Knowing Yourself, Historically: An Interview with Hazel Carby

Abstract

Humanist. Since 2012, the Distinguished Visiting Humanist program has brought scholars and artists to campus for three to four days in activities that are both academic and public. This interview took place on the last day of Hazel Carby's visit to University of Rochester in February of 2019, closing three days of formidable exchanges between Professor Carby and the Rochester community. During this threehour discussion, graduate students and faculty from the university's English Department and Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies engaged ProfessorInVisible Culture • Issue 31: Black Studies Now and the Counter-Currents of Hazel Carby Knowing Yourself, Historically: An Interview with Hazel Carby 3 Carby on her latest work, Imperial Intimacies, asking what inspired her to approach British imperialism through autobiographical writing, or what she calls "auto history." The conversation centers on Carby's imperative to think about ourselves as historical subjects. To trace this theme in her body of work, the interview covers her career trajectory from the United Kingdom to the United States, as she developed foundational work in the field of cultural studies and the study of black diaspora. The conversation then moves to urgent questions of antiracism and the future of African American Studies in US academia. Publishing this interview in the Fall of 2020 only reinforces its pertinence, as the US and the world at large grapple with issues of social and environmental justice, two questions at the heart of this issue and Carby's latest work. Interview edited by Clara Auclair and Byron Fong. Annotations by Kendall DeBoer and