Institutionalizing Black Europe: The Center for Black European Studies at Carnegie Mellon University

Join us for a lecture by Mame-Fatou Niang, Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Director-Founder of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic (CBESA) at Carnegie Mellon University. Niang is the author of Identités Françaises (Brill, 2019) and the co-author of Universalisme (Anamosa, 2022). She conducts research on economies of the living/living economy, Blackness in contemporary France and French universalism. In 2015, she co-directed “Mariannes Noires: Mosaïques Afropéennes” with Kaytie Nielsen, a student in her French class. The film follows seven Afro-French women as they investigate the pieces of their mosaic identities and unravel what it means to be Black and French in France.

This event takes place as part of the Center for the Study of Europe's Decentering Europe initiative, the aim of which is to promote a critical understanding of Europe through its complex heritage, which owes its richness to countless contributions from other regions of the world, including Africa. In an increasingly multipolar world, we believe Europe can only be understood in relation to other sites of socio-cultural production, political engagement, and economic transformation.

Moderated by Odile Cazenave, Professor of French at Boston University. Co-sponsored by the African Studies Center