Examining the Black Atlantic Diaspora

Think of the Atlantic Ocean as a cultural highway connecting Africa, Britain, the Caribbean, the Americas. Black culture evolved all along the Atlantic rim countries, and in each location, it developed in unique ways while maintaining some key attributes in common.

On Friday, April 5, and Saturday, April 6, the Cultural Studies Council and the Whitney Humanities Center will explore this phenomenon at an international conference on “Locations, Cultures, Topographies: Diaspora in Cultural Criticism.” Panels focusing on the visual arts, film and photography, literature, and cultural criticism in Great Britain, Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, will explore the relation between culture and identity in what is sometimes called the “Black Atlantic Diaspora.”

“This conference will move beyond exclusive categories of nation and race. What we are doing, actually, is complicating our understanding of the interconnections between race, nationality, and culture,” says Ian Baucom, assistant professor in English and one of the conference coordinators. “This is not just about Black culture or British culture, for example,” he says. “How can we think of Black culture as national property? All cultures are connected by ways of writing, thinking, and criticism.”

The first session will be held at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, April 5, with a keynote address by University of Chicago critic Homi Bhabha, an authority on colonial and post-colonial theory and the author of “The Location of Culture.”

At 6:15 p.m. the British filmmaker Isaac Julien will present a screening of his new film, “Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask.” Mr. Fanon embodied rich cultural complexities in his own life: born in Martinique, he trained as a psychiatrist in France and went on to work in North Africa, where he became involved in the Algerian independence movement. He was the author of seminal works in intercultural studies, including “Black Skin, White Mask” and “The Wretched of the Earth.”

On Saturday, April 6, from 10 a.m.- 5:30 p.m., there will be sessions that focus on “Framing Diaspora: Charting the Visual Arts,” “Cinematic Visions,” and “Critical Cartographies.” Guest speakers include Colin MacCabe, director of the British Film Institute; Paul Gilroy, visiting professor of African-American studies and sociology and author of “ ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation”; Gilane Towadros, director of the Institute for International Visual Arts; Manthia Diawara, professor of Africana studies at New York University; Kobena Mercer, author of “Welcome to the Jungle”; and Coco Fusco, author of “English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas.”

Other speakers will include filmmaker Julien and Yale faculty members Ian Baucom, Sara Suleri Goodyear, Christopher Miller, and Maurice Wallace.

Co-sponsoring the conference are the Yale Art Gallery, the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, the English Department, the History of Art Department, the Office of the Secretary, the Woodward Lecture Series, Saint Anthony Hall, and the British Council. The sessions, with the exception of the film which will be screened at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street, will take place at Dwight Chapel, 67 High Street. They are free and open to the public.