions
– Red beans & rice
– Southern-style green beans
– Squash creole with shrimp, okra, & tomatoes
– Warm cornbread muffins
– Warm mini white chocolate bread pudding bites
– Bananas foster cheesecake bites
– Mini fruit tarts
– Table side coffee service
*for dietary restrictions, please contact the ASA Secretariat.
Speaker Bios
Angela Y. Davis is professor emerita of history of consciousness and feminist studies at University of California, Santa Cruz. An activist, writer, and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition, and the related intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of many books, from Angela Davis: An Autobiography to Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. Her most recent books include Abolition.Feminism.Now., written with Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie, and a book of essays entitled Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1.
Gina Dent is Professor of Humanities and Faculty Director of the Institute of the Arts & Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she has won awards for her teaching, advocacy, and research. Currently, she serves as Principal Investigator and Co-Director for Visualizing Abolition, a multidisciplinary project addressing the global crisis of incarceration through art and visual culture. Her recent collaborative projects include Abolition. Feminism. Now. (co-authored with Angela Davis, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie, Haymarket 2022), and Seeing through Stone (exhibition catalog, Marquand 2024). She works with several organizations nationally and internationally, including Columbia University’s Center for Justice and Australia’s Sisters Inside, primarily on justice-related concerns. Professor Dent has offered graduate courses and faculty seminars in black feminisms, critical race studies, critical theory and postcolonialism, and legal theory and visual culture in Brazil, Colombia, and Sweden, as well as at the European Graduate School. She previously held positions at Princeton University and Columbia University and was Director of the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research at UCSC, as well as Principal Investigator for the University of California Multicampus Research Group on Transnationalizing Justice.
