Black Studies: Vocabularies and Genealogies

Maisam Alomar
Ethnic Studies
UC San Diego

SA Smythe
History of Consciousness
UC Santa Cruz

“Vocabularies and Genealogies” is the multi-campus project of the Black Studies Project Graduate Student Working Group (BSPGrads). It cultivates the intellectual and political resources of scholars of Black Studies at the graduate level throughout the UCs, moving towards a sustained and collaborative multi-media project. The project stages the simple, but rigorous question of “what are the keywords of Black Studies?” Its form as a dynamic and digital presentation of keywords in conversation with each other through an online platform speaks to the necessarily interdisciplinary, international and yet geo-specific conditions of blackness in the modern world. This project builds off of the foundation established by the faculty initiative “Black Studies Project” with specific aims to establish tools and resources that current and future graduate (and undergraduate) students can use and contribute to, thus helping them frame their Black Studies projects.