The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb and author Margo Jefferson will be among the speakers at “The Black Lives Matter Effect: A Two-Day Conference on Activism, Culture, and Politics,” April 14-15, at NYU's Center for the Ballet and the Arts.
The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb and author Margo Jefferson will be among the speakers at “The Black Lives Matter Effect: A Two-Day Conference on Activism, Culture, and Politics,” April 14-15, at New York University (Center for the Ballet and the Arts, 16 Cooper Square [at East 5th St.]).
After the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013 and a resurgence of African American political activism throughout the country, a host of issues around race and representation have assumed a new significance. Against this backdrop, this two-day conference assembles a number of distinguished scholars, writers, critics, and artists for a series of conversations over five panels exploring the reverberations of these issues in American politics, intellectual life, and the arts.
Sessions include “Reflections on the New Jim Crow,” “The Politics and Poetics of the Black Memoir,” and “Art, Music, and Culture in the Wake of Black Lives Matter,” among others.
Thursday, April 14
3:30 p.m.
Reflections on the New Jim Crow
• James Forman, Jr. (Yale University Law School)
• Elizabeth Hinton (Harvard University)
• Vincent Warren (Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights)
Moderated by Eyal Press, The Nation
5:00 p.m.
From MLK to BLM: A Genealogy of Civil Rights Protest
• Jelani Cobb (University of Connecticut, New Yorker)
• N.B.D. Connolly (New York University)
• Thomas Sugrue (New York University)
Moderated by Sarah Leonard, The Nation
Friday, April 15
2:00 p.m.
Writing Black Lives: The Politics and Poetics of Black Memoir
• Chris Jackson (editor, Spiegel & Grau)
• Margo Jefferson (author, Negroland: A Memoir)
• Clifford Thompson (author, Twin of Blackness: A Memoir)
Moderated by Lisa Lucas, executive director, National Book Foundation
3:30 p.m.
The Choreography of Race: Dance, Identity, Inclusion
• Ronald K. Brown (artistic director, Evidence)
• Virginia Johnson (artistic director, Dance Theatre of Harlem)
• Gia Kourlas (dance critic, New York Times)
• Dean Moss (director, Gametophyte)
Moderated by Danielle Goldman, New School
5:00 p.m.
A New Renaissance? Art, Music, and Culture in the Wake of Black Lives Matter
• Susan Cahan (Yale University)
• George Lewis (composer, Columbia University)
• Rowan Ricardo Philips (poet and critic, Heaven)
• Greg Tate (writer and musician)
Moderated by Adam Shatz, London Review of Books
All events are free and open to the public. Please RSVP by emailing nyih.info@nyu.edu with the subject “RSVP BLACK LIVES MATTER” and your first and last name. For more information, please call 212.998.2101. Subways: 6 (Astor Pl.); N, R (8th St.).
The conference is sponsored by the New York Institute for the Humanities, the Tisch School of the Arts, the Center for Ballet and the Arts, the Vice Provost for Faculty, Arts, Humanities, and Diversity, and the Institute of African American Affairs.