04 Jun Rethinking the Black American Speaking Subject
John Baugh (Washington University in St. Louis)
Renee Blake (New York University)
Tracey Weldon (University of South Carolina)
Monday, June 4 / 8:30 AM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
This interdisciplinary symposium brings together scholars in sociolinguistics and Black studies with the purpose of rethinking contemporary relationships between Black Americans and their communicative practices. Within sociolinguistics, the characterization of Black Americans’ language variation has gone through considerable reformulation, particularly as gender and geographical contexts move scholars away from a monolithic idea of a single Black speaker. Meanwhile, through a multidisciplinary framework, scholars in Black studies have rethought Blackness as an object of study within and across the United States in contemporary power regimes of race and racism. However, these two fields rarely engage in intellectual exchange with each other. This symposium seeks to remedy this omission through invited presentations from leading sociolinguists and Black studies scholars to consider how a rethinking of language shapes theoretical understandings of Black Americans and how contemporary critical and conceptual understandings of Blackness promote new investigations of language and identity.
Sponsored by Center for California Languages and Cultures, the Dept. of Black Studies, the Dept. of Linguistics, and the IHC’s LISO RFG.
Website:http://www.ccalc.ucsb.edu/content/events