The Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, UCL, invites you to a conversation between two leading scholars on the importance of Black Studies in the United States and in the UK.
Professor Abdul Alkalimat and Dr Kesawa John will talk about the inception of Black Studies and the importance of defending this space of insurgent intellectual life in the face of planetary crises.
Abdul Alkalimat (Gerald A. McWorter) is a founder of the field of Black Studies and author of many books and papers about Black liberation. He wrote the first college textbook for the field, Introduction to Afro-American Studies, which has seen seven editions, the last one free and online. A lifelong scholar-activist with a PhD from the University of Chicago, he has lectured, taught, and directed academic programs across the US, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and China. Two of his early contributions were serving as chair of the Chicago chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and co-founding the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) in 1967. Raised in Chicago's Cabrini Rowhouses, he is now professor emeritus of African American Studies and Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
Much of his work is freely available at http://www.alkalimat.org.
Kesawa John is a bilingual (French/English) Black feminist historian curious about stories which defy borders and is a Lecturer in Black British History and Convenor of the MA Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London.
A historian of liberation movements, intellectual history, and gender, Kesewa John’s research and teaching explores transatlantic, multilingual linkages between Afro-Caribbean activists and the evolution and circulation of Black radical thought. Kesewa is particularly interested in the intersections of histories of Black feminist and Black radical Caribbean activism.