Thursday, March 6, 12noon-1:30pm, Kirwan Institute [Conference Room 101], 33 W. 11th Ave. [this event will also be occurring via Zoom]

In this presentation, we will share the progress of our Black Memory and Death Care Work Project, which includes the Black Cemetery Scholars Collective (BCSC) and a paper project tentatively titled “Tending to the Dead and Dying: Blackness, Memory, and the Radical Praxis of Preservation.” This project is funded through a graduate fellowship sponsored by the OSU Global Arts and Humanities Global Arts and Discovery Theme.

In this work, we will examine the intersection of humanist perspectives on death and memory, community-engaged preservation, and Black critical theory. By fostering dialogue (both through academic writing and our BCSC working group) between the often-disparate fields of community-engaged preservation and ethnic studies, this work develops a praxis-oriented approach to preservation that is culturally specific and politically transformative.

Through an interdisciplinary framework, we reimagine preservation as a radical, community-driven process that not only resists traditional power structures in heritage conservation but also confronts the violent exclusions at the heart of humanist ideologies. Ultimately, this study situates Blackness as a critical vantage point for rethinking the possibilities of preservation, memory, and the afterlives of the human.

Online Registration

In-person Registration

Hosted by Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University.