Politics of Conversation: 70th anniversary of the Black Writers' Congress

Politics of Conversation: 70th anniversary of the Black Writers' Congress

In 1956, the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists took place in Paris. It inaugurated the "postcolonial moment" in Europe and Africa, quickly followed by a lesser-known second one, in 1959 in Rome. To celebrate this 70th anniversary, we wonder: what would a congress be today? Namely, how did the 1950's stakes evolved? which territorities, minorities and discourses have been left apart? what can these two Congresses teach us today and what can we add to them?

Speakers/Artists:

Nelson Maldonado-Torres is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut and a leading voice in decolonial theory. He co-chairs the Frantz Fanon Foundation and previously served as president of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, and is the author of Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity.

Nadia Yala Kisukidi is an Associate Professor at the NYU Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture. She is the author of Bergson ou l'humanité créatrice and the novel La dissociation, and curated the first Democratic Republic of the Congo pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2026.

Grégory Pierrot is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Stamford, specializing in the cultural networks of the Black Atlantic. He is the author of The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture and Decolonize Hipsters, and co-editor of Haitian Revolutionary Fictions: An Anthology.

Mame-Fatou Niang is a Professor of French & Francophone Studies and founder of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University. A scholar, filmmaker, and photographer, she co-directed the documentary Mariannes Noires and authored Identités françaises and Universalisme.

Junior Mintt is a Brooklyn-based drag artist, comedian, and Black trans activist, host of The Junior Mintt Show, an independent late-night program centered on Blackness, queerness, and radical positivity.

Brent Hayes Edwards is a Peng Family Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, affiliated with its Center for Jazz Studies. He is the author of The Practice of Diaspora, winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize, and Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination.

Mistura Allison is an independent researcher, curator, and art historian based between London and Milan, currently Curator and Project Coordinator at Villa Romana in Florence. She is the founder of ashikọ, a research platform centered on contemporary diasporic visual and oral production from Africa and its diaspora.

Seumboy Vrainom is a French artist, writer, and self-described "digital shaman apprentice" whose work critiques colonial history through appropriated internet imagery and DIY video. An advocate for decolonial ecology, he is a contributor to the media outlet Histoires Crépues.

Made possible by the generous support of Diana Moore, PhD.

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Photographer unknown, from the Second Congress, Rome, 1959. Left to right: Edouard Glissant, Louis Béhanzin, Léonard Sainville, Cheikh Anta Diop, Bernard Binlin Dadié.

This event will be livestreamed for remote viewing (link coming soon).

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