Christina Sharpe, professor in the Department of Humanities, has published an article in The Globe & Mail titled, The murder that led to an uprising around the world. The piece discusses the ongoing reverberations of the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020 and its global aftermath.
Sharpe was invited to contribute the article as part of The Quarter Mark, a Globe & Mail series featuring authors reflecting on the most significant moments of the past 25 years. Sharpe explains how Floyd’s murder galvanized people around the world who were living under economic and structural inequalities to come together in solidarity and protest. She describes the many actions taken by protesters, their demands to defund and abolish policing, the removal of statues and monuments related to slavery, as well as performances of solidarity by government officials who refused to take real action towards institutional change. These protests continue today despite attempts to suppress them.
Sharpe is a writer, Professor, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities. Her third book Ordinary Notes (2023) was the winner of the Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize in Nonfiction and the Hodler Prize and was a Finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Sharpe is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2024), the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize for the Sciences and Humanities (2024), a Windham-Campbell Prize in Nonfiction (2024) and the Killam Prize (2025).
Read the full article in The Globe & Mail (behind paywall)