Global Black French Studies across Time and Space
The Formation and Future of the Field
October 3-6 at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA – USA
Convened by Jennifer Anne Boittin, Audrey Celestine, Jacqueline Couti, Trica Keaton, and Lorelle Semley
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.
We invite contributors to 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.
We welcome 300-word abstracts in English or French by Tuesday, April 2, 2024. Please click here to upload your abstract. We anticipate subsidizing travel and lodgings and will follow up with additional information as it becomes available.
Gesturing to the breadth of the field, possible topics include:
- Afro-French Feminisms, Gender, and its Broad Intersections
- Arts and Creatives
- Black French Futures
- Black Joy: Liberatory Practices and Praxis
- Causes and Consequences of Brain Drain
- Colonial History and Afterlives
- Decentering and/or the Significance of “Black Paris”
- Digital Black French Studies
- Ecocriticism and Environmental Racism
- Enslavement, Marronnage, and Emancipation
- Historicizing Black France
- Immigration and Migration
- Language Politics, Practices, and Translation
- Museum Curation and Studies
- Pedagogical Approaches to the Teaching of Black France
- Politics, Tensions, and Hegemonies in Black French Studies
- Publishing and Information Dissemination
- Queer and LGTBQI+ Lived Experience and Approaches
- Race, Racialization, Racism, and Raceblindness in the Study of Black France
- The Significance and/or Contestation of Black Americans and Black American Narratives
- Social Advocacy, Justice, or Other Forms of Mobilization and Counter-discourses
- Theorizing Black France and/or Black French Studies
- Transoceanic Connections, Circulations, and Geographies
- Urban and Rural Black Geographies: Public, Alternative, Hidden