Black | France | Noire Inaugural Symposium: Gendered Identities, Racialized Spaces

May 21-23, 2025 Paris

CBESA is one of the Centers behind the BLACK | FRANCE | NOIRE project, an initiative looking at "Black” French Studies as a capacious field that merits exploration along multiple lines of inquiry. One of the most compelling questions to arise in this field is the matter of how race and gender have long intersected, shaping the lived experience of “Black” French women, girls, and non-binary people. The inaugural BLACK | FRANCE | NOIRE symposium offers a series of roundtables that address this question from a variety of angles – from intellectual history to contemporary media, from art and performance to activism, from storytelling to sport.

Over two days of dialogue, study, critique, provocation, and celebration, we will consider intellectual, creative, and political possibilities that are both rooted in the past and committed to fashioning more just futures. Thinking in a transoceanic frame, participants will take up specific avenues of reflection concerning the crucial and longstanding contributions of gendered and racialized individuals and communities within the francophone world.

Sponsored By:

Africana Days – Black History Month Association
The Columbia University African American & African Diaspora Studies Department
The Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University
The Columbia University Institute for Social and Economic Research Policy
Reid Hall – Paris, Columbia University Global Center
Park House Cultural Center and House of Arts
The Carnegie Mellon Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic
Northeastern University College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Africana Studies Department
The Yale University Department of African American Studies

Find Participants Here

Explore the Program Here

Register For Day 1 and 2 Here