This roundtable session addresses the 2022 NeMLA conference theme of “care” to explore its significance and resonance throughout the Black diaspora. As Christina Sharpe asks in In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016), “How can we think (and rethink and rethink) care laterally, in the register of the intramural, in a different relation than that of the violence of the state?” (20) This session aims to continue to rethink care in this context.Presentations will consider how Black writers, artists, filmmakers, and other cultural producers explore the practice of care in relation to Black peoples and other living beings across national boundaries. Participants might consider, but are not limited to, some of the following questions:
· How does migration (and/or forceful movement) shape the practice of care among Black peoples in the Americas and beyond?
· How might we understand the connection between Blackness, notions of care, and the environment?
· What challenges do Black studies and critical race studies present for the Anthropocene?
· How does care enable possibilities and imaginings of Black futures?
While the content of the texts, images, films, and other cultural productions are the primary focus of the roundtable, participants are encouraged to consider how their engagement with the forms of their examples might also demonstrate a practice of care, especially one attentive to caring for Black life. The aim of the roundtable is to think carefully about the various ways we can and do enact care in both ordinary and extraordinary ways.
Please submit abstracts here by the September 30, 2021 deadline: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/login