Theorizing Blackness - April 4, 2008 in NYC
CUNY Graduate Center 8 AM-7PM
co-sponsored by Insight Arts
New York, NY 10016
The Africana Studies Group (ASG) invites you to join us and engage in an intellectually stimulating daylong conference. The CUNY Graduate Center Africana Studies Group's Theorizing Blackness conference will run from 8 am to 7 pm on Friday April 4th, 2008. The conference will feature presentations from artists, activists, and scholars investigating how Blackness has been contextualized from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
Our keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Mark Anthony Neal at 11 am. He is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African American Studies and the Director of the Institute for Critical U.S. Studies (ICUSS) at Duke University. The evening plenary session, moderated by the esteemed Dr. William Cross Jr., will take place from 5 to 7 pm and will feature renowned speakers whose foundational work contributes to critical debates surrounding black experiences throughout the African Diaspora: Mahen Bonetti, Dr. Jacqueline Nassy Brown, Dr. Johanna Fernandez, and Dr. Donette Francis. The conference will take place on the concourse level of the CUNY Graduate Center. Registration is free and all are welcome.
Keynote speaker Mark Anthony Neal is the author of four books: What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1998), Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002), Songs in the Keys of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation (2003), New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity (2005), and co-editor of That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2004). He is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African American Studies and Director of the Institute for Critical U.S. Studies (ICUSS) at Duke University.
Plenary participants include:
Mahen Bonetti, founder and Executive Director of African Film Festival Inc. (AFF), a non-profit art organization founded in 1990.
Dr. Jacqueline Nassy Brown (CUNY) is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College and is teaching at the Graduate Center's Department of Anthropology this spring. Dr. Brown is also the author of the book Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail: Geographies of Race in Black Liverpool.
Dr. William E. Cross Jr. (CUNY, Graduate Center) is the head of the Social-Personality Psychology Ph.D. subprogram at the Graduate Center and author of Shades of Black: Diversity in African American Identity. Dr. Cross is also affiliated with the Africana Studies interdisciplinary concentration.
Dr. Donette Francis (SUNY, Binghamton) is an Assistant Professor of English and author of Fictions of Citizenship: Sexual Violence and a Caribbean Feminist Poetics, forthcoming in 2009.
Dr. Johanna Fernandez (CUNY, Baruch College), Assistant Professor of History and Black Studies, is working on a book on the Young Lords Party, the Puerto Rican counterpart to the Black Panther Party.
Throughout the day, panels will be moderated by doctoral students and faculty members such as Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Leith Mullings and Jerry Watts, Professor of English and Sociology and Interim Director of the Institute for Research in the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC).
For more information please email theorizingblackness@gmail.com.
**TENTATIVE SCHEDULE**
Theorizing Blackness Conference Schedule
Friday, April 4th, 2008
CUNY Graduate Center
New York, NY 10016
8:00-9:00 Registration/Introduction
Breakfast
9:00-10:30 AM PANELS (1-6)
Panel AM 1 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: TBA
Donny Levit (CUNY Graduate Center): "The Spiritual Present: The Inextricable Relationship Between Jazz and the Black Arts Movement"
Algernon Austin (The Thora Institute): "Mapping the Afrocentric Era, 1988-1998"
Panel AM 2 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: Queering Blackness
La Marr Jurelle Bruce (Yale University): "Possessing the Body Beautiful: "Possessing the 'Body Beautiful': Black Drag Queens, White Heteronormativity, and 'Happily Ever After' in American Cinema"
Angelique Harris (California State University, Fullerton): "Sexuality and Homosexuality in the Black Church"
Panel AM 3 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: The Politics of the Black Atlantic Body and the Body of Black Atlantic Politics: Nation, Identity, and Resistance
Natalie Belisle (U. Wisconsin, Madison): "In the Spirit of the Ancestors: Spiritual Discourse and the Black Revolutionary Struggle in O Ano Em Que Zumbí Tomou O Rio"
Jessica Krug (U. Wisconsin, Madison): "Social Dismemberment, Social Remembering: Contested Kromanti Identities, Nationalism, and Obeah, 1675-Present"
Jamila Moore-Pewu (U. California, Davis): "Rebranding the Continent, Rethinking Modernity:"Africa's Image Problem" in the 21st Century"
T.J. Desch-Obi (Baruch College, CUNY): "Embodying Honour: Liberating Enslaved Identities Through the Body"
Jarett M. Fields (U. Wisconsin, Madison): "Blackness, the Body, and the 1968 Olympics"
Panel AM 4 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: TBA
Julian Ellison: "Melanesia: Pacific Blacks in the African American Consciousness"
Fatima El-Tayeb (U. California, Davis): " Theorizing Black Europe"
Kelly Baker-Josephs (York College, CUNY): "Afrofruturism from a Caribbean Past: The Local Orientation of a Black World Vision"
Panel AM 5 MODERATOR: Yasser Payne
Title: Cope, Conform or Resist?: How Blacks "Use" their Blackness at Predominantly White University (University of Delaware)
Brittany Pearl Battle
Mamawa Lemon Fofana
LaMar Rashad Gibson
Thea James Ogunusi
Carl Suddler
10:45-11:45 Keynote Lecture:
Professor Mark Anthony Neal (Duke University)
"Fragments of a Feedback Loop: Blackness in Conversation"
12:00-1:15 Lunch
1:30-3:00 PM PANELS (A1-A5)
Panel PM A- 1 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: TBA
Johanna Faith Cacho Almiron (University of Hawaii, Manoa): "Still Not For Sale: Basquiat's Blackness & The Reeboppers"
Jordana Saggese (Santa Clara University): "Basquiat's Blackness: Re-defining an African-American Aesthetic"
Panel PM A- 2 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: TBA
Janette Yarwood (CUNY Graduate Center): "Deterritorialized Blackness: (Re)making Coloured Identity Among Youth in Post-Apartheid South Africa"
Sara Nichole Artes (American University): "We are, But We Aren't: Constructing African American Identity Through Cultural Heritage Performance on the US/Mexican Border"
Alexander Lamazares (Bronx Community College, CUNY): "Afro-Cuban Aesthetics: The Africa Decade, Secret Societies, and Racial Politics"
Panel PM A- 3 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: TBA
Alan Takeall (CUNY Graduate Center): "Black Uplift in the New Racial Domain"
Jacqueline Jones (Francis Marion University): "Pondering the Strange Meaning of Being Black or How Black Can I Be At Work?"
Lori Sykes (John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY): "Strategic Assimilation or Creation of Symbolic Blackness?: Middle-Class Blacks in Suburban Contexts"
Panel PM A- 4 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: "Theorizing the African Diaspora": (U.C. Berkeley African Diaspora Studies Graduate Group)
Vielka Cecilia Hoy: "Race, Multiple Diasporas, and Points of Departure: Creating a Framework for Theorizing Afro-Latinos"
Petra Raquel Rivera: "'Soca, Reggae, Reggaetón, Tropical Mix': Afro-Latino Spaces and Notch's Reggaetón"
Asia Leeds: "Redeeming Black Womanhood: Newspaper Portraits and Notions of Femininity in Marcus Garvey's Negro World"
Robeson T. P. Frazier: "From Mao to Yao: Chinese–African American Exchanges in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century"
Panel PM A- 5 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: TBA
Marissel Hernández-Romero (CUNY Graduate Center): "Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Female Literature: A Threat to an Imagined Nation?"
Katherine Baxter (University of Hong Kong): "New Black Fiction of the Far East"
Roopika Risam (Emory University): "African American Young Adult Literature: A Black Radical Tradition"
Ronald Tyson (Raritan Valley Community College): "The Changing Same": Essentialized Blackness in Contemporary African American Popular Fiction"
Panel PM A- 6 MODERATOR: Jerry Watts (CUNY Graduate Center)
Title: Ontologies of James Baldwin
Sam Han (CUNY Graduate Center): "An Encounter of Mitsein: The Ontology of James Baldwin's Ethics of Victimhood"
David Stein (Yale University): "(Re)naming/Revealing: James Baldwin's Theorizations of Racialized Formations Under the Terror of State Sanctioned Violence"
3:15- 4:45 PM PANELS (B1-B5)
Panel PM B- 1 MODERATOR: Lise Esdaile (CUNY Graduate Center)
Title: TBA
La Marr Jurelle Bruce (Yale University): "Looking for Lauryn: Madness, Genius, and the Black Prophetess,"
Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Vanderbilt University): "Salvaged Tongue: Transnational Translations of English Between Black Feminists"
GerShun Avilez (University of Pennsylvania): "'Once You Go White': Inter-racial Desire and Contemporary Black Female Identity in Film"
Stacie McCormick (CUNY Graduate Center): "From Jolly Joe's Lady Minstrels to Madea Simmons: Enduring Representations of Black Womanhood through Impersonation"
Panel PM B- 2 MODERATOR: James M. Jones (University of Delaware)
Title: "How Much and What Kind of Blackness is Enough?": University of Delaware Black American Studies Department
James M. Jones and David Wilson: "Black Enough?: Dimensions of Blackness and Attitudes toward Black Leaders"
Carol Henderson: "Boxing' on Paper: Authenticity in the Preservation of a Black Self"
Antonia Randolph: "Retreating from Race: The Social Cost of Erasing Black Ethnicity"
Yasser Payne: "Street Life Black Men: A Culture of Honor, Respect and Resilience"
Maggie Ussery: "Not Just any Job: The Development of Work-related Identity in Young, Black Workers"
Panel PM B- 3 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: TBA
Richard Perez (CUNY Graduate Center): "Archives, Knowledges, and Detours: Rereading the Black Atlantic with and against Ian Baucom's Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History"
DeWitt King (University of California, Santa Barbara): "Theorizing Black Geographies"
Percy Hintzen (University of California, Berkeley): "The Space of Caribbean Blackness & Pedagogies & Performatives of Modern"
Panel PM B- 4 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: TBA
Yamuna Sangarasivam (Nazareth College): "'Terrorist' as Fugitive Slave: Blackness in the Foundations of Citizenship and Democracy"
Robin Hayes (Santa Clara University): "African Liberation, Black Power and a Diasporic Underground"
Juliana Smith (University of California, San Diego): "Freedom Dreams: Political Exile, U.S. Social Movements, and Post-Revolutionary Cuba"
Panel PM B- 5 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: Post(modern) Blackness
Alessandra Raengo (Georgia State University): "Counterfeit Currency: Race at Face Value"
Jonathan Gray (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY): "Black Cultural Artifacts and the Conditions of Democracy"
Danielle Jackson: "Beyond Race: Black People and the Multicultural Idea in Contemporary Magazine Culture"
Panel PM B- 6 MODERATOR: TBA
Title: TBA
Jessica Ruglis (CUNY Graduate Center): "The Graduation Rate Crisis: Adverse Consequences and the Construction of Blackness in the Context of Cultural Oppression"
Gail Perry-Ryder (CUNY Graduate Center): "Making Race Real: Exploring the Intersection of Race, Academic Performance and Educational Culture in Our Public Schools and Colleges"
Brian Purnell (Fordham University): "From "Negro" to "Black": Black Power Politics in New York City's Public Schools During the Mid-1960s – The Story of Jitu Weusi (Les Campbell) and the Origins of the Afro-American Teachers' Association"
5:00 – 6:45: Plenary Roundtable:
Mahen Bonetti (African Film Festival, Inc.)
Jacqueline Nassy Brown (Hunter College, CUNY)
Johanna Fernandez (Baruch College, CUNY)
Donette Francis (Binghamton University, SUNY)
Moderator: William E. Cross Jr. (CUNY Graduate Center)
7:00 – 9:00: Closing Reception/Party
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