Black Feminist Theories: Transnational Approaches

Join NYU's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality for a book talk with editors Angelique Nixon, Carole Boyce Davies, and Christen Smith on Black Feminist Theories: Transnational Approaches.

An innovative contribution to the field of Black Feminist Studies, this landmark collection brings together the most influential historical and contemporary thinkers in Black feminist theories across transnational contexts.

Featuring ground-breaking new work alongside canonical essays from key thinkers, this book adopts a truly global approach to its subject. In doing so, it looks beyond North America to showcase a diverse range of continents and perspectives. The collection includes not only standard academic essays, but also vital statements, interviews, manifestoes, and creative work, which transmit and embody Black feminist thought.

The book is broken up into five carefully curated sections:

• Black Feminist Foundations
• Statements and Manifestos
• Cultures and Aesthetics
• Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities
• Black Feminist Futures

Timely and important, this is an indispensable resource for students and scholars of Black Studies, Women & Gender Studies, and Black Feminist Studies, as well as more generally to American Studies, African Studies, Caribbean Studies, and African Diaspora Studies.

CAROLE BOYCE-DAVIES is Professor of African Diaspora Literatures and chair of
Department of Literature and Writing (English) at Howard University. As Professor of Africana
Studies and Literatures in English (2007-2024) she is also the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of
Humane Letters emerita at Cornell University, New York. She is the author of Left of Karl Marx. The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (2008); Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject (1994); Caribbean Spaces. Escape Routes from Twilight Zones (2013) and Black Women's Rights.  Leadership and the Circularities of Power (2022). She is the editor/co-editor of thirteen critical anthologies including Black Feminist Theories. Transnational Perspectives (2026). A member of the scientific committee for UNESCO’s updated General History of Africa, she edited the epistemological forum on “Global Blackness” for the African Diaspora volume Her popular essays, opeds and reviews have appeared in The Guardian (London), The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, Trinidad Express, Trinidad Guardian, Caribbean Today, The Crisis, Jacobin Magazine, Ms Magazine, The Black Scholar.

Dr. Angelique V. Nixon is a Black Queer writer, artist, scholar, and activist. Born and raised in the Bahamas, she has been living and working in Trinidad and Tobago for over a decade. She is a social justice educator and community worker with over 20 years of experience and leadership in community-based organisations and academic institutions. Her research and creative works are available widely; she is author of the poetry and art chapbook titled Saltwater Healing and the scholarly award-winning book titled Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture. Angelique is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies (IGDS) at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. Her research and teaching areas include Caribbean and postcolonial studies, African diaspora literatures, gender and sexuality studies, Caribbean and Black feminisms, tourism and diaspora studies, and transnational migrations. She earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida in 2008, where she specialised in postcolonial and gender studies. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Africana Studies at New York University in 2009 and has held academic posts at University of Connecticut (2009-2011) and Susquehanna University (2011-2014). She joined The UWI IGDS in 2014 as a Fulbright scholar and in 2015 as a lecturer, where she is now a tenured senior faculty member and coordinator of graduate studies. Her current research investigates race, sexuality, migration, and climate crisis at the crossroads of Caribbean freedom, social movements, and decolonial poetics.

Dr. Christen A. Smith is a Black feminist and African diaspora anthropologist whose work explores the multi-sided dimensions of race, gender, violence, performance and Blackness in the Americas. Her research and writing is two-pronged. She studies the transnational, gendered, politics of anti-Black state violence in Brazil and the Americas—particularly with regard to policing; and Black women’s intellectual contributions to the Americas, especially related to transnational Black feminism. In 2017, Professor Smith started Cite Black Women.—a transnational initiative that brings awareness to society’s gross tendency to ignore Black women’s intellectual contributions and not to cite Black women inside and outside of the academy.

This event is co-sponsored by NYU's Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora.

NYU campus access guidelines: Registration is required. Non-NYU guests may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID. NYU guests must present their NYU ID.

Accessibility note: This venue has an elevator and is accessible for wheelchair users. There are single-stall, all gender restrooms available. If you have any access needs, please email csgs@nyu.edu