Part of the University of Rochester's Mellon Sawyer Seminar series "Unbordering Migration in the Americas," this discussion seminar will be structured around a selection of recent African and Caribbean poetry and critical theory. Participants will consider the ways writers from throughout the global African diaspora articulate questions of memory, belonging, alienation, and historical violence as part of the experience of coming to and living in North America.

Readings will include excerpts from Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return (2001), Achille Mbembe’s Critique of Black Reason (2013), and Rinaldo Walcott’s The Long Emancipation (2021). Discussion to be led by Delali Kumavie (Syracuse University) and Matthew Omelsky (University of Rochester).  Please click on the individual links for each reading.