Study Sessions are informal and intimate discussion groups. This study session opens out the ideas and themes of our exhibitions and research strand Sonic Continuum, and explores how black feminist authors and thinkers reconceptualise voice, performativity and community against patriarchal and racial oppression.
By discussing their radical aspirations and concurrent approaches to gender, race and class, our study sessions explore the global critiques, poetic tactics, and relational political projects of black women writers, and ask: how might we articulate alternative social and political formations?
This session is led by Lisa Palmer (De Montfort University) and explores the work of American prison abolitionist, philosopher, and author Angela Davis.
Reading
Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (London: Penguin Random House, 1998)
A copy of the reading and meeting link will be available on booking.
Online. Free. Limited Capacity. Booking required.
Lisa Amanda Palmer is the Deputy Director of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester. She was the former Course Director for the Black Studies undergraduate programme and Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Birmingham City University. Palmer’s research focuses on Black feminism, Black cultural politics and the intersection of race, racism, gender and sexuality. Her writing covers a broad spectrum of fields including the gendered politics of lovers’ rock music, the production of local community archives and the misogynoir faced by Black women in British public life. She is the co-author of the book Blackness in Britain (2016) and is currently writing her book on Black women in the UK’s lover’s rock reggae scene.
Image courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
