The Black (Research) Problem

Keynote lecture with Lauren McLeod Cramer.

Black Studies is thought that occurs everywhere blackness is, itself, a “problem for thought.” This talk explores the black (research) problem — that is, the scholarly problem that arises when we’re not seeking solutions. This talk is for the black studies scholar (who is, of course, also a queer theorist, a scholar of environmental studies, a film theorist, an architect...) who knows there is difference between being a problem and having a problem. I argue black spatiality which has no aspirations to further own or occupy the “ideological address” that founds colonization’s racial antagonisms and, similarly, that we should resist the temptation to turn every thought into a claim.

Lauren McLeod Cramer is Associate Professor in the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.

This keynote lecture is a part of this year's European Summer School in Cultural Studies Epistemic Equity.

About the Summer School

What knowledge counts, and what counts as knowledge? This is the core question for this year's European Summer School in Cultural Studies. Doctoral and other researchers from eight universities across Europe will come together at the University of Copenhagen in the last week of August to address this urgent question through panel presentations, debate, exchange, and workshops in an invitation-only symposium. 

Four Keynote Addresses will be open to the public in the evenings. Each lecture will be given by a significant international researcher whose work is central to issues of epistemic equity.  You are warmly invited to attend any or all of these lectures, and to participate in the Q&A afterwards. This is an opportunity to hear significant speakers and at the same time to engage with early career researchers attending the ESSCS from Germany, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland and beyond.