The Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC) is pleased to host the Reproduction of Race and Racial Ideologies Workshop at 5733 South University Avenue. Most meetings will be held on alternate Thursdays, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm, in the First Floor Seminar Room, unless otherwise noted.

This quarter’s theme is “From Combahee to #BlackLivesMatter: Exploring a History of Black Politics and Culture.” Recent works on contemporary Black political and cultural formations represent the Movement for Black Lives as distinctively-and, in some accounts, prototypically-attentive to interlocking systems of oppression. However, enduring struggles with secondary and tertiary marginalization within the movement reveal contradictions that necessitate further analysis. Foregrounding the historical (dis)continuities among Black freedom struggles, this workshop aims to re-interpret articulations of race, gender, and sexuality within #BlackLivesMatter by examining the movement’s antecedents-namely, the works of Black feminist, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and trans activists, intellectuals and artists emerging in the late 20th century. Accordingly, the workshop solicits papers that explore the co-constitution of race, gender, and sexuality within contemporary Black political and cultural projects. We will, of course, consider any paper involving conceptions of race and ethnicity, and we are especially interested in works that involve this theme.

Thursday, October 5th
“Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence” Darius Bost, Assistant Professor of Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University

Thursday, October 19th, 7pm / Saieh Hall 021, 1160 E 58th St
Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color:
A Conversation between Cathy J. Cohen and Andrea J. Ritchie
details below

Thursday, November 2nd
“Making All Black Lives Matter”
Barbara Ransby, Professor of History, African-American Studies, and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Thursday, November 16th
“Painting Redemptive Black Labor: Art, Ethiopianism, the Great Migration, and the Political-Theological Problem of Analogy”
Kai Parker, PhD Candidate in History at the University of Chicago

Thursday, November 30th
Title TBA
Roderick Ferguson, Professor of African American and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Thursday, December 7th
“On Black Publics and Counterpublics: (Re) Situating the Queer and Feminist Work at the Margins of the Black Public Sphere”
Jenn M. Jackson, PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago

The workshop meets 4 – 5 times a quarter. Each meeting lasts one hour and twenty minutes. Typically, a paper will be circulated one week prior to meeting. At the beginning of the meeting, the author of the paper will present their work for about 20 minutes. For the remaining time, we hold an open discussion about the paper and the presentation.

You can stay up to date on the workshop schedule and presenters by joining the listserv, or contacting the workshop coordinator Marcus Lee at marcusl3@uchicago.edu.

Official Website

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Tags: Center for the Study of Race Politics and Culture, Chicago, From Combahee to #BlackLivesMatter: Exploring a History of Black Politics and Culture, Hyde Park