American Studies hosts Black Sexualities Symposium

On April 5, 2016, the American Studies Department hosted a day-long symposium on Black Sexualities.  Six visiting scholars -- Vanessa Agard-Jones (Yale), Sarah Jane Cervenak (UNC-Greensboro), Nadia Ellis (Berkeley), Uri McMillan (UCLA), Amber Musser (Washington University), and Emily Owens (Brown) -- presented their new scholarship on topics ranging from Grace Jones to the sexual politics of pesticide in Martinique, from black women's sexual labor in 19th century New Orleans to the idea of liquidity as a new analytic in the study of black sexuality. The day concluded with a conversation among all of the scholars about the field of black sexualities.  The scholars discussed - and theorized - the convergence of scholarly interest in black pleasures and scholarly interest in black death, perishment, and nothingness; the place of sex in black sexuality studies; and the usefulness of "older" analytics like respectability and disrespectability in "newer" work on black erotics.