“Blackness and the Changing Diaspora”

Abstract: Far from being a static, settled identity, Blackness is continually updating itself across the diaspora. In this talk, Michelle M. Wright will discuss how, from its invention as Other in Enlightenment Europe, to the near-monopoly of its study in US academies, Blackness operates as both a historical and phenomenological agent across the diaspora, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, sparking debates and challenges between academics, activists and artists.

Bio: Michelle M. Wright is the Emory University College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of English in Atlanta, Georgia, where she teaches courses on African American fiction, Black European Studies, Black feminist and queer studies, Black Speculative Fiction, and Black and African Diaspora Studies. She is the author of Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora (Duke UP, 2004) and Physics of Blackness: Beyond the Middle Passage Epistemology (U of Minnesota Press, 2015). She is, with Jodi A Byrd, co-editor of the book series Critical Insurgencies from Northwestern University Press.