Description:

Performance Studies scholar Sandra Ruiz reads from and discusses her new book Left Turns in Brown Study (Duke University Press, 2024). Lefts Turns in Brown is a work of poetics in and as performance theory as it is a stunning turn to the work of Brownness, queerness, and the productive pleasures and powers of being with others. As Ruiz writes, each of the book’s various turns “offers Brownness as a practice of engagement, for harboring loss & its possibility for more abundant ways to living together more queerly.” Ruiz will be in conversation with Performance Studies Professor Joshua Chambers-Letson. Lunch will be served. 

Sandra Ruiz is the Sue Divan Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the departments of English and Theatre at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ruiz is the author of Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance (NYU Press, 2019), Left Turns in Brown Study (Duke University Press, 2024), and the forthcoming Tears for Tears: Aesthetics in Grief Minor (NYU Press, June 2025). Additionally, Ruiz is the co-author with Hypatia Vourloumis of Formless Formation: Vignettes for the end of this World and The Alleys (Just Dropped in to See What Condition My Condition Was In). Ruiz is a co-editor with Uri McMillan and Shane Vogel of the book series Minoritarian Aesthetics (NYU Press). When not writing or editing, Ruiz is working closely with students, artists, and community members as the producer of and curator for La Estación Gallery and the Minor Aesthetics Lab.