Love: A RaceB4Race Symposium

In person and livestreamed

This symposium explores the concept of love in the broadest sense. How does race inform the way we conceive of love? How does it influence our capacity to love? What does it mean to love in a time of turmoil, and what can the premodern world teach us about this? How do we negotiate loving a being, a nation, a profession that fails to love us back? In a time where hateful rhetoric floods our media and culture, how do we imagine, build, and sustain communities of love?

About RaceB4Race

RaceB4Race is an ongoing conference series and professional network community by and for scholars of color working on issues of race in premodern literature, history, and culture. RaceB4Race centers the expertise, perspectives, and sociopolitical interests of BIPOC scholars, whose work seeks to expand critical race theory. Bridging many traditional disciplinary divides, RaceB4Race not only creates innovative scholarly dialogues, but also fosters social change within premodern studies as a whole. RaceB4Race is brought to life by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in partnership with The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Division of Humanities and the Hitz Foundation.

Keynote: An evening with Nile Rodgers

January 24, 2026 | 6:00 pm | Carson Ballroom, Old Main

Arizona State University presents a dialogue with legendary musician and songwriter, Nile Rodgers. Nile is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee and a multiple Grammy Award winning songwriter, composer, producer, arranger and guitarist. 

Most recently he became the first creator to be awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy for his legacy in the same year as being awarded a Grammy for his work with Beyoncé on the smash hit “Cuff It”. 

As the co-founder of CHIC, Nile pioneered a musical language that generated chart-topping hits like "Le Freak”, the biggest selling single in the history of Atlantic Records and sparked the advent of hip-hop with "Good Times” and “Rapper’s Delight”. 

Rogers is co-founder and chairman of the We Are Family Foundation, which empowers young people globally through programs like Three Dot Dash, a youth leadership storytelling and mentoring program. The Foundation also runs the Youth to the Front Fund, which supports BIPOC youth at the forefront of fighting systemic racism, inequality and injustice, and Youth to the Table, which brings youth voices to decision making tables that are shaping humanity’s future.  

Speakers

Abdulhamit Arvas University of Pennsylvania

Denva Gallant Rice University

Farah Karim-Cooper Folger Shakespeare Library

Nahir Otaño Gracia University of New Mexico

Joshua Mangle Converse University

Thai-Catherine Matthews Skidmore College

De’Aris Rhymes Arizona State University

Melissa Sanchez University of Pennsylvania

Thelma Trujillo University of Iowa

Yunning Zhang The New School

Program and schedule

Livestream information

This event will be livestreamed by ASU Live. The recording will be available to watch on the ACMRS YouTube channel afterwards.

Travel awards

ACMRS, in collaboration with the Folger Research Institute, is thrilled to offer travel awards for early career scholars to attend RaceB4Race symposia. Travel award applications for Love: A RaceB4Race Symposium are due December 1, 2025. 

Travel information

For information regarding lodging near the ASU Tempe Campus, please visit the Travel Information for ASU visitors page.

This event will take place in Carson Ballroom in Old Main. The closest parking garage to the venue is the Fulton Center parking structure. Learn more about parking rates here.