Following in the tradition of legendary distinguished professors Tejumola Olaniyan (1959-2019) and Nellie Y. McKay (1930-2006), we endeavor with this Global Black Literatures Borghesi-Mellon workshop to build a cross-disciplinary scholarly community of faculty and graduate students engaged in transnational Black literary study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We ambitiously hope to build on the groundbreaking work of Olaniyan and McKay that established UW-Madison as an institution at the forefront of Black literary studies across disciplines, national boundaries, period, genre, languages, and methodologies. The main goal of the workshop, then, is to reaffirm UW-Madison as a thriving location for the production of global Black literary and cultural studies scholarship and stimulating intellectual exchange, attracting prospective graduate students, providing new avenues for engagement and collaboration between current graduate students and faculty, and inviting national and international faculty to gather, discuss, and present their work-in-progress. Through our interdisciplinary conversations and future collaborations, we will explore Global Black Literatures, in all its complexities and contradictions, as a vital emerging field. We ask: What are the possibilities and limits of Black literary and cultural studies framed around the idea of the global?
Contact:
Raquel Kennon, Associate Professor, Department of English
Brittney Edmonds, Assistant Professor, Department of African American Studies
Amadi Ozier, Assistant Professor, Department of English