Once in a while, when you pick up a new academic text, you just know, even from the very first paragraphs, that it’s going to change your whole perspective on the kinds of intellectual and cultural work that research can perform. That’s how I felt one morning in early May, settling into my Caltrain “office,” when I started reading the introduction to our colleague Dr. Roberta Wolfson’s forthcoming book Refiguring Race and Risk: Counternarratives of Care in the US Security State: an incisive account of how the US government has exploited the “affective politics” of race to facilitate its security agenda since World War II, and how writers have responded to this exploitation in literature. I also felt privileged that Roberta allowed me to read an advanced excerpt from the book, which is scheduled to be released from The Ohio State University Press in July. As anyone on the PWR Newsletter committee can tell you, Roberta has been on our short-list for a profile for some time. It’s our great pleasure to be able to celebrate the publication of Roberta’s book with her, and to have this opportunity to honor our colleague as a Teacher, Writer, and Scholar.
Roberta was born in Lexington, Kentucky, and she grew up in San Jose, California. She attended UCLA as an undergraduate, where she earned a BA in English (with a creative writing emphasis) and minored in Chinese. Roberta then attended UC Santa Barbara for her graduate work, earning an MA in English in 2012 and a PhD in English in 2017. At UCSB, she also earned a Certificate in College and University Teaching, and taught for the Writing Program. Before coming to Stanford PWR in 2020, Roberta was an Assistant Professor in the English Department at California Polytechnic University (San Luis Obispo, 2017-2020). Roberta is a prolific writer, and you can find her previously published work in journals and other fora including African American Review, American Literature, College Literature, The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction, 1980-2020, Latino Literature: An Encyclopedia for Students, and MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States).
It was during Roberta’s first year of graduate study at UCSB that the initial theoretical framework for Refiguring Race and Risk emerged in two contexts: one, a graduate course that she took on bio-risk, which was taught by Bishnupriya Ghosh as part of the “Risk Society Series” hosted by the UCSB English Department’s American Cultures and Global Contexts Center (ACGCC) from 2010-2012, and two, the “Antiracism, Inc.” initiative sponsored by the UC Humanities Research Institute and hosted by the ACGCC under the leadership of Felice Blake from 2012-2015. In its first crystallization as a dissertation prospectus, Roberta’s project sought to combine the influential conception of modernity as “risk society” (as developed by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck) with Critical Race Theory (as formulated by legal scholars Richard Delgado, Derrick Bell, Patricia Williams, and Kimberlé Crenshaw). The goal was to create a rubric for understanding how literary works respond to racialized US security politics. Later, the project adopted affect theory as another crucial framework, building on the work of scholars such as Sianne Ngai, Paula Moya, Paula Ioanide, and Sara Ahmed.
Reading Roberta’s introduction on the train, I was struck by its methodological hybridity, especially its application of affect theory to CRT and risk theory. I had the opportunity to ask her a little more about this later that morning at Coupa Café, beside Meyer Green, where Roberta confirmed that the risk theory/CRT scaffolding was “perhaps more intuitive,” while the affective layer—which is central to Refiguring Race and Risk—emerged more slowly. As Roberta explains, she is acutely interested in “reader response,” specifically in “how literature can move readers into ideological change. We all know at this stage that the US government uses very violent responses, often which disproportionately impact communities of color. My intervention shows that the writing coming out of communities of color can move readers to empathize with these communities more.” Her project “changes the locus of risk,” from the bodies and communities of Black and Brown people too often viewed as threats, onto the security state itself. The complexities of affect are central to her thinking about the cultural work literature performs. “I’ve always been a person who reads and emotes,” says Roberta, but “that can’t be taken for granted” in others. This is where affect theory, as a rubric for understanding literature and culture, comes in: literature becomes a “mechanism” that “invites us to emote.” This mechanism crucially explains how and why literary works are able to challenge the “security apparatus,” which can seem “devoid of emotion.” On the contrary, argues Roberta, “it’s very dependent upon emotion. Fear-based risk management policies” are precisely what “fuel the security state.”
What, then, becomes a reasonable response for writers and artists navigating this very troubled, heavily securitized US sociopolitical context? “We can only respond with countervailing affective production,” says Roberta, with “hope and love and empathy.” Indeed, the book asks, what would it mean to securitize not with fear, but with hope and love? This is why the speculative fiction chapter at the end of the book is so important, where writers “imagine alternative histories” as well as possible “future worlds,” focusing specifically on Sabrina Vourvoulias’s novel Ink (2012) (Roberta taught this book in her Fall 2023 Advanced PWR course on Ethnofuturist Rhetorics; see below). Other chapters of Refiguring Race and Risk address specific situations and responses to the fear-based security state, for instance how the “toxic logic of fear-based security can trickle down into social systems that are supposed to operate on care and equity” (35), like the healthcare system. Roberta’s book examines a medical memoir from the AIDS crisis (Abraham Verghese, My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story (1994)), as well as first-hand testimonials from victims of the security state’s racial abuses at the hands of police forces (Sanyika Shakur, Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member (1993), Luis J. Rodriguez, Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in LA (1993)). It explores fictional texts that address the militarization of the US-Mexico border and associated exploitation of workers in the agriculture industry (Helena María Viramontes, Under the Feet of Jesus (1995)), as well as the setting of post-9/11 counterterrorism programs and Islamophobia (Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (2003), Zarqa Nawaz, Little Mosque on the Prarie TV series (2007-12)). Interned Japanese American Miné Okubo’s graphic memoir Citizen 13660 (1946) is a work that occupies a special place in the book: it’s the example with which the book begins, and is central to the introduction.
Of course, a deeply nuanced study like Refiguring Race and Risk does not emerge in a vacuum, and Roberta cites a number of mentors at UCSB who were pivotal in its development, including her dissertation committee members Carl Gutiérrez-Jones, Felice Blake, and Swati Rana. Bishnupriya Ghosh was also a significant influence on the project. Roberta calls it a “gift” to have been “guided by so many scholars of color” at UCSB, in particular “women scholars of color.” She also feels fortunate to have found such expert, supportive editorial guidance at OSU Press, where her acquisitions editor Ana Jimenez-Moreno helped nurture Refiguring Race and Risk into its finished state. Roberta is also grateful for the support she received while working on the book at Stanford, from PWR leadership and colleagues, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (which Roberta highly suggests you check out if you haven’t, since PWR Lecturers are eligible for membership).
Roberta’s courses at Stanford are highly informed by her book, which she has been working on during her entire time here. From her perspective, she has been engaged in “an ongoing process of working with students on long-term projects” and simultaneously “working on my own really long-term project.” Roberta’s courses for PWR include PWR 1: “Writing for Liberation: The Rhetoric of Antiracism” and PWR 2: “Not Part but Whole: Writing Mixed Race Identity.” In Fall 2023, Roberta also taught an Advanced PWR course for the Notation in Cultural Rhetorics entitled “Ethnofuturist Rhetorics: Imagining the Future of Race,” which you can read about in this article from the December 2023 PWR Newsletter. All of these courses foreground how writing relates to identity formation and social advocacy, universally asking, “how do we use our language practices to call for justice and liberation?” In using their writings to expose injustice and advance liberation, her “students are doing the same work as the writers in my book,” she explains.
Teaching for PWR, Roberta “loves the experience [of being] able to teach such an incredible student population” and hearing about our students’ “passions” as well as “what it took for them to get here.” “Stanford students are remarkable because you can tell students something once and then they listen and learn it,” she adds. The “genuinely collaborative and supportive” teaching community of PWR means a great deal to Roberta as well. “We all care so much about being good teachers,” she says, and “everyone [in PWR] is committed to justice. When I walk into a room of our colleagues, I feel like my moral IQ just went up.”
Describing her own writing process, Roberta offers excellent advice for all of us juggling busy lives and many competing responsibilities: “You have to protect your writing time. You have to make it regular. I never could have written this book if I was waiting for winter breaks and summer breaks.” She also expresses how grateful she is to work amid a “community of writers” at Stanford and beyond. This, too, is connected to her work with students, whom Roberta also considers a part of her writing community. What do the nuts and bolts of her process look like? “I’m boring” as a writer, Roberta claims. “I mostly write at my desk. Mug of coffee, giant monitor,” although she adds that her revision process is less standardized. What’s Roberta’s best pro-tip for writers? A timer can be an instrument that helps with focus, and can be useful for generating content. Also: “snacks are helpful for thinking” (your author concurs…).
Beyond her mentors and current colleagues, some figures who have been especially influential for Roberta include bell hooks, Anna Ríos-Rojas, Chela Sandoval, Raymond Williams, Charles Mills, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Giorgio Agamben, and Alexander Weheliye. She also admires the work of Aja Martinez, who visited PWR in Winter 2021. When I asked Roberta what books and podcasts and other content she goes to for inspiration and fun, outside of academic work, she reports being a big fan of The New York Times podcast The Daily, and “marvels at the engineering” of the show. Lately, she has enjoyed hearing from the variety of “fascinating people” covered by the Armchair Expert podcast, as well as listening to complex conversations about race on NPR’s podcast Code Switch. She is always reading fiction or memoir, and loves stories about race and identity. Recent favorites have included Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is, and Danzy Senna’s New People.
As Roberta looks beyond the accomplishment of the “really long-term” writing project of Refiguring Race and Risk, she reflects, “I’ve always been writing, and now this is done: so what’s next?” Part of this exigence emerges from wanting to remain “in the trenches with writing students, [which] makes me a better teacher.”
At this point in our conversation at Coupa, I asked Roberta if she had any specific future projects in mind. As she looked up at Green Library in the May sun, for a moment abstracted, she informed me that I was “extracting an idea that’s never been expressed before.” Here, I had the further honor of hearing about a project more “personal” in nature for Roberta. At present, she is not sure whether it will be an article or a book, although “it’s more likely the germ of the latter.” Here’s Roberta:
"There’s this worry that mixed race people like myself have. That the confirmation of our legitimacy, in terms of racial identity are connected to gatekeepers in our lives who are ancestors. My parents and grandparents, for me, can confirm or disconfirm my identity. But what happens when your ancestors are gone? What is the impact of the loss of an ancestor on the racial identity, cultural belonging of a person who is mixed race?"
These moving reflections about memory and legacy—and loss—are connected to narrative representation. How are “mixed race people processing and thinking through this problem in writing?” Questions like this one have become more exigent for Roberta now that she has a daughter of her own, to whom she feels a responsibility to pass on ancestral knowledge and consciousness. “I think a lot about intergenerational transmission of identity,” and how “there’s an extra anxiety attached to that for mixed race people when it comes to ancestral loss.” The passing of Roberta’s Chinese grandmother, with whom she could only speak in halting, limited phrases due to a language barrier, lies behind these questions as well: there is “no way to show her to my daughter.” The book could be “more of a memoir,” says Roberta, adding, “One thing I admire a lot is scholarly writing that is personal. I gravitate toward it, and I appreciate it in my students, too.”
I, for one, can’t wait to see this project get off the ground. And I’m truly humbled that Roberta offered me—and all of us—this preview. If it’s anything like the selection I read from Refiguring Race and Risk, we are all in for considerable further inspiration and wisdom from our colleague, Dr. Roberta Wolfson.
