Sarah L. Hoagland Speaker Series

Each spring, the Philosophy Department is proud to host Inspiring TriVia: The Sarah L. Hoagland Speaker Series. As professor emerita of Northeastern Illinois University, Dr. Hoagland generously endowed this series to foster philosophical discussion at the intersections of race, class, and gender. Hence the title: Inspire (to breathe life into), and TriVia (the goddess of crossroads).

A heartfelt thank you to Dr. Sarah L. Hoagland for making it all possible.

Spring 2026

Dr. Cristina Beltrán, New York University
3:05-5:00 p.m. Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Main Campus, Room TBA

"Refusing the Politics of Elimination: A Rasquache Ethos of Abundance”

This talk argues that countering the Right’s politics of violence, domination and scarcity requires cultivating democratic imaginaries that promise not only justice, but pleasure, joy, beauty, and delight. Rather than mirroring conservative logics of dehumanization and removal that conflate freedom with the power to subjugate, this talk argues for a defiant, non-eliminationist ethos of what I refer to as affective abundance. 

Dr. Cristina Beltrán is an associate professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. She is the author of Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity (Oxford University Press, 2010). From 2019-2024 she was co-editor (along with Kennan Ferguson and Elisabeth R. Anker) of the journal Theory & Event. She is currently completing her third book, Latinos and Other Uncertainties: On Desire, Difference, and the Rise of Multiracial Conservatism with Oxford University Press.

Past Lectures

2025

Luvell Anderson, University of Illinois
"Comedic Resistance"

2024

K. Bailey Thomas, Dartmouth College
"Knowing While Black: Deconstructing White Lies and Surviving an Anti-Black World"

2023

Robert J. Gooding-Williams, Columbia University
"Du Bois and the 'Souls of White Folk'"

2022

Ainsley LeSure, Brown University
"Assuming a World: A Phenomenology of Racism"

2021

Kris Sealey, Fairfield University
"When Heads Bang Together: Creolizing and Indigenous Identities in the Americas"

2020

Brian Burkhart, University of Oklahoma
"Indigenous Epistemic Sovereignty Through the Land"

2019

Saba Fatima, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
"#MeToo in Muslim America" 

2018

José Medina, Northwestern University
"Racial Violence and Epistemic Activism"

2017

Falguni Sheth, Emory University
"Race, Vulnerability and Violence"

2016

 Mariana Ortega, John Caroll University
"In-Between Selves: World Traveling and Resistance"

2015

Jacqueline Scott, Loyola University Chicago
"'Truth-tellers Are Not Always Palatable. There is a Preference for Candy Bars:' The Benefits of Racialized and Gendered Discomfort."

2014

Charles Mills, Northwestern University
"Critical Philosophy of Race: The Challenge of Intersectionality"