The Least: Violence, the Vulnerable, and the Promise of Black Freedom for a New World | Reuben Jonathan Miller

Join us for the 27th annual Edwards Lecture, "The Least: Violence, the Vulnerable, and the Promise of Black Freedom for a New World," with Reuben Jonathan Miller, Associate Professor, Crown Family School and the Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity, University of Chicago.

The lecture will be presented in person starting at 4:00 pm and will be followed by Q&A and reception.

Register on Eventbrite to attend in person.

This event is presented by the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies and cosponsored by Woodsworth College and the Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law.

Abstract

Rather than mitigate risk, our approach to violence and our efforts to separate ourselves from people who’ve caused harm, through policing and incarceration and myriad forms of political, social and economic exclusion, has hastened, and in fact ensured, a more violent future. We see this across the globe, from the million-dollar blocks and the gang, violent crime and sex offense registries of the United States, to the fervor over knife crimes, joint enterprise crimes and “modern slavery” in England and Wales. Exclusion is a kind of violence that has the unfortunate effect of producing more violence in its wake. The least, those most vulnerable, who are most often managed through the violence of disregard, offer a way out. We begin by examining how and why the needs of the racialized poor are so often misrecognized as threat, look to the work people we’ve learned to be afraid of find and make dynamic lives anew, in the midst of violence of many kinds, and end with a call to reimagine public safety and the role of government in our lives.

About Reuben Jonathan Miller

Reuben Jonathan Miller is an Associate Professor in the University of Chicago Crown Family School and in the Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity, and a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. His research, which focuses on race, punishment, and social welfare policy is published in journals across the social sciences. In 2021, Miller published his first sole authored book Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, which won a number of awards, including the 2023 Michael J. Hindelang Award from the American Society of Criminology, the 2022 Herbert Jacob Book Prize from the Law and Society Association and two PROSE Awards from the Association of American Publisher’s, including the award for Excellence in Social Science. Halfway Home was also a finalist for an LA Times Book Prize for Current Affairs and the Pen America John Kenneth Galbraith Award for nonfiction. In 2022, Miller was selected as a MacArthur Fellow, the so called "genius award," with the prize committee noting that "Miller is modeling a way to write about his subjects that refuses to reduce them to their hardships, and he is illuminating how the American carceral system reshapes individuals' lives and relationships long after their time has been served.” He is currently conducting a transnational study of black emancipation in port cities along the transatlantic slave trade route and a study of violence and our responses to it. 

About the John Ll. J. Edwards Memorial Lecture

The annual John Ll. J. Edwards Memorial Lecture honours and celebrates the late John Llewellyn Jones Edwards, professor at the Faculty of Law and founder of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. Edwards was an English-trained legal scholar who taught at Dalhousie University before joining U of T Law.  In 1963, he established the Centre for Criminology as a world-renowned multidisciplinary research centre which has grown to offer undergraduate, master's and PhD programs in criminology and sociolegal studies.

Directions

This event will take place at the Jackman Humanities Building, Room JHB100 on the main floor. The building is on the north-west corner of Bloor St. and St. George St. with the main entrance on St. George St. The building has no parking.

TTC: St. George subway station, St. George Street exit.

Parking: Google map showing parking options in the area. See also U of T Transportation Services for U of T parking details.

Photography & Videography

Please note that this event will be photographed. The lecture portion of the event, but not the Q&A, may or may not be video recorded. By reserving your spot for this event, you consent to be captured in photos and videos. By providing your consent, you also agree that the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies retains the right to share these on its website and other media platforms. Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at crimsl.communications@utoronto.ca.

Accessibility

The Jackman Humanities Building main floor is accessible. If you have any access needs or if there are any ways we can support your participation in this event, please email crimsl.communications@utoronto.ca and we will be glad to work with you to make the appropriate arrangements.