Keynote Speaker
“How We Know: The Black Feminist Pragmatic Intergenerational Sphere”
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Alexis Pauline Gumbs describes herself as a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist and a prayer poet priestess. Dr. Gumbs has a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. She was the first scholar to research the Audre Lorde P apers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University, and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University during her dissertation research.
Dr. Gumbs’ edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines (PM Press February 2015, co-edited with Mai’a Williams and China Martens) follows in the footsteps of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color and offers and important intervention into the significance of mothering 
as visionary activist labor featuring never before published writing by June Jordan and work by a wide range of essayists, poets and visual artists involved in social movements that center the radical potential of mothering. Dr. Gumbs’ is also the author of Spill: Fugitive Scenes an experimental and poetic work of literary criticism based on the work of Hortense Spillers and the literary archive of freedom seeking black women.
Dr. Gumbs has published widely on Black Feminist literary practice and Caribbean Women’s Literature. Her scholarly work is published many journals including Obsidian, Meridians, Symbiosis, Feminist Studies, Macomere, SIGNS, Feminist Collections, and American Literature. Her black feminist theory is also featured in several edited volumes including innovative works such as The Black Imagination, Mothering and Hip Hop Culture; The Business of Black Power; Laboring Positions: Black Women, Mothering and the Academy; The Imperial University; Near Kin and more. Her work also appears in classroom standards including The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Literature and Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions. She is also a Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize Honoree and is featured in Best American Experimental Writing 2015. Her poetic work has been published in many of the most cutting-edge poetry journals around including Kweli, Vinyl, Backbone, Everyday Genius, Turning Wheel, UNFold, Makeshift, Proud Flesh, Sinister Wisdom, ElevenEleven and more. Her chapbook Good Hair Gone Forever, has been a success on the road and her limited run of Ogbe Oyeku: Black Feminist Book of the Dead and Unborn sold out on its first day in print. Alexis is the author of a critically acclaimed online collection of poems called “101 Things That Are Not True About the Most Famous Black Women Alive” which has more than 9,000 reads and downloads online.
Conference Schedule
Friday, April 14th 5:15 PM: Keynote Talk, Alexis Pauline Gumbs (University Hall 102) Talk to be followed by reception and book signing with Dr. Gumbs (University Hall 201)
Saturday, April 15th: Conference (University Hall 201)
8:00 – 8:45 AM: Breakfast
9:00 – 10:30: Panel 1 – Precarity in the Current Political Moment: Where are we now?
- Chris Russell, (Northwestern): “‘You’re Messing with meme Magic:’ Trump Memes, the Alt-Right, and Online Political Discourse”
- E . Jax Witzig, (DePaul): “The ‘Femme Phenomenon:’ (Mis)using Terminology to Locate the Genderqueer Self”
- Andrea Ford, (U Chicago): “(Anti)Institutional Menses: Our Blood, Our Business”
- Shana Bahemat, (DePaul): “Exploring Vulnerability and Trauma in the Iranian Diaspora
Respondent Morgan Clark (Northwestern, Sociology)
10:45 – 12:15: Panel 2 – Producing Precarity: Institutionalizing Forms of Knowledge
- Aaron Clarke, (Northwestern): “Ontological Precarity: Racial Discipline at the Ends of the University”
- Malia Bowers, (Northwestern): “Feminist Sickness and Temporal Orientations: A Nietzchean Interpretation”
- Becky Bivens, (UIC): “The V-Girls: Political Conviction and Group Action after Post-Structuralism”
Respondent: Christina LoTempio (Northwestern, Political Science)
12:15 – 1:15 PM: Lunch (provided)
1:15 – 2:45: Panel 3 – State, Structures, and Stigma: Policy Implications
- Sameena Azhar, (U Chicago): “Postcolonial Feminist Interpretations of HIV Stigma among Hijras/Transgender Women Living with HIV in Hyderabad, India”
- Cal Lee Garrett, (UIC): “(Institutional) Barrier Methods: HIV/AIDS Public Health, LGBTQ Community, and the Myth of Safe Sex”
- Madeleine Pape, (UW Madison): “Gendered Expertise and the Institutional Reproduction of Sex Difference”
- Alysia Carey and Jenn M Jackson, (U Chicago): “Queering Black Freedom: Black mothering under state repression in the African Diaspora”
Respondent: V Chaudhry (Northwestern, Anthropology)
3:00 – 4:30: Panel 4 – Mapping Precarity: The Making of Spaces, Places, and Worlds
- Sarah Scriven, (DePaul): “Pauli Murray as a Black Eccentric Performer: History and Queer World Making”
- Meagan McChesney, (Loyola Chicago): “Exhibiting Sovereignty: Tribal Museums in Great Lakes Region, 1975-2010”
- Lauren Dean, (UIC): “Gender, informality, and unmapping with the Mumbai Suburban Rail System”
Respondent: Dylan Rollo (Northwestern, Rhetoric and Public Culture)
5:00 – 6:30 PM: Conference Roundtable (University Hall 201)
Featuring:
Veronica Morris Moore, co-founder of Fearless Leading by the Youth (featured in the Chicago Tribute: http://www.chicagotri
Myles & Precious Brady-Davis, a transgender outreach coordinator at the Howard Brown Health Center in Uptown, and the Assistant Director of Diversity Recruitment Initiatives at Columbia College Chicago, (Featured in this article: http://www.chicagotri
Chris Guzaitis, Director of the Odyssey Project (https://www.
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