Intersectional Black European Studies Symposium

Watch the Conference Trailer

This symposium is part of the Intersectional Black European Studies project (InBEST), funded by the senate of Berlin, Germany, and implemented by the Center for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the Technical University Berlin, the RAA Berlin (Center for Educational Justice) and Yale’s European Studies Council and Center for Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration.
 
The key goals of InBEST are the institutionalization of Intersectional Black Studies in Berlin (and Europe at large), the documentation and reduction of structural racism faced by Black students in Germany, and the creation of a digital archive of Black Europe that will both facilitate the digitization of physical documents and allow for a mapping of sites of knowledge production and archiving across Europe. This second symposium, after the inaugural meeting in Berlin in October 2022, is primarily structured around the challenges of translating and archiving marginalized knowledges, in particular the challenges posed by the transnational and multilingual formation of the African diaspora in Europe on the one hand and by the marginalizing of Black knowledge production in European societies, including institutions like schools, museums, and universities, on the other. We are excited to be able to bring together scholars and practitioners who are doing essential work in this area.
 
Program September 29th
Venue: Humanities Quadrangle, 320 York St, New Haven, CT 06511, Rm 136 and courtyard
 
10:00-10:15: Welcome & Housekeeping
10:15-10:45: Introductory conversation: InBEST in Motion (watch recording)
Co-Conveners Fatima El-Tayeb (Yale), Maisha Auma (Technical University Berlin), Denise Bergold-Caldwell (University of Innsbruck), Katja Kinder (RAA Berlin, Center for Educational Justice), Peggy Piesche (German Federal Agency for Civic Education)
11:00-12:00 Keynote conversation: Intergenerational Living Archives (watch recording)
Gloria Wekker (professor emerita, Utrecht University), Gail Lewis (scholar and
psychoanalytic psychotherapist, visiting professor Yale), Fatima El-Tayeb (mod.)
12:00-13:15 Lunch/time browse exhibit
13:15-14:15 Yale Fellows Panel Digital Archive (watch recording)
Jorge Banelos, Roy Celaire, Elisa Crabeil, Isaac Jean-Francois, Sam Jones, Faith Macheria, Ali Touilila, Maisha Auma (mod.)
14:15-14:30 Coffee break
14:30-15:30: Keynote conversation: Institutionalizing Black Studies (watch recording)
Mame-Fatou Niang (Carnegie Mellon University), Roderick A. Ferguson (Yale), Karen Taylor (Policy Advisor, former chair European Network Against Racism), Peggy Piesche (mod.)
15:30-15:45: Coffee break
15:45-16:30: Concluding discussion (watch recording)
(Denise Bergold-Caldwell, mod.)
17:00: Reception
 
September 30th (closed for public)
Workshops on
  • Creating a Digital Archive of Black Europe
  • Reflection as Foundational to Intersectional Black European Studies
  • Curriculum, AI and Afrofuturism
  • The role of feminist and queer African Studies for InBEST
  • Translation in a Multilingual Diaspora
 
InBEST Co-Conveners
Maisha M. Auma (Prof. for Childhood and Difference, University for Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal  (2008 - 2022), Visiting Professor for Intersectional Diversity Studies at the Center for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies of the Technical University Berlin),
Denise Bergold-Caldwell (Postdoctoral Fellow, Center Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, University of Innsbruck),
Fatima El-Tayeb (Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University),
Katja Kinder (Director RAA Berlin, Center for Educational Justice),
Peggy Piesche (Head of the Department on Intersectionality, Diversity and Decoloniality, German Federal Agency for Civic Education)
 
Invited Participants
Chandra Frank (Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Cincinnati) 
Camilla Hawthorne (Associate Professor of Sociology and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, UC Santa Cruz)
Elizabeth Kaneza (Community Outreach Officer at the German Center for Integration and Migration Studies) 
Gail Lewis (Scholar and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Visiting Professor WGSS, Yale)
Elizabeth Lowe Hunter (Graduate Student African American Studies, Yale)
Mathai Muthoni (Professor of Psychiatry, University of Nairobi)
Mame-Fatou Niang (Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies;
Director-Founder of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic, Carnegie Mellon University)
Rahab Njeri ( Officer for Antidiscrimination and Critique of Racism in the Department for Gender & Diversity Management, University of Cologne)
Francesca Schmidt (Senior advisor, German Federal Agency for Civic Education)
Malika Stuerznickel (Graduate Student in Anthropology, University of Michigan)
Karen Taylor (Policy Advisor, former chair European Network Against Racism)
Vanessa Thompson (Assistant Professor Gender Studies and Black Studies, Queen’s University)
Kira Thurman (Associate Professor of History, German Studies, and Musicology, University of Michigan)
Gloria Wekker (Professor Emerita, Utrecht University)
Senami Zodehougan (Clinical psychologist working on intersectionality and queerness)
 
InBEST Yale Digital Archive Fellows
Jorge Banelos (PhD student in Religious Studies and African American Studies)
Roy Celaire (PhD student in Sociocultural Anthropology)
Elisa Crabeil (Ph.D. student in the French department)
Isaac Jean-Francois (PhD student in African American Studies and American Studies)
Sam Jones (Ph.D. student in the French / African American Studies)
Faith Macheria (PhD student in African American Studies and Sociocultural Anthropology)
Ali Touilila (Ph.D. student in the French department)
 
Flyer:
  
 
Many thanks go to our sponsors: