Conversation & Screening

The School of Toni Cade Bambara with Makeba Lavan, Linda J. Holmes, Thabiti Lewis, & Louis Massiah

Tue, Dec 15, 2020

6:30 PM–8:30 PM

This event will take place online via Zoom. Please register below. This event will be ASL interpreted, closed captioned, and bilingual in English and Spanish.

Watch the video recording for this event here:

*This event will be ASL interpreted and include live captioning in English. Spanish interpretation available.

One of the early architects of Black Women’s Studies at CUNY, Toni Cade Bambara fashioned multiple counter-institutions in her lifetime. In this panel, Makeba Lavan will discuss Bambara’s late 1960s efforts at City College on “Realizing the Dream of a Black University,” Linda J. Holmes (author of the Bambara biography A Joyous Revolt) will share her experiences with Bambara as a teacher and cultural worker in the 1970s at Livingston College and beyond, Thabiti Lewis will introduce his new book “Black People Are My Business”: Toni Cade Bambara’s Practices of Liberation and Louis Massiah will screen part of his documentary-in-progress The T.C.B. School of Organizing.

This event will also be Livestreamed on YouTube starting at 6:30 PM (EST) here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJLf2l-L2nus650pGiazgxg

“Realizing the Dream of A Black University,” & Other Writings, edited by Makeba Lavan and Conor Tomás Reed; and “Black People Are My Business” by Thabiti Lewis.

“A Joyous Revolt: Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist” by Linda J. Holmes, and “Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara” co-edited by Linda J. Holmes

“Black People Are My Business”: Toni Cade Bambara’s Practices of Liberation was published by Wayne State University Press in 2020. Bonus! Use coupon code FW20 to save 30% on the book purchase.

This event is organized as part of Conor Tomás Reed‘s residency at Wendy’s Subway, Radiating Black~Puerto Rican~Feminist Studies from the City University of New York to the Americas and the Caribbean, and is co-sponsored by Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative from the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY.

About the speakers

Makeba Lavan is an Assistant Professor of English at Grinnell College. Her research focuses on (African) American Studies, Afrofuturism/Speculative Fiction and Popular Culture. Makeba’s intellectual musings have been published in Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies and Modern Language Studies. As part of Lost and Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, she co-edited “Realizing the Dream of A Black University,” & Other Writings, a collaborative publication of Toni Cade Bambara’s teaching materials from CUNY and Spelman College. Her current project explores the ways in which writers and artists of the African diaspora use speculative fiction to imagine and thus create better futures for Black people.

Linda J. Holmes is a writer, independent scholar, curator and long-time women’s health activist. She is the author of the 2014 book, A Joyous Revolt: Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist, and co-editor (with Cheryl Wall) of the 2007 anthology Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara. Her 1996 book, co-authored with Margaret Charles Smith, is Listen To Me Good: The Life Story of an Alabama Midwife. Holmes is currently working on a second book about midwives of African descent across the diaspora, past and present, as well as collecting oral histories from Hampton Institute Civil Rights Veterans who were in the forefront of the 1960s Movement to desegregate public spaces in Virginia.

Thabiti Lewis is Professor of English and Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Washington State University Vancouver. He is the author of Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America (2010), the editor of Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara (University of Mississippi Press, 2012), a collection of Bambara’s important interviews, and the author of Black People Are My Business: Toni Cade Bambara’s Practices of Liberation (2020). Lewis is also the co-director and co-producer with Pavithra Narayanan of the documentary film, Bam! Chicago’s Black Arts Movement (2019). As a literary critic, Lewis engages critical race theory and feminism. Lewis has been focused on re-examining the Black Arts moment, as well as using sports culture to help people better understand, become aware of, and eliminate racism in our society.

Louis Massiah is a documentary filmmaker and founder of Scribe Video Center. Through Scribe, he assists emerging filmmakers author their own stories, including the Precious Places Community History project, Muslim Voices of Philadelphia, and The Great Migration – A City Transformed. Massiah’s documentaries include The Bombing of Osage Avenue, W.E.B. Du Bois – A Biography in Four Voices, and How to Make a Flower. Other projects include video installations for The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a Nation, and the Musée des Civilisations Noires in Dakar, Senegal. He is the project director and co-programmer of We Tell: 50 Years of Participatory Community Media.

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Sobre el evento

Este es un evento en línea y se llevará a cabo en Zoom.
Regístrese aquí para asistir.
Interpretación al español disponible.
Este evento incluirá subtítulos inglés en vivo.

Una de las primeras arquitectas de los Estudios de la Mujeres Afrodescendientes en CUNY, Toni Cade Bambara diseñó múltiples contrainstituciones en su vida. En este panel, Makeva Lavan discutirá los esfuerzos de Bambara de finales de la década de 1960 al Colegio de la Ciudad sobre “Realizing the Dream of a Black University,” Linda J. Holmes (autora de la biografía de Bambara A Joyous Revolt) compartirá sus experiencias con Bambara como maestra y trabajadora cultural en la década de 1970 en Colegio Livingston y más allá, Thabiti Lewis presentará su nuevo libro “Black People Are My Business”: Toni Cade Bambara’s Practices of Liberation, y Louis Massiah proyectará parte de su documental en curso The T.C.B. School of Organizing.

“Black People Are My Business”: Toni Cade Bambara’s Practices of Liberation fue publicado por Wayne State University Press en 2020. ¡Bono! Use el código de cupón FW20 para ahorrar un 30% en la compra del libro.

Este evento se organiza como parte de la residencia de Conor Tomás Reed en Wendy’s Subway, Radiando Estudios Afro-descendientes~Puertorriqueñxs~Feministas de la Universidad Pública de Nueva York a las Américas y el Caribe.