Black Counter Cartographies
April 7, 2023, 4:00pm Est
Tonya Foster
George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry- San Francisco State University.
and
Elleza Kelley
Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English- Yale University
Presented virtually via Zoom
Registration required http://bit.ly/3J8V3Rg
Akin to the way that racial thinking marks and makes human difference, geographic knowledge and its modes of representation mark differences—above from below ground, land from water, here from there, mine from yours. The field of Black Geographies challenges and reimagines modernity’s production of space (and time), one that has been abstracted by the metrics of markets and politics. Black Counter Cartographies brings together diverse scholars, artists, and designers in a series of conversations exploring the spatial practices of Black life across the diaspora and how they construct “counter cartographies” of sociality, imagination, and liberation.
Speaker Bios
Dr. Tonya Foster is a poet, essayist and Black feminist scholar. Dr. Foster is the George and Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry at San Francisco State University. She is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os; and coeditor of Third Mind: Teaching Creative Writing through Visual Art. Her writing and research focus on poetry, poetics, ideas of place and emplacement, and on intersections between the visual and the written. Forthcoming publications include poetry collections—Thingifications (Ugly Duckling Presse); ; a 2-volume compendium on the Umbra Writers Workshop; and an anthology of experimental creative drafts.
Dr. Elleza Kelley is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English at Yale University. Dr. Kelley works on African American literature, with an emphasis on black geographies and radical spatial practice in the United States. Her current research traces how black spatial knowledge and practice appear in literature and art, particularly through experimentations with form, genre, and media. Her first book project looks at practices of inscription and mark-making as modes of spatial production, representation, and reinvention. Kelley’s second project explores Toni Morrison’s theories of place and geography, which she has written about in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography. Her other writing can be found in The New Inquiry, Cabinet Magazine, and elsewhere.
Semester Event Partners: Center for Ethnicity and Race-Columbia University (CSER), Institute for the Study of Sexuality & Gender -Columbia University (ISSG); Institute for Comparative Literature & Society (ICLS); Department of Art History & Archaeology-Columbia University ; Department of Anthropology ; Department of History-Columbia University, Department of Africana Studies- Barnard College; The School of the Arts - Columbia University; Center for Jazz Studies-Columbia University
