Black Studies/Science Studies: A Science of the Word Conference

Black Studies/Science Studies: A Science of the Word Conference

The conference engages what Sylvia Wynter called “a new science, beyond the limits of the natural sciences,” namely, a “Science of the Word.

By UCI Comparative Literature, UCI Critical Theory, UCI Center for Medical Hum

Date and time

Thursday, June 1, 2023 · 12 - 7pm PDT

Location

University of California Irvine

Humanities Instructional Building HIB 135 Irvine, CA 92697

Agenda

12:00 PM - 12:20 PM

Introductory Remarks

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Panel 1: Towards a Revolutionary STEM


Imani Howard, Doctoral Student, Philosophy, UCSD; J'anna Lue, Doctoral Student, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCB; Mehra Gharibian, Professor, Ethnic Studies, Merced College

1:30 PM - 2:30 PM

Panel 2: Dark Matter and the Field of Sense


Morgan Slade, Doctoran Candidate, Comparative Literature, UCI; Victor Peterson II, Research Fellow, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, Rutgers University; John Murillo, Professor, Afri...

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Panel 3: Wynterian Humanisms


Isaiah Rivera, Doctoral Student, African & African Diaspora Studies, UT Austin; Morinade Stevenson, Doctoral Student, Philosophy, Emory University; Randy Felder, Doctoral Student, History, UCI

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Panel 4: Blackness Against the Human


Vincent Perez, Doctoral Candidate, Theater, Dance & Performance Studies, UCB; Ignacio Evans, Doctoral Candidate, Communications, UCSD; Michael Cordova, Researcher, African & African Diaspora Studies,...

5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

Keynote: Incalculable Blackness: Mathematics and Existence

Calvin Warren, Professor, Philosophy, Emory University

7:00 PM

Reception

About this event

***UPDATE*** Zoom link now available, register below!

You are invited to a Zoom webinar.

When: Jun 1, 2023 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Topic: Black Studies/Science Studies conference

Register in advance for this webinar:

https://uci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_t_UbXLa8S_CfWi3SUe48Tw

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

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Recent debates in Black Studies have begun to make prescient interventions into the field of science and technology studies as well as the history and philosophy of science. These interdisciplinary debates attend to issues and concerns across a wide-ranging field of scientific inquiry utilizing methods of philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, history and culture studies to interrogate assumptive logics across the biological, physical and mathematical sciences. This call for papers request abstracts which describe, elaborate, discuss and extend the ways in which Black Studies has contributed to the study and practice of science studies. In the words of Sylvia Wynter, this ‘Black Studies, Science Studies’ conference attends to the “half-starved” debates within science and science studies itself. By putting together a gathering of intellectuals invested in radical inquiry in Black studies, the conference belongs to a process which might begin what Sylvia Wynter called “a new science, beyond the limits of the natural sciences,” namely, a “Science of the Word."

Starting at the intersection of close readings and interlocutions with radical Caribbean thinkers like, Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter, the class of debates in Black Studies around the impact and influence of scientific and technological development on Black life and death has produced a number of scholarly conversations on the ways in which problems in the field of science, technology and society studies become philosophical problems of anti-Blackness. In the aftermath of COVID-19, the question of the intersection of science, society and anti-Blackness can no longer be delayed.

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