About this Event
As of right nowl, this event will be held at Baldwin & Co Bookstore. Pending rsvp numbers it might get moved offsite to a larger indoor venue. Keep an eye out for any updates of venue changes as we get closer to the event date.
For readers of His Name Is George Floyd and Under the Skin
A landmark investigation into forensic medicine that exposes the systematic concealment of state-sanctioned violence through death investigations
Each year, police officers K*ll over 1,000 people they've sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd's and Sandra Bland's, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner's Silence reveals a disturbing truth about these cases: coroners and other death investigators are often complicit in obscuring the violent circumstances of in-custody deaths.
Through rigorous research—including critical records analysis, public health studies, and interviews with victims' families—this book unmasks the systemic failures within forensic medicine. Terence Keel shows how incomplete autopsy reports, mishandled medical documents, and strategically lost evidence effectively shield law enforcement from accountability.
The Coroner’s Silence uncovers how the current system of death investigation operates as a mechanism of institutional safeguarding. By highlighting the structural powerlessness of coroners and their disconnection from the communities most affected by police violence, Keel demonstrates how bureaucratic processes can render human suffering invisible.
True accountability requires more than procedural reform. It demands a fundamental reimagining of how we investigate, document, and understand deaths at the hands of state institutions. The Coroner's Silence is a crucial intervention that challenges us to confront the deeply ingrained mechanisms that perpetuate systemic violence.
Terence will be in conversation with local professor Andrea Armstrong.
Terence Keel is an award-winning scholar, the founding director of the BioCritical Studies Lab, and a professor of human biology, society, and African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science and co-editor of Critical Approaches to Science and Religion. Keel has received fellowships from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.
Professor Andrea Armstrong is a Professor of Law at Loyola University. She is a leading expert on incarceration conditions who has dedicated her career to shedding light onto incarceration practices in the United States. Professor Armstrong was named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow and received the “Genius Grant” for her creation of the Incarceration Transparency Project. The project's mission is to publicly share data and research to address significant harms from conditions of incarceration. She has authored over twenty publications, including law review articles, expert reports, and book chapters. Her research has been profiled by New Yorker Magazine and quoted in the national newspapers and radio such as the New York Times, the Atlantic, National Public Radio, and the Times-Picayune among others.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
1030 Elysian Fields Ave, 1030 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 37.74
