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Saturday, May 24, 2008

conference: The Poetics and Politics of Blackness

France Noire &mdash Black France: The Poetics and Politics of Blackness
June 6-7, 2008 &mdash Paris, France
http://history.berkeley.edu/faculty/Stovall/conference/

Colloquium Mission
The last few years have seen an extraordinary flowering of Black consciousness in France. Individuals and collectives have organized around questions pertaining to the memory of slavery, "race" and anti-Black racism, the Black condition, and what it generally means to be Black in contemporary French society. At the same time, there has been a new wave of scholarship on Blacks in Europe and a (re)theorizing of "blackness" in the African diaspora relative to European society and history. Paris, in particular, has always been a center of Black life worldwide, from the Negritude movement of the past to the myriad formations of Black empowerment specific to this moment. On June 6 and 7, 2008, a gathering of leading international scholars will meet in Paris to examine "Black France," that is, the Black presence and condition in French society. Madame Christiane Taubira, the esteemed member of the French Parliament whose very name is now synonymous with legislation that recognizes slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity &mdash The Taubira Law &mdash will deliver the keynote address as the prelude to an exciting and stimulating series of discussions. All who are interested in the African diaspora and French society are encouraged to attend what will be an historic event.