Keynote provided by Dr. Mame-Fatou Niang "Are We Late? Black French Studies for the 21st-century"
Join our very own CBESA Director at Boston College for the as she dives into the past, present and future of Black French Studies.
The conference aims to explore the formation, growth, and challenges of Black French Studies across geographies, focusing on how this field has been understood, practiced, and resisted beyond the U.S., particularly in France, where universalism contrasts with the lived experiences of race and blackness.
5:00-6:30 p.m at the McMullen Museum of Art, reception to follow
"Who, what, when, and where is Black France, and what is the current state of Black French Studies across geographies? Recent decades have seen an extraordinary growth and recognition of this academic field in the United States, but how has this formation been apprehended, resisted, and practiced beyond those shores? What is the state of Black French Studies, particularly in continental France where an idealized universalism is in constant tension with lived experiences and evidence-based analyses of race, Black life, blackness, and antiblackness?
At this critical inflection point in the growth and evolution of a field that defies boundaries, this conference seeks to explore these questions from a variety of perspectives. Indeed, Black French Studies encompasses a wealth of material and spans diverse periods and territories, ranging from pre-Atlantic life and black enslavement through the era of the Haitian revolution and its afterlife to present-day social justice mobilizations that refuse the enduring legacies and violence of coloniality.
These generative and defining pursuits have, however, largely been siloed across academies and geographies, despite the efforts of scholars, activists, creators, and communities in question to engage each other about various aspects of Black French Studies. This conference proposes to amplify these efforts while assessing the state of this dynamic field over time and space and across real and imagined borders. The conference will explore how their artistic creations, lived experiences, mobilizations, and research interests historicize, complicate, interrogate, and advance the field of Black French Studies within and beyond France" provided by Global Black French Studies, Boston College