2025 Black Feminist Graduate Symposium & Exhibition

The Black Feminist Working Group, co-convened by Jazmin Maço (Duke University, PhD, Art History) and Rukimani PV (Duke University, PhD, Literature), will be hosting the 2025 Black Feminist Graduate Symposium, "Thinking Beyond: Black Aliveness, Futurity, and Imagination."

Inspired by Kevin Quashie's Black Aliveness, Or A Poetics of Being (2021), this symposium offers presentations by graduate students across the US, public intellectuals, and artists engaging Black feminist thought across scholarly, creative, and community-based practices. Together, we consider questions of Black aliveness, futurity, and imagination - exploring how Black feminist frameworks offer new ways of attending to Black life and forging emergent aesthetics of being.

From May 1-2, at the FHI's Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall (Smith Warehouse, Bay 4), presenters will share their research projects and reflections. Sessions will address themes such as the poetics of Black embodiment, the aesthetics of Black life beyond death, and the transformative potential of Black feminist theoretical and artistic practices. The symposium will also include an art exhibition on display from May-August which focuses on these themes as engaged by Durham-based Black artists.

Our introductory keynote speaker for this year's symposium will be Jennifer Nash, Jean Fox O'Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies at Duke University. Nash's scholarship, including her work The Black Body in Ecstasy and Black Feminism Reimagined (2014), has shaped contemporary conversations on Black feminism, love, loss, and affect. Her keynote will engage the possibilities of Black feminist writing to imagine new futures for Black life and thought.

Our closing keynote speaker will be Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Associate Professor of Literature at Duke University and author of Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (2020). Jackson's work examines the intersections of race, species, and the human, offering insights into Black feminist poetics and philosophy. Her closing remarks will invite us to reflect on the stakes of Black aliveness and the necessity of Black feminist theoretical interventions.

We welcome you all to join us for Duke's First Black Feminist Graduate Symposium!

View the full symposium schedule here

RSVP here