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Theme for 22-23

Annual Theme – 2022-2023

After/Math

A piece of art titled "The Sun is a Distant Mirror" by Johnny Floyd, depicting a face

Johnny Floyd, The Sun is a Distant Mirror, Oil, acrylic, and 24kt gold leaf on canvas, 2021 Roanoke College’s Permanent Art Collection, Gift of Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo and the Dorothea L. Leonhardt Foundation, INC

In 2022-2023, the Center for Studying Structures of Race asks us to think After/Math. How have mathematical analysis, algorithmic knowledge, and statistical modeling produced and reproduced categories of race and demarcation? In what ways have practices of applied mathematical knowledge in fields such as artificial intelligence, biometrics, and actuarial science codified racial formations?

During the 2022-2023 academic year, the CSSR will host conversations that contemplate how we might think After/Math. The CSSR will place these contemporary questions into broader historical perspective. We will also consider how cultural and intellectual lived practices challenge and resist certain modes of thinking that are so widely influenced by mathematical knowledge. Our ongoing research and public exhibition projects will demonstrate that the relationship between race and mathematical reason have a longer lineage that need to be evaluated as key elements of more recent political practices and forms of activism.