Presenting a Paper at a Conference (6pts)

 

On November 8th, I presented my current thesis and Mellon capstone project: “Errancy and Docility: Reimagining Black Girlhood, Education, and Becoming in the Archives of Inanda Seminary and Spelman College,” at the MMUF Southeastern Regional Conference. It was such an enriching experience to learn from and be in conversation with others in the UNCF and Southeastern Mellon consortium. 

For my panel discussion, I was joined by two students, one from Howard University and the other from Rice University, who were similarly engaged in the archive as they analyzed print culture and Black women’s legal resistance in the twentieth century. Our moderator, Toni Stevens, was thoughtful and asked deliberate questions that compelled me to elaborate on the work I have been developing over the past few months. Upon reflecting on my presentation, I believe that I successfully conveyed the broader implications of my work. Through looking at various periodicals, photographs, and catalogues, I have been able to curate a counter history of Black girlhood in South Africa and the United States in the midst of Jim Crow and apartheid. I have found both joy and struggle in the archive. However, I want to be more intentional about how I am choosing to ground my work theoretically. At the time, I was thinking about putting scholars like Saidiya Hartman, Kevin Quashie, and even Michel Foucault in conversation as I aimed to write a nuanced account that fabulates about the lives of girls at these conservative, racially homogeneous institutions. 

Throughout the conference, my favorite panel of presentations was the section on Queer Possibilities. In this room, students from the University of Puerto Rico, Howard, and Emory each presented on the capaciousness of queerness and the necessity for understanding queer theory in the twenty-first century. My favorite presentation was the exploration of black feminist techniques used in queer mothering – particularly because I am interested in how we think about what we (as daughters) inherit from our mothers and grandmothers - Jayda Hendrickson