On December 7, 2023, Sabine N. Meyer from the University of Bonn will join for a guest lecture. Under the title “Entangled Lives, Entangled Freedom(s): The Transformative Potential of Contemporary Black Indigenous Literature,” she will talk about The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois (2021) and Black Indigenous Literature. Please find an abstract of her talk below. The lecture will be held on Zoom from 12 to 2 pm.
If you would like to join, please use this link: https://kuei.zoom.us/j/62362308168
“Entangled Lives, Entangled Freedom(s): The Transformative Potential of Contemporary Black Indigenous Literature”
Over the last two decades, Black Indigenous literature, that is, literary works written by authors who identify as Black Indigenous, has emerged as a prominent medium for the negotiation of Black Indigeneity and for carving out a space outside the racial order implemented by North American settler states since the 18th century. My talk sets out to explore negotiations of Black Indigenous identity and relationality in one of the most recent examples of Black Indigenous fiction, Honorée Fannone Jeffers’ debut novel The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois (2021). My close reading demonstrates that the novel, through theme and form, consequently thinks together Blackness and Indigeneity in both past and present and explores the possibilities of shared Black Indigenous futures. Throughout my analysis, I also emphasize why it is important for scholars to engage with Black Indigenous literary production: shedding light on the politics and methodological limits of Western epistemologies and advancing alternative ways of knowing and making known, Black Indigenous literature is useful for confronting the “impasse between Blackness and Indigeneity” (Cheryl Harris) that has come to dominate discourses on Blackness and Indigeneity inside and outside academia.
