Schedule

Conference Schedule

Instead of traditional paper presentations, the conference will host 8 panels consisting of 4-6 participants each. These panels will facilitate moderated public conversations focused on themes of Blackness and queerness, with each panel featuring a series of collaborative questions and a short position statement available to attendees.

The eight conference panels focus on:

Representing the Race: Queer Images of Blackness
Disciplinary Tensions: Black Studies and Queer Studies
How to Teach the Unspeakable: Race, Queer Studies & Pedagogy
Policing Black Bodies: Queer Studies, Public Policy, and The Law
Black Queer Digitality
Black Queer South: Regionalism & Transnational Flows
Black Queer Writing: Who’s Reading Us?
Black Queer Identities: Sex & the Future of Queerness

Beyond panel discussions, the conference will include performances, a curated exhibition, and a closing community picnic.

These events are free and open to the public, but registration is required as space is limited.

The conference is located in Hyde Hall on Friday and Saturday, April 4-5, and Swain Blackbox Theatre for Sunday, April 6.

Keynote Conversation

Friday, April 4th | 4:30-6:00pm

Hyde Hall

This keynote conversation between Dr.'s Hammond and Johnson will focus on how the failure of queer studies in the late 1980s/early 1990s to consider race prompted a generation of scholars, artists, and activists to address the absence.

Evelynn Hammonds

Professor Hammonds is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. Read more about her here!

Areas of Research: African & African-American Studies, History of Medicine, Science & Race, Science & Technology Studies, Women & Gender Studies

E. Patrick Johnson

E. Patrick Johnson is Dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University. A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Johnson’s work has greatly impacted African American Studies, Performance Studies, and Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Read more about him here!

Areas of Research: Black Gender and Sexuality Studies, Performance studies, Ethnography, Oral Histories, Spirituality

FRIDAY, April 4, 2025

Location: Hyde Hall

8:15 am REGISTRATION OPENS

9:00 am Welcome by Jennifer Nash

9:30 am –– 11:00 am Representing the Race: Queer Images of Blackness

Panelists: Charles Nero (Moderator), Amber Musser, Antonia Randolph, La Marr Jurelle Bruce

This panel focuses on the ways in which the black (homo)sexual body is represented through the mediums of film, theater, and/or live performance, engaging the politics and possibilities of these representations.

11:30 am –– 1:00 pm Disciplinary Tensions: Black Studies and Queer Studies

Panelists: Dwight McBride (Moderator), Sharon Holland, Jeffrey McCune, Roderick Ferguson, Michelle Wright, Olivia Polk

This panel revisits the ways in which Black Studies has historically elided issues of (homo)sexuality and/or how Queer Studies has elided issues of racism and race and explores the trajectories of “black queer studies” or “black gay studies” as a critical intervention of both disciplines. The panelists examine if such interventions have signaled the inclusiveness they have purported and offer future articulations of “black queer studies” within the context of our contemporary moment.

1:00 pm –– 2:30 pm LUNCH BREAK

2:30 pm –– 4:00 pm How to Teach the Unspeakable: Race, Queer Studies & Pedagogy

Panelists: Bryant Keith Alexander (Moderator), Keith Clark, Beverly Guy Sheftall, Shoniqua Roach, Reginald Blockett

This panel asks what is at stake when black queer pedagogy is institutionalized in the academy, especially at a time when the state has questioned the legitimacy of teaching sexuality as a category of intellectual inquiry. How do teachers and students navigate issues of power inside and outside the black queer studies classroom?

4:00 pm –– 4:30 pm BREAK

4:30 pm –– 6:00 pm Keynote Conversation between Evelynn Hammonds & E. Patrick Johnson

SATURDAY, April 5, 2025

Location: Hyde Hall

8:15 am REGISTRATION OPENS

9:30 am –– 11:00 am Policing Black Bodies: Queer Studies, Public Policy, and the Law

Panelists: Cathy Cohen (Moderator), Charlene Carruthers, Mel Michelle Lewis, Shannon Malone Gonzalez, Ash Williams

This panel examines the intersections between queer studies and public policy/ law, with a focus on policies that directly impact gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people of color. The panelists will address queer political organizing and reflect on how issues of poverty, discrimination, homelessness, and access to healthcare affect black LGBTQ communities.

11:00 am –– 11:30 am BREAK

11:30 am –– 1:00 pm Black Queer Digitality

Panelists: Shaka McGlottenm (Moderator), AJ Christian, Moya Bailey, Brian A. Horton, Legacy Russell, Quortne R. Hutchins

The digital is often perceived as both a space for Black queer community building, bypassing the gatekeeping mechanisms that have limited Black queer expression, but also as a site where Black queer communities can be targeted, exploited and even replaced by AI and avatars. This panel addresses Black queer investment in digital and virtual spaces, the potentials of those spaces to create new modes of connection, collaboration, and cultural citizenship, but also the anxieties and risks posed by these same participatory opportunities.

1:00pm –– 2:30 pm LUNCH BREAK

2:30 pm –– 4:00 pm Black Queer South: Regionalism & Transnational Flows

Panelists: Jafari Allen (Moderator), Nikki Lane, Tanya Saunders, Lyndon Gill, Rico Self, LaToya Eaves, Darius Scott

This panel takes the fact that this symposium/conference is situated in the American South as a starting point for thinking black queer studies through the regional and the transnational. Using the South as a reference point for both the American South and the Global South, panelists explore how regional and transnational differences, linkages, and contexts shape (and are shaped by) black queer cultures, representation, and praxis.

4:00 pm –– 7:00 pm BREAK

Doors at 7:00 pm, Performances Exploring Black Queer Identity at Current Art Space & Studio

Show at 7:30 pm. "Strange Fruit: Sowing the Seeds of Change, Resistance, and Personal Power"

SUNDAY, April 6, 2025

Location: Blackbox Theatre in Swain Hall

8:00 am REGISTRATION OPENS

9:30 am –– 11:00 am Black Queer Writing: Who’s Reading Us?

Panelists: Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Moderator), Briona Simone Jones, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Destiny Hemphill, Zelda Lockhart

The writers in the Black queer literary tradition are creators of queer worlds and audacious possibilities that black queer scholars, activists and community builders hold close. These panelists demonstrate how Black queer writing has transformed the thinkable moving Black Queer Studies beyond critique into a generative imaginative collective imperative.