The Suicide Archive : A Book Talk with Dr. Doyle Calhoun
Thursday, September 18, 2025
Rittenburg Lounge, Mather Hall
12:15pm – 1:15pm
From the time of slavery to the Algerian war for independence to the “Arab Spring,” people have responded to enslavement, colonization and oppression through acts of suicide. Though often obscured in colonial archives, self-killing has long been at the center of African and Caribbean engagements with the colonial past. Reading across literature, film, oral history, archival documents, legal history, and scientific texts, The Suicide Archive (2024) shows how creative works (literature, film, visual art, performance) preserve powerful histories of resistance and loss, offering an innovative reading of African, Caribbean, French and global literary history.
