THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN’S BLACK RESEARCH ROUNDTABLE is pleased to announce its call for submissions for its first annual graduate student conference on Feminist, Queer, and Trans Perspectives on the Future of Black Studieson May 10-11, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Submissions are due by Friday, December 14. For more information, see below.
The University of Michigan’s Black Research Roundtable invites submissions for its first annual graduate student conference on Feminist, Queer, and Trans Perspectives on the Future of Black Studies.
This conference asks: where are we and where are we going? Black Studies is 50 years out from its scholar activist-origins. In that time, the study of Blackness has been taken up across disciplines and institutions. Over the last three decades, there has been a proliferation of theoretical and political interventions within the (inter)discipline--of which, Black queer studies, Black trans studies, and Black women’s history have been central. Among these fields, Black gender has arguably emerged as the central object of analysis. As graduate students who will contribute to the future of the (inter)discipline, this context means we must re-engage the theories, methods, and practices that undergird Black Studies in general, and Black gender studies in particular.
Looking simultaneously backwards and forwards, the Black Research Roundtable hopes to reconsider the perennial questions for any (inter)disciple forged in struggle: How is our theory engaging with both the institutionalized reality of the (inter)discipline and the material concerns of Black people in the world? What can the debates and contributions of Black feminist, queer, and trans theory offer in this moment? As graduate students trying to find our grounding as scholars and professionals, we hope to use this conference as an opportunity to re-engage the space between abstraction and the practice of situating our scholarship.
The Black Research Roundtable invites papers, and workshop proposals. We anticipate and encourage a wide range of topics, but seek work in particular that grapples with: Black feminist, queer, and trans theory, futures, lived experiences, archival fragments, and the aesthetic objects etc. that ground our work. We welcome work that addresses but is not limited to the following questions:
Context
· What role does Black Studies play in our current political moment?
· How is the current structure of the university shaping the conditions of the production of Black thought?
· What are the political futures suggested by Black queer, trans, and feminist studies? How do they converge? How might they be in tension?
· What are the unspoken realities of our discipline? How do the class dynamics of Black Studies academics affect Black studies scholarship?
· What theoretical gaps are produced by divergent geographies of Black analytics?
· Black thought is produced all over the world. However, much emerging work on Black gender seems to be fairly U.S. centric, with some key exceptions. How does this U.S. centric nature shape the questions we ask about the nature of Black gender?
Relating theory, method, and practice
· What topics and who have we overlooked in Black gender and queer studies?
· How can queer and trans analytics be used to understand social transformation?
· How do we grapple with the relationship between ontologies of Blackness and the lived realities of Black people?
· How do we continue to do the work of connecting the theoretical interventions of Black queer studies, Black trans studies, and Black gender studies more broadly to the political needs of Black people?
· How does the U.S. centric nature of most Black Studies scholarship shape the questions we ask about the nature of Black gender?
Theory
· What dominant theoretical trends are shaping Black Studies today?
· What is the relationship between Black feminism and Black queer studies?
The conference will be held from May 10-11, 2018 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We hope to cultivate a space with a focus on rigorous, collegial feedback and lively conversation on graduate students’ current scholarship. In lieu of the traditional keynote, we’ll be having a faculty roundtable on a recent publication thinking about gender and Blackness.
Proposals must contain a 250 word abstract and an abbreviated C.V. of no more than 2 pages. Materials must be submitted no later than December 14th, 2018. BRR will notify selected authors whether their abstract has been accepted by January 18th 2019. Please submit abstracts via this form and contact Eshe Sherley (esherley@umich.edu) or Reuben Riggs-Bookman (reubenr@umich.edu) with any questions.
