Kimberlé Crenshaw: Backtalker
Civil rights scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw — the legal theorist who coined 'intersectionality' — on her pioneering life and career at the Chicago Humanities Festival.
Why we picked this
Crenshaw gave American law and activism the concept of intersectionality — and has spent decades fighting the backlash against it. Hearing her tell her own story in a format this intimate is a rare opportunity.
Kimberlé Crenshaw is a professor at UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, a civil rights activist, and the legal theorist who developed the concept of intersectionality — the framework that describes how overlapping systems of discrimination (race, gender, class, sexuality) interact in ways that are invisible when examined separately. The concept has become one of the most influential in American legal and cultural discourse, and also one of the most contested.
Backtalker is Crenshaw’s term for the posture she has maintained throughout her career: refusing to accept the terms set by institutions that would prefer she stay quiet. Her talk at Lakeview Day covers the arc of that career — the legal battles, the theoretical contributions, and the sustained effort to protect civil rights frameworks under pressure.
Part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Lakeview Day at the Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture.