The Bookshop of Black Queer Diaspora

The Bookshop of Black Queer Diaspora tells the story of how black queer diasporic activists and artists challenged neoliberalism in the nineteen seventies and eighties in North America and the U.K. The talk does so through a series of visits to and engagements with an imaginary black queer bookshop, the artifacts contained within it and the historical and epistemological formations that the artifacts invoke.

Bio

Roderick A. Ferguson is professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He is the author of One-Dimensional Queer (Polity, 2019), We Demand: The University and Student Protests (University of California, 2017), The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference (University of Minnesota, 2012), and Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (University of Minnesota, 2004). He is the co-editor with Grace Hong of the anthology Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (Duke University, 2011). He is also co-editor with Erica Edwards and Jeffrey Ogbar of Keywords of African American Studies (NYU, 2018). He is currently working on two monographs—The Arts of Black Studies and The Bookshop of Black Queer Diaspora.

Olumide Popoola is a London-based Nigerian German writer and speaker who presents internationally. She is Writer in Residence at Greenwich University for 2019/20. Her novella this is not about sadness was published by Unrast Verlag in 2010. Her play Also by Mail was published in 2013 by Witnessed (edition assemblage) and the short story collection breach, which she co-authored with Annie Holmes, in 2016 by Peirene Press. Her full-length novel When we Speak of Nothing was published in the UK and Nigeria in 2017  and in 2018 in the US (Cassava Republic Press).​ Her publications also include critical essays and creative non-fiction, hybrid pieces and poetry. Olumide holds a PhD in Creative Writing, a MA in Creative Writing and a BSc in Ayurvedic Medicine. She has lectured in creative writing at various universities and regularly gives workshops and masterclasses. In 2004 she won the May Ayim Award in the category Poetry. She is the initiator and leader of the Arts Council funded mentoring scheme for emerging LGBTQ+ writers, The Future is Back.

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