Rethinking Black Studies for the 21st Century

Dayo Gore
Ethnic and Critical Gender Studies
UC San Diego

Sarah Clarke Kaplan
Ethnic and Critical Gender Studies
UC San Diego

“Rethinking Black Studies for the 21st Century” was a national conference held in Spring 2015 at UC San Diego. This was the culmination of a multiyear initiative at UCSD to bring together a collection of California and national scholars whose pedagogy and research intersect with critical emergent political and intellectual crosscurrents of Black Studies, including Black feminist and queer studies, Black trans- and internationalism, and science and technology studies in the Diaspora. By engaging perspectives from a range of disciplinary homes and fields of study, “Rethinking Black Studies” sparked critical and collaborative work at the intersections of African-American Studies, black feminisms and women of color feminisms, sexuality studies/queer theory, and the African Diaspora. Our goal was to initiate an ongoing conversation about the significance, direction, and potential of Black Studies as an intellectual and institutional project in the UC system, and in California more broadly.