2020-21 speaker series “Black Lives Matter: Global Perspectives” organized by the UCLA International Institute, in collaboration with the UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies and other International Institute area studies centers.
ABOUT THE SERIES
The 2020-21 speaker series “Black Lives Matter: Global Perspectives” aims to provide a platform for scholars, students and activists to deepen our collective understanding of the structure and experience of racial oppression and the long struggle for racial justice, as well as to draw connections among unique, but interlinked anti-racist struggles in the context of global histories of colonialism, imperialism and internationalism.
The UCLA Center for European Studies served as one of the lead organizers of the overall series, as well as the featured organizer of three discussions focusing on Black Lives Matter in the European context.
#BLM IN EUROPE SERIES
During the 15 months between the death of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore and subsequent unrest in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois in 2005, and the deaths of the adolescents Moushin and Laramy and subsequent uprising in another Paris suburb, Villiers-le-Bel, in 2007, Didier Fassin conducted research on police work in poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Paris. His research focused on the everyday life of the dreaded anti-crime squads, ordinary racial discrimination and the banality of violence.
CLICK HERE to watch or listen to the recorded discussion.
This multidisciplinary panel brings together scholars to discuss Black Lives Matter in Belgium. Among the topics to be explored are: the distinctive history of Belgian colonialism, which moved from an internationally sanctioned entity of extraction (“The Congo Free State”) to a national settler colony (the Belgian Congo); the intertwined histories of the U.S. and Belgian colonialism; the impact of “BLM” in Belgium and the effectiveness of “trauma activism;” language, race, and citizenship in Belgium; public monuments, the Tervuren Afrika Museum, and the visual culture of colonialism, conscious and unconscious.
CLICK HERE to watch or listen to the recorded discussion.
Conventional wisdom holds that Africans are only a recent presence in Europe. But in African Europeans, renowned historian Olivette Otele debunks this and uncovers a long history of Europeans of African descent. From the third century, when the Egyptian Saint Maurice became the leader of a Roman legion, all the way up to the present, Otele explores encounters between those defined as "Africans" and those called "Europeans." She gives equal attention to the most prominent figures—like Alessandro de Medici, the first duke of Florence thought to have been born to a free African woman in a Roman village—and the untold stories—like the lives of dual-heritage families in Europe's coastal trading towns.
CLICK HERE to watch or listen to the recorded discussion.