Minnie Bruce Pratt’s Longed-for but Unrealized World: A Roundtable with Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Margo Okazawa-Rey, and Matt Richardson

This roundtable features a conversation with three scholar-activists Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Margo Okazawa-Rey, and Matt Richardson, each of whom engaged deeply with Minnie Bruce Pratt’s work and life in different ways. Mohanty and Okazawa-Rey were both faculty members with Pratt at Hamilton College in New York and the Union Institute in Ohio and Mohanty later worked with her at Syracuse University. The three sustained a friendship spanning across decades and different geographic locations. Richardson first met Pratt in the 1990s at a writing workshop he organized and then worked with her through the Feminist Studies editorial collective; although Richardson did not have the same sustained relationship with Pratt, he was shaped by her work and her presence in his life. Together, roundtable participants reflect on their relationships with Pratt, draw our attention to the nuanced ways Pratt theorized identity, and discuss how she might make sense of our current moment, remembering that for Pratt theory was connected to everyday life and thus, immensely political and personal.