Word Up Recirculation welcomes Emmaia Gelman to celebrate the launch of her new book, The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State (out 6/16/26), the first-ever history of the Anti-Defamation League and its determined, century-long alliance with Western empire.
This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. All attendees must register in advance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emmaia Gelman is the founding Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. She has taught social and cultural analysis at NYU and social sciences at Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing appears in Jewish Currents, Boston Review, The Forward, and elsewhere.
Word Up celebrates the gallery opening of visual artist Elizaveta Kozlova’s show ANTE PERPETUUM. Join us for drinks, snacks, and a discussion with the artist.
The show will be up for the month of May at Recirculation, a project of Word Up.
Ante Perpetuum (Before Forever) is a series of images created by Elizaveta Kozlova in July 2022. The monochrome photographs decontextualize fragments of driftwood. Discovering the extensive amount of driftwood on the banks of the Hudson River inspired Elizaveta to capture the striking expressivity of its shape and texture that will soon be destroyed by time, wind and water.
Elizaveta Kozlova is a NYC-based art and portrait photographer whose work has been presented at the Louvre Fifth Annual Exposure Award in 2015. She has been employed nationally and internationally as a fashion and portrait photographer. She has worked for such organizations as The Metropolitan Opera and The New School in New York, Branksome Hall School and Aprilage Inc. in Toronto. Her art photography work involves an exploration of nature through the prism of chiaroscuro technique as seen in the open_in_newANTE PERPETUUM series.
This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 80 max attendees. Please register in advance.
Word Up welcomes Michael Staudenmaier to discuss his new book White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago (Latinx Histories), a portrait of the Puerto Rican community’s experience of racialization in Chicago. Joining Staudenmaier will be Johanna Fernandez, author of The Young Lords: A Radical History.
Drawing on an extraordinary array of archival material, much of it previously inaccessible, Michael Staudenmaier highlights cultural and political projects profoundly informed by nationalist sentiments, from beauty pageants and parades to protests and bombings to elections and legal battles. Revealing how nationalism became a key site of racial formation for Puerto Ricans in Chicago, White, Black, Brown shows how they understood themselves and demanded to be seen by their neighbors and the world.
Lauren Derby’s BÊTES NOIRES with Anne Eller, René Cordero, and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
With a performance from Orchestre Moto
To celebrate Independent Bookstore Day, Word Up welcomes author Lauren Derby to celebrate her new book Bêtes Noires: Sorcery as History in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands. Joining Derby will be Anne Eller (long durée Hispaniola history), René Cordero (post-Trujillo corruption and drug trafficking), and Lizabeth (Lisa) Paravisini-Gebert (vodou/vodú), each presenting on their research topics.
After the reading, there will be a performance from Orchestre Moto. Orchestre Moto is a New York and Los Angeles-based band with a constellation of roots, from Kinshasa to Brazzaville, Lubumbashi to Pointe-Noire, dedicated to showcasing the Congolese sound. Moto means “fire” in Lingala: a name that reflects the explosive, high-energy African dance music they bring to the stage. The ensemble performs genres such as rumba, sebene, mutuashi, and ndombolo—styles born in post-independence Africa that blend traditional rhythms with electric guitar and Afro-Cuban influences.
This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket. Please register in advance.
