Black Queer Studies Conference 2025

Black Queer Studies Conference 2025 BQSC25 is a significant event celebrating and interrogating the intersections of Blackness and queerness in everyday life as well as in the cultural imaginary.

The original Black Queer Studies conference was co-organized by Dr. E. Patrick Johnson and Dr. Mae G. Henderson in 2000 at UNC. BQSC25 will feature a series on intergenerational conversations between some of the original participants and an emerging generation of scholars, artists, and activists whose work focuses on the intersections of Blackness and queerness. Beyond panel discussions, the confe

rence will include performances, a curated exhibition, an opening reception and a closing community picnic. These events are free and open to the public, but registration is required as space is limited.

Registration has opened! Check in at Hyde Hall now, our first speaker is Jennifer Nash (Duke Univeristy) giving our Open...
04/04/2025

Registration has opened! Check in at Hyde Hall now, our first speaker is Jennifer Nash (Duke Univeristy) giving our Opening Remarks.

BQSC is TODAY!!! Registration is in Hyde Hall, starting at 8:15am. For information on parking and other logistics, visi...
04/04/2025

BQSC is TODAY!!!

Registration is in Hyde Hall, starting at 8:15am.

For information on parking and other logistics, visit bqsc25.org/parking.

As we kick off BQSC today, we wanted to start with highlight the person truly making it all happen!Kayla Corbin is a 4th...
04/04/2025

As we kick off BQSC today, we wanted to start with highlight the person truly making it all happen!

Kayla Corbin is a 4th year PhD Candidate operating as our Conference Coordinator. Some of her roles include sitting on the Panels and Events Committee; organizing, coordinating, and facilitating panels and participants; scheduling; communication with venders; volunteer coordination; and distribution of information to panelists and collecting panelists materials.

For this conference, Kayla says she is “most looking forward to putting names to faces” and hopes everyone has a wonderful time!

For more details about the conference, and more people involved, visit bqsc25.org.

Our exhibition is NOW OPEN!!Curated by UNC PhD Candidate Simiyha N.J. Garrison, “WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE: AN IMPERFECT ...
04/01/2025

Our exhibition is NOW OPEN!!

Curated by UNC PhD Candidate Simiyha N.J. Garrison, “WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE: AN IMPERFECT HISTORY OF BLACKNESS & QUEERNESS” will be open from March 24th – April 28th, 2025. Hosted at The Love House (at 410 East Franklin Street), this month-long (physical) exhibition follows historical and cultural shifts and natural movements of the evolution of Black and q***r studies over three centuries. The exhibition features an array of archival material as well as work(s) from Black feminist scholars, activists, and q***r theorists.

Visit the BQSC conference website, bqsc25.org/exhibition, to learn more.

As the conference approaches, we wanted to focus and highlight another of our panels: How to Teach the Unspeakable: Race...
03/28/2025

As the conference approaches, we wanted to focus and highlight another of our panels: How to Teach the Unspeakable: Race, Q***r Studies & Pedagogy! Happening at 2:30pm on Friday, April 4th, this panel consists of (in order of slides) Bryant Keith Alexander (Moderator), Keith Clark, Beverly Guy Sheftall, Shoniqua Roach, Reginald Blockett. The panelists will address the following prompt:

“This panel asks what is at stake when black q***r pedagogy is institutionalized in the academy, especially at a time when the state has questioned the legitimacy of teaching sexuality as a category of intellectual inquiry. How do teachers and students navigate issues of power inside and outside the black q***r studies classroom?”

Visit our website, bqsc25.org, for a full conference schedule, locations, panelists’ position paragraphs, registration information, and more!

In preparation for the conference and the wonderful opportunity to meet all our panelists, we have asked them all to sub...
03/27/2025

In preparation for the conference and the wonderful opportunity to meet all our panelists, we have asked them all to submit Position Paragraphs, in response to each of their panels. These position paragraphs engage the core themes in the panel descriptions and prompted moderators and panelists to put forth their thoughts and provocations as the basis for the panel discussions.

In the slides above, we’ve highlighted selected position paragraphs from the panel “Disciplinary Tensions: Black Studies and Q***r Studies” happening on Friday at 11:30am. The panel’s description is as follows:

This panel revisits the ways in which Black Studies has historically elided issues of (homo)sexuality and/or how Q***r Studies has elided issues of racism and race and explores the trajectories of “black q***r studies” or “black gay studies” as a critical intervention of both disciplines. The panelists examine if such interventions have signaled the inclusiveness they have purported and offer future articulations of “black q***r studies” within the context of our contemporary moment.

Visit bqsc25.org/position to read each of the statements.

We wanted to remind everyone of our shared reading list! Visit bqsc25.org/readinglist to explore readings, books, and ot...
03/26/2025

We wanted to remind everyone of our shared reading list! Visit bqsc25.org/readinglist to explore readings, books, and other works written by activists and scholars in the field, as well as from many who will be attending BQSC 2025 as panelists.

For more details about the conference, including registration, scheduling, a complete list of our cosponsors, our shared reading list, and more, visit bqsc25.org.

Beyond panel discussions, the BQSC 2025 will include performances, a curated exhibition, and a closing community picnic. These events are free and open to the public, but registration is required as space is limited. As of now, pre-conference registration is closed, but day-of registration is still available.

As the conference approaches, we wanted to highlight one of our panels: Black Q***r Digitality! Happening at 11:30am on ...
03/25/2025

As the conference approaches, we wanted to highlight one of our panels: Black Q***r Digitality!

Happening at 11:30am on Saturday, April 5th, this panel consists of (in order of above slides) Shaka McGlottenm (Moderator), AJ Christian, Moya Bailey, Brian A. Horton, Legacy Russell, Quotne R. Hutchins. The panelists will address the following prompt:

“The digital is often perceived as both a space for Black q***r community building, bypassing the gatekeeping mechanisms that have limited Black q***r expression, but also as a site where Black q***r communities can be targeted, exploited and even replaced by AI and avatars. This panel addresses Black q***r investment in digital and virtual spaces, the potentials of those spaces to create new modes of connection, collaboration, and cultural citizenship, but also the anxieties and risks posed by these same participatory opportunities.”

Visit our website, bqsc25.org, for a full conference schedule, locations, panelists’ position paragraphs, registration information, and more!

Calling back to our very first BQSC pre-conference event that happened last semester! Spearheaded by COMM graduate stude...
03/21/2025

Calling back to our very first BQSC pre-conference event that happened last semester! Spearheaded by COMM graduate students, “Confronting Contradictions” consisted of a colloquium and community conversation that brought the community together for collaborative and interdisciplinary dialogue back in October.

The colloquium featured Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs (who is also coming back to be on the BQSC panel, Black Q***r Writing!) in conversation with Dr. Renée Alexander Craft around Black q***r feminist resistance, art as activism, and the role of the academy in contemporary activism. Later that week, Community Conversations continued the conversation around collective resistance and organizing, both within and beyond the academy.

For more details about the conference, including registration, scheduling, locations, a complete list of our cosponsors, our shared reading list, and more, visit bqsc25.org.

As the conference approaches, we wanted to make sure to highlight our keynote speakers! Our keynote conversation, betwee...
03/20/2025

As the conference approaches, we wanted to make sure to highlight our keynote speakers!

Our keynote conversation, between Dr.’s Hammond and Johnson, will focus on how the failure of q***r studies in the late 1980s/early 1990s to consider race prompted a generation of scholars, artists, and activists to address the absence. This conversation will happen on Friday from 4:30pm-6pm in Hyde Hall.

Evelynn Hammonds is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University.

E. Patrick Johnson is Dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor at Northwestern University. He is a 2020 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Johnson is a prolific performer/scholar, and an inspiring teacher, whose research and artistry has greatly impacted African American studies, Performance Studies, Gender and Sexuality studies.

He is the author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (2003); Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (2008); Black. Q***r. Southern. Women.—An Oral History (2018); and Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women (2019), in addition to several edited and co-edited collections, essays, and plays.

For more details about the conference, including registration, scheduling, locations, a complete list of our cosponsors, our shared reading list, and more, visit bqsc25.org.

We wanted to remind everyone of our shared reading list! Visit bqsc25.org/readinglist to explore readings, books, and ot...
03/18/2025

We wanted to remind everyone of our shared reading list! Visit bqsc25.org/readinglist to explore readings, books, and other works written by activists and scholars in the field, as well as from many who will be attending BQSC 2025 as panelists.

For more details about the conference, including registration, scheduling, a complete list of our cosponsors, our shared reading list, and more, visit bqsc25.org.

Beyond panel discussions, the BQSC 2025 will include performances, a curated exhibition, and a closing community picnic. These events are free and open to the public, but registration is required as space is limited.

We are so excited to highlight our exhibition complementing the BQSC conference!Curated by UNC PhD Candidate Simiyha N.J...
03/17/2025

We are so excited to highlight our exhibition complementing the BQSC conference!

Curated by UNC PhD Candidate Simiyha N.J. Garrison, “WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE: 
AN IMPERFECT HISTORY OF BLACKNESS & QUEERNESS” will be open from March 24th – April 28th, 2025. Hosted at The Love House (410 East Franklin Street), this month-long (physical) exhibition follows historical and cultural shifts and natural movements of the evolution of Black and q***r studies over three centuries. The exhibition features an array of archival material as well as work(s) from Black feminist scholars, activists, and q***r theorists.

Visit our website, bqsc25.org/exhibition, to learn more.

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