Black Studies Collaboratory

The Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley is excited to announce that we have been selected as one of sixteen recipients of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures grant. This grant is a collaborative effort to address racial inequality through new humanities-based research & solutions. The $2.87 million—the largest award UC Berkeley has ever received from the Mellon Foundation—will fund “The Black Studies Collaboratory,” a three year project aimed towards amplifying the interdisciplinary, political and world-building work of Black Studies. The Black Studies Collaboratory will consist of academic-year think tanks, summer labs for graduate students, research grants for faculty and students, and a university course open to the public. The Black Futures Retreat organized in collaboration with a host of community partners will be the culmination of the initiative. With the Mellon Foundation Just Futures grant, the Department of African American Studies at UCB is poised to greatly expand the scope and impact of its scholarship.

Email: Blackstudiescollab@berkeley.edu

Leigh Raiford, Inaugural Director and Co-PI

Tianna Paschel, Co-PI

Barbara Montano, Project Manager

Official Website: https://blackstudiescollab.berkeley.edu

Berkeley African American Studies awarded $2.8 million grant to expand community impact

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Black Studies Collaboratory Postdoctoral Fellow Application

Small Grants Program 2022

Applications due October 29th, 2021

Roundtable on Black Feminist Praxis – Global Black Feminisms Summer Lab 2021

This summer, the Black Studies Collaboratory (BSC) launched its first iteration of the Global Black Feminisms Summer Lab. The program selected advanced graduate students doing Black feminist work on the United States, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Colombia and the UK. Each student was paired with a mentor who provided rigorous and generous feedback on the students’ works in progress. Additionally, the mentors each offered a critical Black feminist text that spoke to the urgency of Black feminist epistemologies in the academy and beyond.

In our quest to concretize Black Study as a public good, the BSC is making available the recording of the final session of the Global Black Feminisms Summer Lab. This Roundtable was moderated by BSC Director, Dr. Leigh Raiford and Summer Lab Host, Dr. Tianna S. Paschel. The event allowed our mentors– Drs. Christen Smith, Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez and Moya Bailey– to speak to students about being Black feminist public intellectuals and how to think about Black feminist teachings in our current political and social moment. The mentors also discussed what it is like to navigate higher education as Black women with Black feminist principles. Here are some takeaways:

Engage in embodied practices.
Honor your creative work, especially during graduate school.
If you do not create boundaries for yourself, they will not exist.
Identify one or two problems you would like to address when you become a faculty member. Do not try to fix the institution.
Black feminist praxis also includes holistic care, collectively and intergenerationally.
Black feminism is not contained within the walls of the university.

We hope you enjoy engaging with and sharing this rich discussion. We are currently editing the recording of the Summer Lab’s Opening Keynote address by Dra. Ochy Curiel, which will also be made available to the public.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Global Black Feminisms Summer Lab and made it such a success! We look forward to the next Summer Lab in 2022.

The Global Black Feminisms Summer Lab was created as part of the Black Studies Collaboratory, a three-year project housed in Berkeley’s African American Studies department and made possible through a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative.

Spring 2021 Critical Conversations Series

Critical Conversations Spring 2021 series is organized around two themes: celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. Barbara T. Christian, an architect of Black feminist criticism, a founding member of our Department and a gifted writer and teacher; and exploring the concept of “abolition democracy,” thinking creatively and collaboratively about the practice of abolition as necessary to building life-affirming institutions and robust democratic structures. Through both themes, we ask: what are the lessons of the Black Feminist, Black Radical, and Black intellectual traditions for our moment and what is the role of Black Studies in building more just futures?