We are pleased to announce the Genres of Speculation Symposium and New York City Round Robin, a collaboration between the debate programs at UC Berkeley and The New School held on the weekend of February 25-26, 2017 in New York City. Six teams have been selected because of their commitment to centering critical black studies in their argumentation and advocacy. After five rounds of competition against similarly minded and outstanding debaters, the event turns to a symposium featuring panel discussions with some of the most important thinkers that influence you and your competitor’s argumentation. We hope to bridge the divide between debaters and the thinkers they engage by bringing them in conversation at one event. Debaters will have the opportunity to directly engage these scholars in discussions that proceed each panel presentations. Moreover, students will also have the opportunity to present your own work on a panel if you decide to do so. The symposium culminates Sunday evening with a keynote address by Saidiya Hartman, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Other panelists include Christina Sharpe, Jarod Sexton, Donna V. Jones, Tavia Nyong'o, Zakiyyah Jackson, Aimee Bahng, Anna Agathangelou, Julia Ott, and Shanara Reid-Brinkley. 

The theme Genres of Speculation runs through the heart of how debaters such as as those selected have challenged the terms of this year’s resolution concerning US Federal Government engagement with the People Republic of China. Speculation brings together financialized capital with the modes of fantasy, expectation and forecast at the heart of racialized economies of enjoyment and terror. Moreover, speculation serves as a bridge to those scholars attending to the forms of imagination, fabulation, and thought in the subjunctive mood which strain against the limits of the archive and the structure of violence, knowledge and desire which undergirds modernity's coordinates of power.