Moments of becoming: genealogies of black diaspora feminism

Thursday, 8 February 2018
5-7pm
Wolfson Lecture Theatre (Senate House)
Discussant: Parvathi Raman, SOAS
Chair: Awino Okech, SOAS

Please join us for our seminar with Dr. Nydia A. Swaby:

moments of becoming: genealogies of black diaspora feminism

Moving between past and present, narrative and theory, archive and ethnography, in this talk Nydia A. Swaby maps the genealogies of what she terms black / diaspora / feminism. Her usage of this concept is a decidedly epistemological proposition. Dr. Swaby suggests particular ‘ways of knowing’ that consolidates black feminist consciousness with the idea of diaspora as a socio-political formation and the site for solidarity and resistance. She proposes this epistemology not to replace one type of black feminist episteme with another. Rather, she seeks to highlight a theory and praxis that refuses nativism, cultural nationalism, and ethnic authenticity by emphasizing that liberation can only be achieved if we imagine and seek to develop more inclusive modes of critical analysis. The knowledge created by black British feminism emphatically demonstrates this approach, which has, in turn, influenced Dr. Swaby's conceptualization of black / diaspora / feminism.

Nydia A. Swaby is a historian and ethnographer working at the intersection of black feminist theory, diaspora studies, and queer of color critique. She is a Senior Teaching Fellow in the department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS, University of London. She was a Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher on the transdisciplinary project ‘Diasporic Constructions of Home and Belonging’ (CoHaB) co-hosted by the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies and obtained her Phd from the Centre for Gender Studies. Prior to enrolling at SOAS, Nydia worked at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She recently joined the editorial collective for the journal Feminist Review.

Parvathi Raman is a Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS

Awino Okech is a Lecturer at SOAS