About this Event
The graduate students of Emory’s African American Studies PhD program invite paper proposals for its inaugural and interdisciplinary Black Studies Symposium. This year’s conference, “Gathering at the Threshold: Situating Our Theories and Praxes as Tools for the Contemporary Mo(ve)ment” will take place on our campus at Emory University April 5-6th, 2024.
This symposium seeks to bring graduate students together to consider radical praxis formations, intellectual traditions, and interventions concerning the study of Black life and “Black livingness” in the 21st century. We invoke Hortense Spillers who asks, “To what extent do the ‘conditions of theoretical practice’ pass through [us], as the living site of a significant intervention?” How are we (individually and collectively), as informal and formal sites of theoretical/praxis invention, writing against the mounting conditions of violence and toward radical possibilities of freedom? What political responsibility does this particular moment necessitate? Situating ourselves as belonging to and/or of Black study—and not necessarily Black Studies with its allegiance to institutionalization— how do we “reflect the times” like Nina Simone urges us to do? Being scholars of the imperial core, the Black South, and the university bears both complicity and responsibility. We reckon it demands a relentless pursuit of epistemic formations that take the integrity of our living and dying seriously. So, we ask how we renew our commitment to love, rage, and struggle; our commitment to knowing ourselves and each other; our commitment to Black liberation, movement, and other-world building everywhere there is Black life.
Please mark your calendars and join us for an exciting and vigorous communal gathering at the threshold. Final event details, including the full symposium schedule and campus locations, will be sent via email to all RSVPs late March.
Symposium Schedule:
- Keynote Address, Friday April 5th – 4PM-6PM
- Themed Panels, Saturday, April 6th –9AM-4:30PM
Please contact our Symposium Committee Chairs:
Lizette London, at [email protected] and Cheyenne Ross, at [email protected] with any questions or concerns.
For more information, visit: Emory University Department of African American Studies.
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Call for Papers
Abstract Submission Form (submission deadline is February 26, 2024)
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Emory University, 201 Dowman Drive, Atlanta, United States
USD 0.00