Fellows' Gathering at Texas A&M
About the Gathering
As COMIT's network expands, new centers of intellectual activity are emerging, and Texas A&M University in College Station is one of them. A group of COMIT fellows gathered there with COMIT's directors to discuss new projects and pathways for emerging areas of inquiry. The visit also created several opportunities to make new connections and cultivate relationships with like-minded scholars and potential partners.
Much of what makes College Station a natural home for this work is the presence of philosopher and COMIT Senior Fellow Benjamin P. Davis, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. Davis's scholarship asks what concepts like "the human" and "humanity" can mean after colonialism. His most recent book, Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt (Edinburgh University Press, 2025), asks whether there is a way of being human that could invite people away from today's models of violence and consumerism.
The Lecture
A highlight of the visit was an evening at the Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, where COMIT Senior Fellow Kerilyn Schewel, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, lectured on her recent book.
Moved by Modernity: How Development Shapes Migration in Rural Ethiopia
Moved by Modernity shows why the pursuit of economic and social development in rural Ethiopia drives migration rather than curbing it, upending conventional "push factor" narratives. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in a single Ethiopian village, Schewel traces how successive generations of families reshaped their aspirations, livelihoods, and migration strategies amid the country's turbulent pursuit of development.
The lecture drew a wide-ranging audience of faculty and students into a lively discussion of global migration patterns and dominant development thinking.
About the book →