Black Studies in Canada: Confronting Empire, Resisting Erasure

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

This roundtable brings together junior faculty to reflect on the development and significance of emerging Black Studies programs in Canada amidst the sociopolitical crises of late-stage American empire. As attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and critical race theory (CRT) escalate in the United States, the reverberations of this backlash are felt globally, including in Canadian institutions. Black Studies in Canada exists at the intersection of these ideological battles, navigating local legacies of settler colonialism and anti-Blackness while responding to transnational discourses shaped by American empire.

Our discussion will consider the implications of Black Studies as an institutional project in Canadian universities. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, Black Studies programs in Canada are shaped by a distinct context: the erasure of Black presence in national narratives, the mythologies of Canadian multiculturalism, and the intertwined struggles for Black and Indigenous liberation. These programs reject the reactive framing often imposed by American discourses, offering instead a proactive vision grounded in the specificity of Canadian Black geographies and histories.

This roundtable also interrogates the precarities faced by Black Studies scholars in Canada, particularly junior faculty, as we grapple with institutional barriers, limited resources, and the broader sociopolitical climate of anti-intellectualism. We ask: To what extent does Black Studies in Canada provide a blueprint for resisting the late-stage American empire's encroachment on global critical thought? How can it chart alternative futures that transcend the boundaries of nation and empire?

Through collective reflection and dialogue, this session foregrounds the urgency of sustaining and expanding Black Studies in Canada as both an academic project and a site of resistance against imperialist logics.



Chair: pending

Participants/Presenters:
1) Ola Mohammed (York University)
2) Kristin Moriah (Queen's University)

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Panelists

• Ola Mohammed, York University

• Kristin Moriah, Queen's University

Biographical Information

CHAIR:

Pending

PARTICIPANTS/PRESENTERS:
1) Dr. Ola Mohammed is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Black Canadian Studies Certificate in the Department of Humanities at York University. She specializes in interdisciplinary research exploring Black cultural production, Black social life and Black being as sites of possibility. Her manuscript, The Black Nowhere: Sonic Architectures of Dispossession, examines the sonic dimension of anti-Blackness in Canada; her research interests include, Black Studies, Popular Music & Sound Studies, Performance Theory and Digital Cultures.

2) Dr. Kristin Moriah is an Associate Professor of English at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She earned her Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the most recent recipient of the Marie Tremaine Fellowship from the Bibliographic Society of Canada. Moriah was the 2022 recipient of the American Studies Associations Yasuo Sakakibara Prize. She was a 2022 Visiting Fellow at the Pennsylvania State University Center for Black Digital Research. From 2021-2023 she was the co-director of the Black Studies Summer Institute, a joint initiative between Queen’s University and the University of Toronto which sought to advance Black Studies in Canada at the graduate level. She is the editor of Insensible of Boundaries: Studies in Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the first collection of scholarly essays about radical Black feminist editor and activist Mary Ann Shadd Cary (forthcoming with Pennsylvania Press). Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada, the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, and the Harry Ransom Center. Her research and writing have appeared in American Quarterly, TDR, PAJ, Early American Literature, Theatre Research in Canada, Performance Matters and Sounding Out.