The Phil Lind Initiative

Heather Cox Richardson

The UBC Phil Lind Initiative Presents: Heather Cox Richardson

As a professor of history at Boston College and an award-winning author, Heather Cox Richardson has explored critical periods of American history, from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the Gilded Age and the evolution of the Republican Party. Reaching over 1.5 million readers daily with her wildly-popular newsletter Letters from an American, she has earned a reputation as one of the most trusted voices in American public life.

Bridging academic rigor and public discourse with insight and precision, Cox Richardson offers accessible yet profound commentary on American politics. Her Phil Lind Initiative talk draws from a deep well of historical knowledge to contextualize the current threats to American democracy.

What It Means to Be “American”

Raven Chacon

The UBC Phil Lind Initiative Presents: Raven Chacon

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, performer and installation artist Raven Chacon creates evocative and powerful multidisciplinary works that challenge, question and reframe America’s colonial legacy from an Indigenous perspective. Born in Fort Defiance on the Navajo Nation, his experimental practice invites audiences to question the narratives that shape our world.

This Phil Lind Initiative event features a live performance of Chacon’s work Horse Notations alongside a conversation with moderator Jarrett Martineau that reflects on the on-going legacies of colonialism and how they challenge and unsettle notions of “American” identity.

What It Means to Be “American”

Ziwe

The UBC Phil Lind Initiative Presents: Ziwe

A positively fearless comedian, writer and actress, Ziwe has taken the internet by storm and redefined the boundaries of satire and cultural commentary with her provocative and hilarious interviews that confront America’s most uncomfortable truths about race, power, identity and politics.

As the host of “Ziwe,” she has welcomed guests like Fran Lebowitz, Gloria Steinem, and Stacey Abrams, along with a viral interview with George Santos after his expulsion from Congress. Named one of TIME’s 100 Next Gen Leaders, Ziwe blends wit and sharp insights into politics and culture.

What It Means to Be “American”

Adam Kinzinger

The UBC Phil Lind Initiative Presents: Adam Kinzinger

A six-term Republican congressman and U.S. Air Force veteran, Rep. Adam Kinzinger made headlines as one of only two GOP members to serve on the Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Offering a candid look at one of the most tumultuous periods in modern American politics, Kinzinger takes us into the deeply polarized and fractured system that facilitated the Republican party’s transformation under Trump.

His Phil Lind Initiative talk “American Identity and the Republican Party” took place at UBC mere weeks after president-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be sworn in following a decisive victory over Kamala Harris. This recording features the Q&A portion of the talk.

What It Means to Be “American”

Smriti Keshari & Eric Schlosser

The UBC Phil Lind Initiative Presents: Smriti Keshari & Eric Schlosser

Join us in this conversation as we step into the chilling world of the bomb, an immersive art installation by filmmaker Smriti Keshari and writer Eric Schlosser.

Eric Schlosser is a writer and filmmaker. His book Command and Control, a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in History, describes the challenges of managing America’s nuclear arsenal. His book Fast Food Nation (2001) helped to launch the modern food movement. Smriti Keshari is an acclaimed Indian-American director and is an artist-in-residence at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the National Theatre in London.

What It Means to Be “American”

Sasha Velour

The UBC Phil Lind Initiative Presents: Sasha Velour

Critically acclaimed gender-fluid drag queen, visual artist, speaker, illustrator and author, Sasha Velour has been a force in the international drag scene long before her scene-stealing, rose-petal-filled win on season nine of the Emmy Award-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race. Her first book, The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag has been heralded as “a rousing tribute to a revolutionary art form and its practitioners” (Publisher’s Weekly).

In her Phil Lind Initiative talk titled The Big Reveal: Why Drag Matters, Velour will delve into queer history and the importance of drag as an expression of oneself, as a revolutionary act of visibility for queer culture, and as a rich, multifaceted and politically-charged art form that delights and disrupts. “Drag embodies the queer possibility that exists within each of us,” Velour states, “the infinite ways in which gender, good taste, and art can be lived.”

Pop Politics: Pop Culture and Political Life in the United States

Jia Tolentino

The UBC Phil Lind Initiative Presents: Jia Tolentino

Her Phil Lind Initiative talk—Who’s Afraid of Eating the Rich?—focused on the recent waves of TV shows and media that make the argument, with varying degrees of sophistication and subtlety, that extreme wealth is unjust, immoral, and corrosive to the human soul. What does this mean, when income inequality is only worsening and poverty itself is almost entirely absent from media and pop culture? Is critique in this case a release valve, a sign of unrecognized popular radicalism, or a form of elite capture? How might this change the way we think about our affective relationship to capitalism today?

Pop Politics: Pop Culture and Political Life in the United States