Reason, Rhythm and Reflection: The Paradoxes of Exile

Yannick M. Blec

Dr. Yannick M. Blec is the author of a recent French biography of James Baldwin (James Baldwin, Folio Biographie, 2024). The other aspects of his research concern the construction of subaltern identities as his work focuses on African American identities...

Nicholas Boggs

Nicholas Boggs is the author of Baldwin: A Love Story ( Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which was a finalist for the 2025 Kirkus Prize and currently longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. He is the co-editor of Baldwin’s...

Barbara Chase-Riboud

Born in Philadelphia in 1939, for over six decades Barbara Chase-Riboud has created abstract art with a deep and nuanced understanding of history, identity, and a sense of place. Her celebrated work operates on several dichotomies that have become central...

Erwan Dianteill

Erwan Dianteill is a prominent French anthropologist and sociologist specializing in the anthropology of religion, particularly African and Afro-American traditions such as vodun, Santería, candomblé, and Louisiana spiritual churches. As a professor at...

Brent Hayes Edwards

Brent Hayes Edwards is the Peng Family Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he is also affiliated with the Center for Jazz Studies. He is the editor of the journal PMLA. His books include The Practice of Diaspora...

Cheryl Finley

Cheryl Finley, Ph.D., is the Walton Endowed Professor and Director of the Atlanta University Center Art History + Curatorial Studies Collective in the Department of Art & Visual Culture at Spelman College. Committed to engaging strategic partners to...

Terri Francis

Terri Francis is the author of Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism (2021) and an associate professor at the University of Miami. She has lectured internationally on Baker’s legacy and co-curated Icon in Motion: Josephine Baker at the New National Gallery in...

Arlette Frund

Arlette Frund is Associate Professor emeritus at the University of Tours, France, who specializes in African American literature and culture. She is the author of Phillis Wheatley et Olaudah Equiano : Figures pionnières de la diaspora atlantique (Michel...

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy, DuPont, and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, cultural critic...

Kaiama L. Glover

Kaiama L. Glover is Professor of Black Studies and French at Yale University. She is the author of A Regarded Self: Caribbean Womanhood and the Ethics of Disorderly Being (Duke UP) and Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon...

Jacqueline Goldsby

Jacqueline Goldsby is Thomas E. Donnelly Professor of English and Black Studies at Yale University. She specializes in African American literary criticism and Print Culture Studies during the long century of Jim Crow segregation, from 1865 to 1965. She is...

Farah Jasmine Griffin

Farah Jasmine Griffin is University Professor at Columbia University, where she also served as the inaugural Chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies. Professor Griffin received her B.A. in History & Literature from Harvard and her Ph.D...

Lauren Michele Jackson

Lauren Michele Jackson is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern University and contributing writer at The New Yorker . She is the author of the essay collections White Negroes (2019) and the forthcoming Back .

Marlon James

Marlon James was born in Jamaica. He is the author of multiple award-winning novels including A Brief History of Seven Killings, which won the 2015 Booker Prize and the American Book Award. His novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf, was a finalist for the 2019...

Bennetta Jules-Rosette

Bennetta Jules-Rosette is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and the Director of the African and African-American Studies Research Center (AAASRC) at the University of California, San Diego. AAASRC has recently celebrated its 30th Anniversary on the...

Andrée-Anne Kekeh-Dika

Andrée-Anne Kekeh-Dika is Full Professor at Université Paris 8 (France). She teaches anglophone literature and translation. Her recent research has focused on the intersections between Caribean literature and science (history, botany, geometry, economy) —...

Nadia Yala Kisukidi

Nadia Yala Kisukidi writer and philosopher. She is actually Associate Professor in the French department of literature, thought and culture at NYU and affiliated to .the University of Paris 8 Vincennes Saint Denis (France) .She was vice-president of the...

Mike Ladd

Michael (Mike) Ladd, born in Boston (USA) in 1970 is a Black American poet, lyricist and music creator. He has released over fourteen records with important labels. His collaborative recordings have included artists from Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey to U-God...

Jake Lamar

Jake Lamar is the author of seven novels, a memoir, numerous essays, reviews and short stories, and a play. He was born in 1961 and grew up in the Bronx, New York. After graduating cum laude from Harvard University, he spent six years writing for Time...

Jesse McCarthy

Jesse McCarthy is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He is the author of The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War , the essay collection Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? and...

Léonora Miano

A French citizen born in Cameroon (1973), Léonora Miano is a great voice in French speaking literature. A novelist, playwright and essayist, she is the author of more than 20 books. Her work explores sub-Saharan or Afro-descendant experiences. Léonora...

Simon Njami

Simon Njami is a Paris-based independent curator, lecturer, art critic and novelist. Njami was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Revue Noire , a journal of contemporary African and extra-occidental art. He served as artistic director of the first...

Robert Reid-Pharr

Robert F. Reid-Pharr Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and an M.A. in African American Studies from Yale University as well as a B.A. in Political Science from the University of North...

Ming Smith

Ming Smith, a Harlem-based photographer, has used her camera as a spiritual practice to capture the movement, light, rhythm, and shadow of Black life. A pioneering artist, she was the first woman to join the Kamoinge Workshop and the first Black woman...

Maboula Soumahoro

Maboula Soumahoro is an associate professor in the English Department of the University of Tours and president of the Black History Month Association, dedicated to celebrating Black history and cultures. She is the author of Le Triangle et l’Hexagone...

Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka GCON is a Nigerian author, best known as a playwright and poet. He has written three novels, ten collections of short stories, seven poetry collections, twenty-five plays and five memoirs.[1] He also wrote two translated works and many...

Salamishah Tillet

Salamishah Tillet is the Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University, Newark, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning contributing critic-at-large at The New York Times . She is the author of “Sites of Slavery: Citizenship...

Carla Williams

Carla Williams is a photographer, archivist, editor, and writer born and raised in Los Angeles. A graduate of Princeton University and the University of New Mexico, she is the author of two histories of photography including The Black Female Body: A...

Deborah Willis

Photographer and historian Deborah Willis is Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University. She is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She is...

Dagmawi Woubshet

Dagmawi Woubshet is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Associate Term Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. A scholar of literature and visual culture, he works at the intersections of Africana and LGBTQIA+ studies. He is the...