Can empathy deliver political change? Does art that elicits emotional identification with others take us where we need to go? Whitman's Concentration in Social Justice is delighted to bring writer and art historian Aruna D’Souza into conversation with Prof. Lisa Uddin (Art History) around these questions. Drawing from her latest book Imperfect Solidarities (Floating Opera Press, 2024), D'Souza will offer observations pulled from current events as well as contemporary art that suggest that a feeling of understanding or closeness based on emotion is an imperfect ground for solidarity. 

Aruna D'Souza is an award-winning writer on modern and contemporary art; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics; and how museums shape our views of each other and the world. She is a regular contributor to 4Columns.org, and The New York Times. Her writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Art News, Garage, Bookforum, Frieze, Momus, Art in America, and Art Practical, among other places, as well as in numerous artist’s monographs and museum exhibition catalogues. Her book, Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts (Badlands Unlimited), was named one of the best art books of 2018 by The New York Times. She is the recipient of the 2021 Rabkin Prize for art journalism and a 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant, and delivered the Distinguished Critics Lecture for AICA (the International Association of Art Critics) in 2019. She was appointed the Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor at the National Gallery of Art in 2022, and the W.W. Corcoran Professor of Social Engagement at the Corcoran School of Art, George Washington University, in 2022-2023.