VCU news

By Brian McNeill

Two leading international experts on the black LGBTQ experience in the United States will join with Virginia Commonwealth University faculty to engage in a dialogue about the future of “black queer imaginings.”

VCU faculty members will offer perspectives from their research, courses and life experience on the conditions of black LGBTQ Americans, and Jeffrey McCune, Ph.D., associate professor in the Departments of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Performing Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and Darnell Moore, a senior correspondent at MicNews, co-managing/editor at The Feminist Wire and writer-in-residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice at Columbia University, will share ideas and take questions from the audience in person and via Twitter.

The event “Black Queer Imaginings: A Dialogue on Masculinities, Movements & Mattering,” will be held Thursday, April 14, in Richmond Salons I & II, in University Student Commons, 907 Floyd Ave. A reception with the participants will begin at 5:30 p.m. and the dialogue will be held from 7:30 to 9 p.m.

We are excited to be hosting this event – the first of its kind at VCU.

“We are excited to be hosting this event – the first of its kind at VCU. We are all witness to a critical moment in American social life and politics where intersectionality, identity politics and the multiple conceptions of who we are and how others perceive us are constantly in flux. No group knows this more than the black queer community,” said Ravi K. Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and president of the National Association for Ethnic Studies, and instructor of Black Queer Politics at VCU, the first such course on the intersections of black LGBTQ life, politics and American culture in Virginia.

The event is sponsored by LGBTQ Initiatives in the Division for Inclusive Excellence, the Department of Political Science in the College of Humanities and Sciences and the National Association for Ethnic Studies.

It will be moderated by Paris Fitzgerald Prince, special assistant for LGBTQ initiatives in the Division for Inclusive Excellence.

“Dialogues such as the ‘Black Queer Imaginings’ conversation help foster a balance of self-reflection on VCU’s core values by engaging learning activities that promote a deeper intersectional analysis, in this case, how racial justice and LGBTQ liberation connect in the 21st century," Prince said.

As part of the dialogue, the keynote dialoguers will also address questions during the event from Twitter. To ask a question, tweet to:@VCUinclusive. Participants may also watch the event via the livestream at mssvideo.vcu.edu/BQI to join in the dialogue.

Keynote dialoguers will include:

• Kimberly N. Brown, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies and interim chair of the Department of African American Studies at VCU.
• Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., Ph.D., associate professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies and associate professor in the Performing Arts Department at Washington University in St. Louis.
• Darnell L. Moore, a senior correspondent at MicNews, co-managing/editor at The Feminist Wire and writer-in-residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice at Columbia University.
• Ravi K. Perry, Ph.D., associate professor of political science and president of the National Association for Ethnic Studies at VCU.