Thursday, March 06, 2014

Upcoming 'Whose Beloved Community?' Conference At Emory

Story imageDefinitely wish I could b in the ATL for this one, but I'm already committed to an event on the HCC-Southeast campus on one of the dates for this conference..

Emory University is hosting an international conference entitled 'Whose Beloved Community?  Black Civil and LGBT Rights Movements that is right up my activist alley. 

It is taking place on the Emory U.campus from March 27-29 which support from the Arcus Foundation  and I posted the Call For Proposals on TransGriot last March.

The role of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in both race-based and sexuality-based civil rights movements is frequently rendered invisible as a result of prevailing national narratives that present (presumed white) LGBT communities and (presumed straight) Black communities as opposing forces. 

In recent years, however, an increasing number of scholars and activists have produced work seeking to make visible the vital points of intersection and contention among the U.S. Civil Rights movement, the LGBT equality movement, and Black LGBT communities.  This work is shaped by questions related to identity formation, intersectionality, tokenism, marriage equality, the role of religion and “respectability” in African American communities, the emergence of the South as a center of Black LGBT life in the U.S., HIV/AIDS and its continuing effect on African American communities, the proliferation of a prison-industrial complex unprepared for its LGBT population, and the appropriation of the civil rights movement by the right. 

This conference seeks to make visible and critically engage the points of convergence and divergence between these two historic, overlapping, yet distinct social movements that continue to transform civil society, law, and the academy.
Should be an informative and lively discussion, and I hope it doesn't turn out to be a monoethnic event.   

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