Maboula Soumahoro is an Associate Professor in American Studies at Université de Tours. Formerly, a visiting Professor at Bard College (Bard Prison Initiative) and a visiting scholar at Columbia University, her work addresses political and religious movements in the Black Diaspora, namely the Nation of Islam and Rastafarianism, in the first half of the 20th century. In this talk, she will discuss her recent book Le Triangle et l’Hexagone: essai sur une identité noire (2020) to give a reflexive account of her trajectory as a working-class scholar of Ivoirian descent, racialized as Black and of her position on racism, anti-racism, identity and belonging
in contemporary France.

Deborah A. Thomas is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the former Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious journal American Anthropologist. Her several books, articles and films address race, postcolonialism, globalization and violence in Jamaica. Based on her latest book Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair (2019), in this presentation, she will analyze the subjective impact of politics and State violence in 20th and 21st century Jamaica so as to address post-colonialism,
imperialism as well as grassroots and party politics.