Black liberation movements around the world, from the streets of Oakland and Ferguson to the shores of southern Europe, have focused international conversations among activists, academics, and artists on the importance of blackness to the geographical imagination. Importantly, this dialogue has elucidated the possibilities of blackness not only as a tool for understanding inequality, whiteness, non-being, and social/physical death, but also as a radical framework for envisioning liberation, social justice, and reconstruction.

We invite researchers, organizers, community stakeholders, and policymakers to Black Geographies to discuss the possibilities of work oriented around black geographic thought. This symposium offers geography in general, and black geographies specifically, as capacious fields of inquiry that invite historical, political, economic, sociological, and artistic perspectives–as well as a range of “established” and alternative methodologies.

 

Sponsorship provided by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California, the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, and the UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies