Media

Black Futures Symposium: Brazil’s Landless rural Workers Movement

On October 13, 2022, Cristina Sturmer, an activist, and researcher with Brazil’s Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Landless Rural Workers Movement participated in Baruch College’s Black Studies Colloquium symposium “Black Futures: Black Ecologies.” Read more here.

Fireside Chat: Black Futures, Race, Inequality, & Public Policy
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This video involves a discussion or “fireside chat” between two Black Futures Scholars, Jacquelyn Ortiz and Maya McFarlane. In this presentation, they discuss their research, lessons they learned in Prof. Beeman’s Race, Inequality, and Public Policy course, their career goals, and how their work relates to Black Futures. Read more here.

“Such is Aunt Nancy:” Gender, Scavenging, and Racial Capitalism on the Harlem Renaissance Stage” a Works-in-Progress presentation by Erica Richardson

In what spaces and places can poor Black women’s work be economically and socially valued? Is scavenging labor? Can Black women’s care and ingenuity transform discarded items? And what does it mean to depict these issues in the context of an emerging Black Modernity of the Harlem Renaissance? In this Work-in-Progress style presentation, Professor Erica Richardson (English, Affiliated faculty in Black and Latino Studies, Weissman Arts and Sciences, Baruch College) will respond to these questions through an excavation of The Chip Woman’s Fortune (1923) by Willis Richardson (no relation to Professor Erica Richardson). Read more here.

Black Futures Symposium, Dr. Nisrin Elamin

The Black Futures Symposium welcomes a presentation by researcher and activist Nisrin Elamin. Nisrin received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Stanford University in 2020. Her doctoral research was an ethnographic examination of the ways Saudi and Emirati corporate investments in land reconfigured everyday social relations between landless and landholding stakeholders in central Sudan. Nisrin has published scholarly articles in Critical African Studies and the Project on the Middle East Political Science Journal. Before pursuing her Ph.D., Nisrin spent over a decade working in youth development, organizing, and resource rights in the US and Tanzania. Her presentation focuses on dispossession and corporate investment in Sudan. This presentation will is moderated by Dr. Keisha Allan (Black and Latino Studies, Baruch College). Read more here.

A Select Screening of Quilombo (1984) and discussion of Racial Capitalism, Radical Black Feminism, and Imagining the Archive

Select scenes from Quilombo (1984) are shown with a discussion from Professor Tshombe Miles (Black and Latino Studies), Professor Rojo Robles (Black and Latino Studies), and Professor Erica Richardson (English). This open discussion and reflection on the film focuses on racial capitalism, radical Black feminism, and “telling impossible stories” from archives of slavery as explored in Saidiya Hartman’s essay “Venus in Two Acts” (2008) and Pedro Lebrón Ortiz’s “Maroon Mlogics” (2019). Read more here.

Black Futures Symposium : Colette Pichon Battle

Colette Pichon Battle is a generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana. She founded the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy and led the development of programming focused on equitable climate disaster recovery, global migration, community economic development, and energy democracy for more than 17 years in the Gulf South. Colette now serves as the Partner of Vision & Initiatives at Taproot Earth, a global climate justice organization working for a world where all people can live, rest and thrive in the places they love. She serves on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly, co-chairs the national Water Equity and Climate Resilient Caucus with PolicyLink, serves on the steering committee of the Ocean Justice Forum, and is a lead architect of the 5-state, multi-issue initiative Gulf South for a Green New Deal. Colette also helped to develop the 13-state Southern Communities for Green New Deal with the Southeast Climate & Energy Network and the Red, Black & Green New Deal, the national climate initiative with the Movement for Black Lives. In 2022, Colette received the William O. Douglas Award- recognizing individuals who have made outstanding use of the legal/judicial process to achieve environmental goals, particularly those with national significance. Her TED Talk on climate migration was ranked in the top 10 TED talks of 2020. And she was named a 2019 Obama Fellow for her work with Black and Native communities.

Black Futures Symposium Dr. Chakanetsa Mavhunga

The Black Futures Symposium welcomes a presentation by Dr. Chakanetsa Mavhunga. Mavhunga is a full professor of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. He characterizes his work as knowledge in the service of and through the problem-solving, wherein theory is a product of and informs an ethic of responsibility to the community, so that especially faculty and students from marginalized communities carry their communities’ priorities to shape what they do on campus while drawing the university to communities, to engage in learning-and-solving-at-the intersection of multiple forms of knowing. Prof. Mavhunga will draw from this ongoing work in Zimbabwe and western Massachusetts for his talk. This presentation is moderated by Dr. Shelly Eversley (Chair of Black and Latino Studies. Read more here.

Black Futures Student Scholars Reflections and on “Such is Aunt Nancy” Gender, Scavenging, and Racial Capitalism on the Harlem Renaissance Stage

In what spaces and places can poor Black women’s work be economically and socially valued? Is scavenging labor? Can Black women’s care and ingenuity transform discarded items? And what does it mean to depict these issues in the context of an emerging Black Modernity of the Harlem Renaissance? In this Work-in-Progress style presentation, Professor Erica Richardson (English, Affiliated faculty in Black and Latino Studies, Weissman Arts and Sciences, Baruch College) will respond to these questions through an excavation of The Chip Woman’s Fortune (1923) by Willis Richardson (no relation to Professor Erica Richardson). Read more here.

An Indestructible Life: Reflections on Marronage Pedro Lebrón Ortiz

The following is an overview of some of the topics addressed in the podcast series “Afro-Indigenous Past Lives and Futures”, followed by a presentation recap by Guest scholar and writer Pedro Lebron Ortiz. Read more here.

Listen to Episode 1: Euromodernity and Race in the Americas

Listen to Episode 2: Taino and Quechua Rebellions