For "Earth, World, Ethics: Conversations in Black and Caribbean Studies," the hosts asked participants to consider several thematics and questions, which the hosts locate in Black Critical Theory, Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Caribbean Poetics. How do we conceive of various formulations of disposability, life, nature, and the earth, against the apocalyptic tendencies in the discourses of the Anthropocene? What do we do with the category of the human vis-à-vis the senses—the senses and blackness, the senses and indigeneity, the senses and the elements? How do we think with geographical specificity in formulations of black ecology? What notion of nature renders our current ecological crisis so “monstrous” and “unnatural”? Must the thought of ecology at this geological and historico-political conjuncture yield its own “earth ethics”? Can we envisage a thinking of life and nature without falling prey to the violent history of vitalism and biologism?

April 30th @ 1-3 P.M. EDT 

Tiffany Lethabo King | Georgia State University
Dixa Ramírez D'Oleo | Brown University
Selamawit Terrefe | Tulane University
Moderated by Ren Ellis Neyra | Wesleyan University

Zoom Conference: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/92843208608

May 7th @ 1-3 P.M. EDT

Denise Ferreira da Silva | University of British Columbia, Vancouver
R.A. Judy | University of Pittsburgh
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz | Artist
Moderated by Mlondi Zondi | Wesleyan University

Zoom Conference: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/92843208608

May 14th @ 1-3 P.M. EDT

Zakiyyah I. Jackson | University of Southern California
David Marriott | Penn State University
Ronald Mendoza de Jesús | University of Southern California
Moderated by Axelle Karera | Emory University

Zoom Conference: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/92843208608

Date: Friday, April 9th
Time: 6:30 pm EST

Poet and sx salon creative editor Rosamond S. King will celebrate the launch of her new book, All the Rage, at a special edition of Gibney’s Living Gallery. RSVP here.

All the Rage addresses everyday pleasure as well as the present condition of racism in the United States—a time marked both by recurring police violence and intense artistic creativity—from a variety of perspectives: being Black, an immigrant, a woman, and queer. At its core dwells “Living in the Abattoir,” a series in which people of color live out their days as both workers and meat. All the Rage simultaneously invokes both anger at ongoing systemic violence and the frivolity of something that is, perhaps temporarily, “trending.” Read more & buy All the Rage here.

Date: Tuesday, April 20th
Time: 7pm EST

From the Kupferberg Center for the Arts website:

OFF THE PAGE: Conversations with Writers is a Queens College series produced by Kupferberg Center for the Arts, the Department of English, the Provost’s Office, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities. Curated by QC professor, author and Small Axe managing editor Vanessa Pérez-Rosario.

This event with Julia Alvarez is funded in part by Poets & Writers through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Read more about the event and register here.

About Julia Alvarez

Born in New York City in 1950, Julia Alvarez’s parents returned to their native country, Dominican Republic, shortly after her birth. Ten years later, the family was forced to flee to the United States because of her father’s involvement in a plot to overthrow the dictator, Trujillo.

Alvarez has written novels (How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, ¡Yo!, In the Name of Salomé, Saving the World, Afterlife), collections of poems (Homecoming, The Other Side/ El Otro Lado, The Woman I Kept to Myself), nonfiction (Something to Declare, Once Upon A Quinceañera, and A Wedding in Haiti), and numerous books for young readers (including the Tía Lola Stories series, Before We Were Free, finding miracles, Return to Sender and Where Do They Go?).

Alvarez’s awards include the Pura Belpré and Américas Awards for her books for young readers, the Hispanic Heritage Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. In 2013, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Obama.

Date: Wednesday, March 31st
Time: 6:30 pm EST

From LACS Stony Brook:

CuCa Cuir is back! Join us for the third installment of this LACS' graduate student-initiated series. This session focuses on independent queer presses.

CuCa3: Cuir Caribbean Voices/ Voces Queer del Caribe

Voces Cuir Editoras

Organized by PhD candidate Mario Henao (Hispanic Languages and Literature) 

From Ian Randle Press:

A first of its kind in the English-speaking Caribbean, Methodologies in Caribbean Research on Gender and Sexuality brings together contributions from a variety of Caribbean-based and diasporic researchers and activists about the main methods used in existing feminist research practice. Edited by professors Kamala Kempadoo and Halimah A. F. DeShong and comprising 29 chapters organized around 7 main themes – History & Historiography; Methodologies for Feminist Organizing & Action Research; Researching Gender; Researching Sexualities; Researching the Visual & Cultural; Methods for Analysing Talk & Text; and Reflections on Positionality – this book brings together canonical texts on Caribbean gender and sexuality research methods and methodology, recent research on digital cultures and critical reflections on positionality in fieldwork. The multi-disciplinary collection reveals both the embrace of multiple methods by Caribbean researchers and the limitations that the need to produce detailed and comprehensive knowledge about gender and sexuality imposes on the research process.

It is an invaluable resource for university students, for teaching purposes in women, gender and sexuality studies, and methods courses.

You can order the collection here.

Date: Saturday, March 13th
Time: 3-4pm EST

sx editorial assistant Alyssa James will co-facilitate "Honoring the Ancestors: Black Feminist Citational Praxis, an interactive workshop" alongside her Zora's Daughters podcast co-host Brendane Tynes as part of Strategies for Survival: Black Feminist Manifestos. This series by Weeksville Heritage Center is an online public program engaging with a series of historical and contemporary manifestos resonant with the explosive reality we experience now. Zakiya Collier, a Project Archivist for the Weeksville Heritage Center, will also co-facilitate the event. 

Written by Black feminist artists, activists, and writers and performed by Weeksville community members, these texts point to circumstances that are unacceptable and in need of change. But most importantly, they propose pathways to move forward in order to overcome the status quo and create new realities. In the midst of political uncertainty and a physically isolating pandemic, these statements offer visions that can help us connect with one another and transcend what feels like a never-ending crisis.

Book here and read more about the event here.

An anthropologist, an artist, a writer, and a philosopher collaboratively engaged the prison records of four Afro Caribbean women who led a 19th century labor riot in St. Croix, Danish West Indies (now U.S. Virgin Islands). Join the VI Studies Collective for a panel about intimate histories, collaborative research, and Black feminist decolonial archival interventions.

The VI Studies Collective consists of:

Tami Navarro, Associate Director, Barnard Center for Research on Women; Small Axe editorial committee member
La Vaughn Belle, Artist in Residence, University of the Virgin Islands
Hadiya Sewer, Research Fellow, African and African American Studies Program, Stanford University
Tiphanie Yanique, Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing, Emory University

Register for the event here.

Date: Monday, March 8th
Time: 6pm EST

From the screening's Eventbrite:

On International Women's Day 2021, the Center for Experimental Ethnography is pleased to present Haitian filmmaker Etant Dupain's feature "Madan Sara: Pouvwa Fanm Aysiyen" (Madan Sara: The Power of Haitian Women) followed by a discussion between Etant Dupain (Director, Madan Sara), Dr. Régine Michelle Jean-Charles (Associate Professor of French and the Graduate Program Director at Boston College), and Lunise Cerin (Editor, Madan Sara). The CEE screening of Madan Sara follows a four-day series of free, public screenings of the film throughout Haiti, supported by matenmidiswa pwodiksyon. 

Spaces are limited, so reserve your spot today by following this link to register for the event. 

For more information on future film screenings and to support the efforts of the Madan Sara Project as they work to share the film across Haiti, please visit MadanSaraFilm.com.

Small Axe editorial committee member Régine Jean-Charles also wrote "'Madan Sara' Tells the Story of Haitian Women Both Ordinary and Extraordinary," a review of the film, for Ms. magazine. Read it here.

Date: Tuesday, March 9th
Time: 7pm EST

From the event website:

During this International Women’s Day conversation moderated by W. Ford Schumann Faculty Fellow in Democratic Studies Régine Jean-Charles, Évelyne Trouillot and Edwidge Danticat will read from their fiction and share their unique perspectives about Haiti’s past, present, and future.

In a recent essay, the award-winning Haitian author Trouillot writes, “…my writings, stemming from my lived experience and my aesthetic and social vision for a more beautiful and just world, are presented to readers who are not always acquainted with my reality…” The same can be said of the internationally acclaimed author Danticat whose writing set in Haiti and in the Haitian diaspora reflects a commitment to humanity, beauty, and justice.

Register for the event here.