Decentering
the Field of
Black Studies
Diahara Traoré
Diahara Traoré is a professor at the University of Montreal’s School of Social Work. Her research interests focus on emancipatory group intervention, non-Western epistemologies in social work, group work in Black communities, and the place of religion and spirituality in social work. Her work focuses on cosmologies, beliefs and practices within African communities in Quebec, gendered knowledge within these communities, and their implications for social work training and research. As a socio-anthropologist, she attaches great importance to narratives and orality. Her aim is to develop practices and knowledge that promote the emancipation and inclusion of marginalized groups, by valuing critical perspectives.
Catherine Larochelle
Catherine Larochelle is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Montreal since 2018. She is the author of the books Marie-Louise et les petits Chinois d’Afrique (Mémoire d’encrier, 2024), School of racism. A Canadian History – 1815-1930 (University of Manitoba Press, 2023) and L’école du racisme. La construction de l’altérité à l’école québécoise (1830-1915) (Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2021). A member of the Centre d’histoire des régulations sociales, editor of the journal Histoire Engagée (www.histoireengagee.ca) and trustee of the Fondation des archives et du patrimoine religieux du Grand Montréal, her current research focuses on the history of the Œuvre de la Sainte-Enfance in Canada. She has a passion for theory, and is interested in ways of writing and transmitting Quebec’s history so that it remains relevant in the 21st century.
Philippe Néméh-Nombré
Philippe Néméh-Nombré is assistant professor at Saint Paul University’s Élisabeth Bruyère School of Social Innovation. His research focuses on Black political thought, cultures, poetics and ecologies, the possibilities of relations between Black and Aboriginal liberatory perspectives, and critical methodologies. He is the author of Improviser le reste : Études noires, risques poétiques, relationalité décoloniale (2024, Presses de l’Université de Montréal) and Seize temps noirs pour apprendre à dire kuei (2022, Mémoire d’encrier).
Jacques Renaud Stinfil
Jacques Renaud Stinfil is a doctoral student in philosophy at the Université de Montréal. His current research focuses on the colonial survivals framing relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and on the epistemic injustices of colonialism. He is also developing a Caribbean-inspired decolonial perspective, based in particular on the works of Frantz Fanon and Édouard Glissant. Interested in the (violent) ways in which ideas are inscribed in reality, Jacques Renaud Stinfil also reflects on what he sees as the world’s colonial availabilities.
Caroline Keisha Foray
Caroline Keisha Foray is a doctoral student in social work at the Université de Montréal, where she explores the intersections between social movements and the arts. With degrees in psychopedagogy as well as performing arts and cultural management, she fuses her diverse skills to explore social issues through an artistic prism. Her current research focuses on artivism in Black Canadian communities, a theme that highlights the links between the arts and social work, demonstrating how artistic practices can not only express complex identities, but also catalyze social movements and community change. Through her research, she aims to build bridges between critical theory, social engagement and artistic expression, thereby contributing to a better understanding of contemporary cultural and social dynamics.
Ariane Marcheterre-Pina
Ariane Marcheterre-Pina is a master’s student in history at the Université de Montréal. Her interests include the formation of Black communities in present-day Ontario. She is particularly interested in the plurality of approaches and institutions that supported Black education in Canada West. She is currently working on the commitment and practices of Black women’s work as educators in segregated schools for Black people in 19th-century Canada West. Ariane is actively interested in the methodological issues and challenges raised by research based on fragmentary bodies of sources that have played a role in the historical gaps concerning African-Canadians.
In 1963, the first course in Black Studies entitled “Negro History” was established at Merriet Junior College in Oakland, California, and shortly afterwards, the first Black Studies program was launched at San Francisco State College. This program preceded by a few years a first Black Studies department at the same institution, which was soon imitated first at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and then in nearly 500 academic units that were propelled between 1968 and 1975.
The decade of the 1980s then saw the negotiation of the place of Black Studies in institutions that were not necessarily welcoming to it, and the turn of the 2000s saw the solidification of the theoretical, institutional and political posture of Black Studies, which was now well established. In the end, it was mainly during the 2010s that such programs began to appear more widely outside the United States. In the United Kingdom, for example, it was not until 2017 that an undergraduate degree in Black Studies was created. In Canada, it was in 2016 that the first Black Studies program was established at Dalhousie University, seven years after the creation of the Black Canadian Studies Association, and just before such spaces multiplied elsewhere in the country. While such programs and university units have been slow to emerge in many contexts, including Canada, even though calls for their creation have been heard since the 1960s, the last few years have seen them take off.
On the other hand, in French-speaking countries, more so than in Portuguese- or Spanish-speaking countries, these programs and institutional spaces do not exist, despite the vitality of research, and discussions in this area are still barely audible in universities. What explains this discrepancy? The colloquium proposes to explore (1) epistemological formations across the different linguistic locations and spaces of the black diaspora, (2) the institutional and political trajectories of black knowledge and methodologies in universities, and (3) the political, social and cultural impacts and challenges of the presence or absence of black studies.
How can the field of Francophone Black Studies take shape in Canada, and particularly in Quebec? An initiative of the Université de Montréal and its partners, the “Decentralizing the Field of Black Studies” symposium will take place on November 7 and 8. Focusing on exchange and multidisciplinarity, this event will serve as a space for sharing, by welcoming the questions and knowledge of numerous panelists who will open up avenues of reflection on the issues surrounding Black Studies in the French-speaking world, and more broadly beyond English-speaking spaces. The colloquium has been organized with a view to broadening and stimulating discussion on the current state and future of this multidisciplinary field, while aiming for the growth of initiatives to develop programs and institutional structures for Black Studies in French.
What shape might French-language Black Studies take, particularly in Quebec and French-speaking Canada? What bridges are conceivable between Black studies here and elsewhere? How do Black Studies in Quebec and the Canadian Francophonie differ from Black Studies in English, Portuguese, Spanish and German? This symposium aims to help answer these questions. The overall aim of the event is to explore, in a comparative way, the relationship between black knowledge and academia, and, more specifically, to analyze and measure the heuristic potential of its institutionalized presence in Francophone and Quebec universities.
With 17 speakers, 5 panels and a plenary lecture, we look forward to welcoming you on November 7 and 8, both online and at the Carrefour des arts et des sciences de l’Université de Montréal (3150 rue Jean-Brillant), to a learning space where food and fun are guaranteed!
We would like to thank our partners for their invaluable support in organizing the conference.
Website by Quentin Castellano