"Theorizing the Diaspora: Black Sound and Intellectual Exchange" invites papers from graduate students that center and consider how sound and performance inform our engagement with Black life and identity. This symposium aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary dialogue about how Blackness and sound contribute to political movements and popular culture and provide space to discuss the resonance of Black sound throughout the diaspora. Black music reflects Black people’s struggles with dispossession, violence, and freedom; struggles that have shaped Blackness and its interlocking connections globally. Black diasporic thinkers and cultural producers have made critical interventions in how we engage Black expressive culture and Black identity by examining the complex intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and geographical location. We are particularly interested in contributions that explore the experiences and knowledge from various diasporic communities, including but not limited to the African diaspora, Asian diaspora, Latin American diaspora, and Caribbean diaspora. In keeping with this tradition, we seek to explore how Blackness and sound expand our definition of diaspora and recognize its varied cultural crossings.

The keynote conversation will be Monday evening beginning at 4pm, with an open mic beginning at 7:30pm. The majority of the conference will be on Tuesday, April 22nd beginning at 9am with panels until 5:30pm.

Panels include:

• Airwaves and Afterlives: Black Feminist Listening Practices across Radio, Literature, and Performance
• Tidalectic Soundscapes: Black Sacred Sound in the Americas and Diaspora
• Unbound & Unclaimed: The Black-Queer Femme, Quiet Storm and Skate Music
• Turn the World Upside Down: Black Women’s Vocality and Visual Aesthetics

Please RSVP.