Global Blackness Symposium

Mobilizing “Blackness”: From the Haitian Revolution to Now

DESCRIPTION
From Negritude, to the Anti-Apartheid movement, to Mizrahi Jewish claims to being Black Panthers, to Asian/African/Caribbean coalitions in the United Kingdom, to articulations by German and French youth today, this symposium will address the ways in which “Blackness” has been mobilized to make claims on state and other resources. It will engage the anti-normative forms of living Blackness has enabled. Given these histories and contemporary articulations, it asks: Who can claim Blackness? Under what conditions and with what effect can one make this claim? To what extent does claiming Blackness lead to social change? What are the conditions for coalition around claiming Blackness? Does racism persist, even amongst people of color, in spite of this coalitional claim?

Speakers
• Charisse Burden-Stelly, Carleton College
• Fatima El-Tayeb, University of California, San Diego
• Nathalie Etoke, City University of New York
• Ezgi Guner, Illinois College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
• Priscilla Layne, University of North Carolina
• Alana Lentin, University of Western Sydney
• Jasmine Linnea Kelekay, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Esra Özyürek, London School of Economics
• Fatou-Seydi Saar, African Bureau for Immigrations and Social Affairs
• Mihir Sharma, Bayreuth University
• Marian Swanzy-Parker, Leiden University
• Katerina Teaiwa, Australian National University
• Vanessa Thompson, Goethe-University of Franfurt