The 49th annual Scholar and Feminist Conference will explore transnational Black feminism in the context of “third world” liberatory movements since the 1940s. At the height of struggles for anti-colonial independence in the African subcontinent and diasporic communities during the 1960s and 1970s, the praxis of Black feminist alliances proved to be foundational to global anti-racist and anti-imperial radicalism. We aim to consider how Black feminist solidarity was forged across a broader geopolitical frame that includes the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, strengthening local mobilizations and generating new transnational liberatory possibilities. We will also chronicle the evolution of transnational Black feminism since then, and how the shift from anti-colonialism to neoliberalism impacted the radical possibilities embedded in attempts at self-determination and collaboration across geographic divides.

Registration

Friday, March 22

• 3:00 p.m. | Opening remarks by Premilla Nadasen (Co-Director of BCRW and Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History, Barnard College)
• 3:30-5 p.m. | Marxism and Transnational Black Feminist Liberation
  • Charisse Burden-Stelly (Associate Professor of History and African American Studies, Wayne State University)
  • Dayo Gore (Associate Professor, Department of African American Studies, Georgetown University)
  • Robyn Spencer-Antoine (Associate Professor of History and African American Studies, Wayne State University)
  • Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University)
  • Moderated by Premilla Nadasen (Co-Director of BCRW and Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History, Barnard College)

Saturday, March 23 

• 9:30 a.m. | Welcome by Premilla Nadasen (Co-Director of BCRW and Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History, Barnard College)
• 10-11:30 a.m. | Black Women and Anti-Colonialism 1940s-1980s
  • Abosede George (Tow Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies, Barnard College)
  • Lynette Jackson (Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Black Studies, University of Illinois-Chicago)
  • Laurie Lambert (Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, Barnard College)
  • Paula Marie Seniors (Associate Professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Religion and Culture, Virginia Tech)
  • Moderated by Imaobong Umoren (Associate Professor of International History, London School of Economics)
• 11:45 a.m. – 1 p.m. | Lunch 
• 1-2:30 p.m. | The Colonial Legacy, Gender, and Economic Empowerment 
  • Yolande Bouka (Assistant Professor of Political Studies, Queen’s University)
  • Jennifer Fish (Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Old Dominion University)
  • Natasha Lightfoot (Associate Professor of History, Columbia University)
  • Keisha-Khan Perry (Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania)
• 2:45 – 4:15 p.m. | Intellectual and Activist Interventions in Contemporary Movements 
  • Layla Brown (Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology & Africana Studies, Northeastern University)
  • Tao Leigh Goffe (Associate Professor of Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies, Hunter College)
  • Zifeng Liu (Postdoctoral Scholar in the Africana Research Center, Pennsylvania State University)
  • Gabriella Muasya (PhD Student in the Department of Educational Anthropology and Educational Psychology, Danish School of Education)
  • Moderated by Yvette Christiansë (Claire Tow Professor of Africana Studies and English Literature, Barnard College)
• 4:30 – 6 p.m. | Keynote
  • Lorgia García Peña (Professor of African American Studies and in the Effron Center for the Study of America, Director of the Program in Latino Studies, Princeton University)
  • Tami Navarro (Assistant Professor and Chair of the Pan-African Studies Program, Drew University)

ATTEND

Accessibility
ASL Interpretation will be provided. For additional accessibility needs please email skreitzb@barnard.edu.
This is an in-person event, free and open to all. Please review our COVID safety guidelines. Registration is preferred.

Cosponsors 
This conference is cosponsored by the Transnational Black Feminisms Working Group and the Center for the Study of Social Difference, Columbia University.

Image Credit
Elsa Rakoto, “Toutes les féministes en lutte contre l’imperialisme,” 2021.