Anthropology Colloquia: Archaeologies of Whiteness from the West Indies to the West Africa

4:15pm – 6:00pm
9 November 2018
CUNY Grad Center
Room C415A
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY

“Archaeologies of Whiteness from the West Indies to the West Africa”
Matthew Reilly
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
City College, CUNY

Dr. Matthew Reilly is an anthropological archaeologist interested in race formation processes, whiteness, and colonial modernity in the Atlantic world. His work on the Caribbean island of Barbados, the subject of his forthcoming book, Archaeology below the Cliff: Race, Class, and Redlegs in Barbadian Sugar Society, explores how a group of poor whites known as the Redlegs fit within the social matrix of a system of sugar production and slavery. He is currently working on two related projects in Barbados and Liberia. His work in Barbados focuses on heritage management and the process of building futures with the material remains of the dark histories of plantation slavery. He is also collaborating on a project in the West African nation of Liberia investigating a small village established by Barbadian settlers in 1865. The project uses archaeological and ethnographic approaches to explore the process of “reverse diaspora” and settler-native interactions. At the heart of his research is a critical exploration of the complex relationships between slavery and freedom, colonialism and sovereignty, race, class, and capitalism, the social construction of race and structural racism, and the past, present, and future.

Above text adapted from webpages. Click here and here for more information.

Édouard Glissant: One World in Relation

6:30pm – 8:30pm
6 November 2018
Martin E. Segal Theatre
CUNY Grad Center

Manthia Diawara’s film Édouard Glissant: One World in Relation (2009, 48 min) follows Édouard Glissant, thinker of Relation and the All-World, on a transatlantic journey as he discusses his philosophies of creolization, relation, and history. Following the screening will be a discussion with the director and artist Asad Raza, co-curator of the exhibition Lydia Cabrera and Édouard Glissant: Trembling Thinking at the Americas Society (October 9, 2018 to January 12, 2019).

This event is free and open to the public, but to attend, please click here to RSVP.

This screening is in tandem with the exhibition Lydia Cabrera and Édouard Glissant: Trembling Thinking at the Americas Society (Oct. 9, 2018–Jan. 12, 2019), and the symposium “Édouard Glissant’s Tout-Monde: Transnational Perspectives” at the Graduate Center, CUNY (Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 12:45 PM – 7:00 PM).

Co-sponsored by the Americas Society, New York, and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY. 

Above text and image adapted from webpage.

Recent Publication – Slavery & Abolition: Special Issue on “Africa’s Sons Under Arms”

Slavery & Abolition: Special issue on “Africa’s Sons Under Arms”
Volume 39, Issue 3
August 2018

This issue of the journal Slavery & Abolition focuses on the theme “Africa’s Sons Under Arms,” exploring “various historical themes around the creation and deployment of armed units of men of African descent by European empires and their successor states” (451). The special issue grows from a two-day conference on “Armed people of African descent: Africa and the Americas, 1750–1900” held in 2017 at the University of Warwick, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council.” 

Slavery & Abolition is the only journal devoted in its entirety to a discussion of the demographic, socio-economic, historical and psychological aspects of human bondage from the ancient period to the present. It is also concerned with the dismantling of the slave systems and with the legacy of slavery.

Table of Content

Continue reading Recent Publication – Slavery & Abolition: Special Issue on “Africa’s Sons Under Arms”

Édouard Glissant’s Tout-Monde: Transnational Perspectives

12:45pm – 7:00pm
16 November 2018
Elebash Recital Hall and The James Gallery
CUNY Grad Center

The year 2018 marks what would have been the 90th birthday of Édouard Glissant (1928-2011), the eminent thinker of Relation and the All-World (Tout-Monde) who taught for sixteen years at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Since Glissant’s passing, the influence of his thought continues to grow as his works are now taught not only in Europe and the Americas but also in India and China. This symposium, organized by the Henri Peyre French Institute and co-sponsored with Americas Society, the Center for the Humanities and the Ph.D. Program in French at the Graduate Center, CUNY celebrates the transnational reach of Édouard Glissant’s ideas and the continued sustenance they provide to activists, artists, scholars and writers world-wide. It underlines his call for all people to abrogate the walls, real or imaginary, that separate them for all communities to achieve equality and solidarity and embrace the “Poetics of Relation.”

Édouard Glissant’s humanist project influenced and engaged colleagues and students alike during his years as Distinguished Professor of French at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (1995 to 2011), a city in which diverse ethnic and religious groups share a space that allows “Relation” to thrive, be reformulated and constantly rediscovered. The symposium includes academics whom Glissant mentored as well as those who have been inspired by reading him and have applied his thought to their own work and in teaching their own students.

The symposium brings to the fore scholars and artists who apply Édouard Glissant’s theories to shed light on inter-communal relations, expose the power dynamics of the privileged versus the marginalized, advocate against boundaries while acknowledging difference, contest dominant hierarchies of race, ethnicity, and gender, and show how texts normalize some groups and make others “other.” The symposium celebrates the many perspectives of the Tout-Monde and brings the “periphery” back to the center of discourse, mindful of the powerful Glissant-inspired motto “Les Périphériques vous parlent!” (The Periphery is speaking to you!).

Free and open to the public, but to attend, please click here to RSVP. 

Speakers include: Mohit Chandna, Nathalie Etoke, Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François, Jarrod Hayes, Sylvie Kandé, Cilas Kemedjio, Barbara Webb, Christopher Winks, Pedro Zylbersztajn, and others.

SCHEDULE:

Continue reading Édouard Glissant’s Tout-Monde: Transnational Perspectives

Seminar Series on Édouard Glissant

1:00pm – 4:00pm
9th to 30th  November 2018
French Department Thesis Room
CUNY Grad Center

This Fall semester, the Henri Peyre French Institute, the PhD Program in French, and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY will host a series of seminars honoring the legacy of Édouard Glissant, who taught here from 1995 to 2011. Each of the informal seminars—held in the French Department thesis room where Glissant taught––will be led by one of his former students on a topic of their choosing, ranging from their personal experience with Glissant to the themes in his work and its ongoing influence across disciplines. Offering an intimate at-one-remove experience, these one-hour seminars will be open to 10–15 participants. To attend, participants must RSVP on Eventbrite (see links to RSVP below). Maximum capacity is 10–15 persons due to the size of the seminar room.

Weds, October 24, 2-3pm: Paul Fadoul, Lecturer in French, Queens College, CUNY [FULLY BOOKED]

Friday, November 9, 3-4pm: Led by Chadia Chambers-Samadi, Assistant Professor of French, University of the Bahamas. Click here to RSVP for this seminar.

Tuesday, November 27, 1-2pm: Led by Hamid Bahri, Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies, York College, CUNY. Click here to RSVP for this seminar.

Friday, November 30, 1-2pm: Led by Eric Lynch, Assistant Professor of French, Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX. Click here to RSVP for this seminar.

These seminars are in tandem with the exhibition Lydia Cabrera and Édouard Glissant: Trembling Thinking at the Americas Society (Oct. 9, 2018–Jan. 12, 2019), and the symposium “Édouard Glissant’s Tout-Monde: Transnational Perspectives” at the Graduate Center, CUNY (Fri, Nov 16, 2018, 12:45 PM – 7:00 PM).

Co-sponsored by the Henri Peyre French Institute, the PhD Program in French, and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY. 

Above text adapted from webpage. Above image adapted from email.

9th Annual African, African American, and Diaspora Studies Interdisciplinary Conference

21st to 22nd February 2019
James Madison University

CFP Deadline: 15 December 2018

The African, African American, and Diaspora Studies program at James Madison University invites proposals for its annual interdisciplinary conference, to be held on the campus of JMU in Harrisonburg, Virginia on Feb 21-22, 2019. This year’s theme is “Bodies in Motion.” Ranging across topics from the politics of migration to the aesthetics of black embodiment, from action films to political activism, the conference will bring together a group of scholars from a wide variety of overlapping and intersecting fields. We welcome proposals from scholars in all relevant disciplines at any point in their scholarly careers. Topics for 20-minute presentations or 60-minute panels could address topics such as these:  Continue reading 9th Annual African, African American, and Diaspora Studies Interdisciplinary Conference

The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present

6:00pm – 7:30pm
30 October 2018
NYU Center for the Humanities, Fifth Floor
RSVP here

In twelve essays that draw from a number of disciplines—history, anthropology, literature, geography, indigenous studies— and regional locations (the Black Atlantic, South Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Australia, Argentina) The Postcolonial Contemporary (Fordham UP, 2018) seeks to move beyond the habitual oppositions that have often characterized the field: universal vs. particular; Marxism vs. postcolonialism; politics vs. culture. The essays reckon with new and persisting postcolonial predicaments, doing so under four interrelated analytics: postcolonial temporality; deprovincializing the global south; beyond Marxism versus postcolonial studies; and postcolonial spatiality and new political imaginaries.

Join us to celebrate this new volume and to reflect on the project with the book’s editors, Jini Kim Watson and Gary Wilder, and several contributors.

Featuring:

Continue reading The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present

[ Decodings ] exhibit by Pascale Monnin

Exhibit Opening 
4:00pm – 9:00pm
2 November 2018
Rogue Space #9 E-F-G
508-526 West 26th Street
Between 10 & 11th Avenue
Chelsea, NY 10001

RSVP for the opening: [email protected]

The exhibit will be on view from Saturday November 3rd to Saturday November 10th Open every day from 10am to 6pm.

Pascale Monnin last exhibited in Manhattan 5 years ago. This November, she returns to the city with [Decodings], a solo exhibit organized by GALERIE MONNIN NYC.

[ Decodings ], both a celebration of the world and an evidence of Monnin’s estrangement from it, presents more than a hundred paintings, mobiles and sculptures. Punctuated by Monnin’s obsessions: history, politics, debt, myths, complexity, animals, plants, life, childhood, time, movement, the sacred, faces, vertigo…, it reveals many facets of her artwork and displays a world of warring births, dazzling impulses, hybrid forms, with reckless nuances of a childhood spreading sometimes cast in stone, sometimes lying on the frame as the art spills over.

Continue reading [ Decodings ] exhibit by Pascale Monnin

7th Annual Screening Scholarship Media Festival

30th to 31st March 2019
University of Pennsylvania

CFP Deadline: 30 November 2018

CAMRA at Penn is pleased to announce the call for submissions for the 7th Annual Screening Scholarship Media Festival which will take place on March 30-31, 2019 at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Screening Scholarship Media Festival (SSMF) provides a creative, collaborative space to explore the affordances and challenges of multimodal strategies in research and to interrogate their social implications. SSMF is a hybrid between a traditional academic conference and a film/ media festival fostering the intersection of art and science across disciplines since 2013.

Rendering Matters of Concern and Present Histories is the theme of SSMF2019, and scholars, educators, artists, activists, visual legal advocacy and digital humanities groups are welcome to participate. This year, SSMF will feature works rendering matters of concern and the present histories of indigenous people, persons under any form of detention, diasporic communities, LGTB+ collectives, and environments in conflict.

The categories for submission are:  Continue reading 7th Annual Screening Scholarship Media Festival

Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA) 2019 Summer School

Williams College,
Williamstown, Massachusetts
June 16-23, 2019

Application Deadline:  15 December 2018

Founded in 2003 in Mona, Jamaica, the principal goal of the Caribbean Philosophical Association is to support the free exchange of ideas and foster an intellectual community that is truly representative of the diversity of voices and perspectives that is paradigmatic of, but not limited to, the Caribbean. The Caribbean is thus understood not solely as a geopolitical region, but also as a trope to investigate dimensions of the multiple undersides of modernity. Likewise, philosophy is conceived, not as an isolated academic discipline, but instead as rigorous theoretical reflection about fundamental problems faced by humanity. Understood in this way, Caribbean philosophy is a transdisciplinary form of interrogation aiming to elucidate fundamental questions that emerge with discovery, conquest, racial, gender, and sexual domination, genocide, dependency, and exploitation as well as freedom, emancipation, and decolonization.

The 2019 CPA summer school will be hosted by Neil Roberts of Williams College, with generous support from the W. Ford Schumann ’50 Program in Democratic Studies.

Featuring:

Continue reading Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA) 2019 Summer School

Queer Trouble in Caribbean Art & Activism

A Conversation with Rosamond S. King & Angelique V. Nixon

6:00pm – 8:00pm
23 October 2018
Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality (CSGS)
285 Mercer Street, 4th Floor


Rosamond S. King, English, Brooklyn College, City University of New York


Angelique V. Nixon, Institute for Gender & Development Studies, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad

Two award winning artist-scholars reflect on the intersections of LGBTQI and feminist arts, activism, and politics in the Caribbean. King and Nixon address how their own work moves between these different registers. They also discuss how they see contemporary queer Caribbean performance, literature, and visual art engage and resist the ongoing violences of colonial and postcolonial histories, and how these works offer us vibrant models of desire, embodiment, and collectivity.

Continue reading Queer Trouble in Caribbean Art & Activism

Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies

Application Deadline: 23 November 2018

Georgetown University’s Department of French & Francophone Studies is seeking a tenure-line assistant professor for a specialist in ONE of the following areas: 1) Francophone Caribbean Studies, especially Haitian Studies; OR 2) Middle Eastern Francophone Studies. Beyond courses taught in French in the specific area of research expertise, the candidate will be expected to teach a variety of offerings in French at the lower- and mid-division levels, including language-learning and writing-intensive courses. Ph.D. in hand by August 2019 and near-native fluency in French AND English are required. The Georgetown University Department of French & Francophone Studies has a strong commitment to undergraduate teaching and research at all levels. Our overarching learning goal is to give students linguistic competency, cultural literacy, writing and research skills, and critical thinking abilities within a framework that encourages creativity.

Cover letter, CV, two sample syllabi, writing sample, and three letters of recommendation must be received by November 23, 2018. Cover letters, in addition to describing research, teaching, and service profiles, should show how candidates will enrich a community that seeks a diversity of perspectives and people. We will conduct first-round interviews via Zoom video conferencing.

Applications will be accepted through Interfolio.  Questions about the position should be e-mailed to Andrew Sobanet ([email protected]), Interim Chair, Department of French and Francophone Studies.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
Georgetown University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer fully dedicated to achieving a diverse faculty and staff. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation), disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Above text adapted from webpage.

Roxane Gay in Conversation with Katia D. Ulysse

7:00pm
8 November 2018
CUNY Graduate Center 


Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay, award-winning author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017), Difficult Women (2017), and Bad Feminist (2014) and Katia D. Ulysse, Haitian poet, essayist and author of Drifting (2014), among other works, will join us for a reading and conversation in the Critical Caribbean Feminisms series. Following the reading, Gay, Ulysse, and BCRW Associate Director Tami Navarro will discuss various forms of writing–including novels, memoir, and social media interventions–and examine how these create space for conversations around and advocacy for social justice.


Katia  D. Ulysse

This event is free and open to the public. All advance tickets have been claimed. A limited number of tickets will be available and released on a first-come, first-seated basis. For more information, visit the CUNY Grad Center event page.

Event Co-Sponsors: Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, the Center for the Study of Women and Society, CUNY Graduate Center, the Society of Fellows in the Humanities and the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, and Women Writing Women’s Lives

About the Speakers Continue reading Roxane Gay in Conversation with Katia D. Ulysse

Reimagining Money Workshop and Caribbean Syllabus Launch

4:00pm – 6:00pm
10 October 2018
754 Schermerhorn Ext
Columbia University

The Center for the Study of Social Difference (CSSD) working group Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy presents: Caribbean Syllabus: Second Edition and Max Haiven’s Art After Money, Money After Art Book Launch with: Tao Goffe, Monica Jiménez, Sarah Muir, Frances Negron-Muntaner, and Jason Wozniak.

Continue reading Reimagining Money Workshop and Caribbean Syllabus Launch