MAY 28-31, 2015 – VILLA LA PIETRA, CINEMA ODEON

 

Sister Outsider: Black American Women, Identity and Global Travel is a panel comprised of cultural workers, artists and scholars who are devoted to the creation and embodiment of new narratives about the international presence of Black culture. We are travelers who walk through the world possessed with a drive for adventure and exploration, but who are also deeply invested in discussing and dissecting the ways in which we collectively seek to understand ourselves as part of a larger global community. How do our race, gender and citizenship status complicate how we conceive of ourselves and how we’re perceived by others? How do we occupy our art and aesthetics? Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Michaela Angela Davis, Shani Jamila, Dr. Asia Leeds and Imani Uzuri will engage in a multilayered conversation, moderated by Dr. Cheryl Finley, about our complicated identities as Black American women who root ourselves in the African diaspora, while simultaneously talking back to the long history of travelers such as Katherine Dunham, Zora Neale Hurston, Juanita Harrison and women who were forced to travel like Saartje Bartman.

Cinema Odeon Firenze| Florence, Italy| May 30, 2015

Shani’s talk begins at the 12 minute mark.

Moderator: Cheryl Finley, Cornell University

Panelists:

Indigenous Style & Unmolested Beauty: A MAD Conversation
Michaela Angela Davis
Activist/Independent Scholar; New York

Who We Be and Where We Belong: Citizen Artists of the African Diaspora
Shani Jamila
Artist, Director; New York

Laylah A. Barrayn
Photographer

Privilege, Misrecognition, and the Body Politics of Traveling as a Black American Woman
Asia Leeds
Spelman College

“A Race Women’s Representation of Africa and Diaspora Culture: Shirley Graham Du Bois ‘Tom Tom”
Sharon Harley
University of Maryland, College Park

More information on participants can be found at the conference website:
http://www.blackportraitures.info/