Mar 1 | Racing the International: “Tracing a Black Feminist International”

Mar 1, 2017
4.30pm - 6pm
CSRPC, 5733 S University Ave

free and open to the public

Despite the growing scholarship on black and subaltern internationalisms, there remains a stubborn gendering of internationalist politics. W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey and C.L.R. James are always identified with this tradition, while Claudia Jones, Pauli Murray, Merze Tate, Eslanda Robeson and others are often marginalized and forgotten. This panel takes up the question of internationalism from the perspective of Black women’s intellectual and political history as well as from a black and third world feminist theoretical lens.

A panel discussion featuring: Annette Joseph-Gabriel (University of Arizona), Erik S. McDuffie (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Barbara Ransby (University of Illinois-Chicago)

 

Annette Joseph-Gabriel is an Assistant Professor of French and faculty affiliate in Africana Studies at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on francophone Caribbean and African literature, with interdisciplinary specializations in global feminisms, Afro-diasporic literary and cultural movements, and the Enlightenment in the French Atlantic. Her forthcoming book, Decolonial Citizenship: Black Women’s Narratives of Political Identity in the Francophone World, examines the political and literary writings of women involved in mid-twentieth century anticolonial movements in Francophone Central Africa and the Antilles. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies and The French Review. She is managing editor of Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender and the Black International.

Erik S. McDuffie is an Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research and teaching interests include African diaspora history, black feminism, black queer theory, black radicalism, black urban history, and black masculinity. He is the author of the book, Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). The book received the 2012 Wesley-Logan Prize from the American Historical Association-Association for the Study of African American Life and History, as well as the 2011 Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians. He is also the author of several scholarly articles and essays published in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society; Journal of African American History; African Identities; African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal; Radical History Review; American Communist History; Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International; among other journals and edited volumes.

 
Barbara Ransby is an historian, writer and longtime activist. She is a Distinguished Professor of African American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where she directs  the campus-wide Social Justice Initiative. She previously served as Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program and Interim Vice Provost for Planning and Programs (2011-2012) at UIC.  Ransby is author of the highly acclaimed biography, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. The book received eight national awards and recognitions.
 
Ransby's most recent book is Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Yale University Press, January 2013).  She serves on the editorial boards of The Black Commentator (an online journal); the London-based journal, Race and Class; the Justice, Power and Politics Series at University of North Carolina Press; and the Scholar’s Advisory Committee of Ms. magazine. In the summer of 2012 she became the second Editor-in-Chief of SOULS, a critical journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society published quarterly. 
 

 

This venue is physically accessible and has a gender-neutral restroom. Please contact the CSRPC at 773.702.8063 with any questions or accommodation requests.
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This series is organized by Professor Adom Getachew (Political Science) in partnership with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, with support from the Social Sciences Division, the Harris School for Public Policy, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, the Department of Political Science, the Theory & Models Group, the Center for International Social Science Research, and the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT) at the University of Chicago.