On Interinstitutional Community: Black Feminist Methods, Mentorship, and Writing

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Discussion

Abstract

This roundtable brings together two interinstitutional writing and support collectives to meditate on how scholars build alternative forms of mentorship and peer support for interdisciplinary Black feminist diasporic knowledge production. Our participants range from full professors to pre-tenure faculty to recent PhDs, and our ways of working together represent new forms of relating that exceed and expand standard institutional channels. This roundtable insists that our networks of care and collaboration are themselves scholarly infrastructure, built on Black diasporic techniques of improvisation as collective practice—a technology long central to Black diasporic intellectual and creative traditions. All participants share a dedication to methods grounded in Black women’s knowledge, including critical family history, genealogy, ancestor work, and oral history. What does it mean to produce knowledge with and for family, community, and ancestors? How does centering embodied, archival, and intergenerational Black women's knowledge require us to improvise beyond and against institutional protocols? And how have we built the communities that make this work possible?

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Alison Kibbe, College of Charleston

Panelists

• Kameelah L. Martin, College of Charleston

• Candace Borders, Washington University in St Louis

• Karine L. Narahara, University of North Texas

Biographical Information

Alison H Kibbe is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the College of Charleston. She is a scholar, multidisciplinary artist, and cultural organizer. In her scholarly work, Alison specializes in critical food studies, Black geographies and Black mobilities, and cultural production across the Caribbean and African Diaspora.
Kameelah L. Martin’s scholarly expertise sits at the crossroads of African Diaspora literature(s) and folklore studies. She is trained in African American literary and vernacular traditions, with an emphasis on twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction. Her interdisciplinary reach spans such topics as African-derived spiritualities, Black Feminism, African American genealogy, Beyoncé, and Black popular culture & film. She is the author of two monographs, Conjuring Moments in African American Literature (2012) and Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics: African Spirituality in American Cinema (2016), and co-editor of The Lemonade Reader: Beyoncé, Black Feminism, & Spirituality. She is a professor of African American Studies & English at the College of Charleston.
Candace Borders is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and curator. Her research explores the intersections of race, gender, class, and the urban Midwest, with particular attention to the role of Black women’s activism in shaping the urban landscape. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Center for the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis and received her PhD in American Studies and African American Studies from Yale University.
Jeania Ree Moore is a writer, clergyperson, and interdisciplinary scholar of theology, religion, and African American studies. She is a PhD candidate in African American Studies and Religious Studies at Yale University, where her research draws on theology, ethics, and related disciplines to engage a range of sites in Black history and culture.
Karine L. Narahara is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Texas. Her research interests include Environmental Anthropology, Anthropological Theory, Ethnographic Methods, and Latin America. Her recent book is an ethnography about the Mapuche people and their conflicts with the oil industry in Patagonia. She is also a member of the Ilê Axé Aganju Ixolá, a Candomblé community in Rio de Janeiro, with whom she has been collaborating on a project about the journeys of Afro-Brazilian spiritual leaders in a post-slavery context. This research led her to explore alternative archival records created by Afro-Indigenous communities. From that, she is beginning to work on the "Okra Archives," a project that intends to explore plants as devices of ancestral memory.