Black French studies are at an embryonic stage compared to that of Great Britain and the United States. The field has increasingly attracted interest since the 2000s, and the publication of Pap Ndiaye’s La Condition Noire. As an area of scholarly inquiry, Black French studies focus on the emergence of Black identity politics within the universalist tenets of French republicanism, the rise of Afro-French intellectualism, and constant circulations between mainland France, Africa and the African diaspora. This talk is a series of reflections from the perspective of an Afro-French scholar-artist: What is it to be Black in France? Black and French? How do we talk about race in a country that struggles to see it? How do we navigate a field marred by invisibility, the lack of statistics, and the lack of words anchoring Blackness in the French language? How did the 2020 “racial spring” affect the field?

Pre-register at: https://buffalo.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJckcOmvrDssGNA65XFUvLRGEPBqQnw9Y9as

Attendees who register in advance will be sent samples of any work our guest presenter has shared.

Scholar-artist, Mame-Fatou Niang is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Melodia E. Jones Chair of French at UB for the Fall 2021 semester. She is the author of Identités Françaises: Banlieues, féminités, universalisme (Brill, 2019), and co-director of Mariannes Noires: Mosaïques Afropéennes (2015), a documentary film about the lives of seven Afro-French women who investigate and unravel what it means to be Black and French, and Black in France. Dr. Niang’s work has been featured in a wide array of venues: journals like Contemporary French Civilization and Présences Francophones; collections such as Racismes de France (2020, La Découverte, Eds. Le Cour Grandmaison and Slaouti); numerous interviews and podcasts (#unsilencedpast @ Barnard College DHC, France24 in English, La Poudre in French); and collaboration with Slate, Jacobin, and various news outlets in metropolitan France. She is also a photographer and the co-author of a photo series on Black French Islam. Dr. Niang is currently working on a second manuscript tentatively titled “Mosaica Nigra: Blackness in 21^st-century France.”

This event is free and open to the public, thanks to generous support of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Melodia E. Jones Chair of French, and the College of Arts and Sciences.