About

March 8-9, 2024

Conference Theme:

Reparations: Past, Present, and Future

Hosted by The Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies

University of Virginia

Reparations—as an idea, a practice, and a demand—spans the entire course of Black history.  From indigenous African notions of uBuntu and kima, to the activism of Belinda Sutton, Callie House, Queen Mother Moore, the Republic of New Afrika, N’COBRA, CARICOM, and Black Lives Matter, reparations abide as a powerful global current in Black life.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, academia has been slow to take up its study. Reparations are frequently dismissed by mainstream scholars as a relatively new fringe idea that is more performative than substantive.  Even Black Studies itself—which initially coalesced around the struggle against Jim Crow—has not yet similarly rallied around reparations as a collective post-Civil Right meta-project.  This relative indifference appears even more striking as local grassroots movements around the world are demanding reparations on an unprecedented scale and at an exponential rate.  U.S. cities as diverse as Evanston, Asheville, San Francisco, St. Louis, Boston, and many others have all passed legislation and are in the very preliminary stages of developing a reparations praxis.  Yet as the willingness of civil society to embrace reparations gains steam (largely in response to Black Lives Matter), the threat of elite capture and the wrestling of reparations away from its radical historical origins has emerged as an urgent problem. The reparations movement needs us all.

We, therefore, call for papers and panels from scholars, activists, educators, and artists whose work can be (re)conceptualized in some way through the prism of reparations and reparative justice. For panels on reparations: How does your work inform, challenge, complicate, historicize, or speak to the discursive and organizational practice of reparations? How do our narratives detailing the many harms of slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic racism illuminate (or at times obfuscate) the reparative process? What might reparations look like international, nationally, in your city, at your university, or in your neighborhood?

Conference Committee:

• Chair: Robert Greene II, Claflin University
• Cherisse Jones-Branch, Arkansas State University
• Paula Austin, Boston University
• Celeste D. Moore, Hamilton College

For more information write us at: conference@aaihs.org

** Conference 2024 Program

Note: The goal is to have an in-person conference, but this is subject to change given the current pandemic. Hybrid options may be available as we are an organization that does take seriously inclusivity of all interested in participating in this timely event. Masks are strongly recommended. Proof of vaccination and/or a negative COVID test (24 hours before attending) may become required, to be determined per CDC guidelines around the time of the event.