Event Details

For Black History Month, the English & Creative Writing Department are delighted to invite Dr Kwasu Tembo to give a public talk on mixed race studies, using DC Comics Superman as a case study.

“You Will Travel Far, My Little Kal-El: Otherness, Hybridity, and Metaphors of Mixedness in Superman”: in this public talk, Dr. Kwasu D. Tembo thinks through issues and debates related to identity, hybridity, mixedness using DC Comics flagship character Superman as a case study. Drawing on ideas from mixed-race studies, he proposes that Superman offers interesting ways of thinking about identarian, ontological, cultural, and historical difference, as well as marginality, and assimilation. Pointing to illustrative comic book issues, Tembo hopes his talk will re-present a character many are familiar with in ways that challenge, complicate, and enrich our understandings and misunderstandings thereof, and the concepts of identity latent within him.