Closing Keynote Address
Wednesday, May 19, 2021 | 2:45pm – 4:00pm EST
A conversation between Cite Black Women and Black Women Radicals moderated by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz.
Cite Black Women
Christen A. Smith is the founder of Cite Black Women, a Black feminist anthropologist, social justice advocate, Associate Professor of Anthropology and African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Her work focuses on the gendered dimensions of anti-Black state violence and resistance in the Americas, examining the immediate and long-term impact of police violence on Black communities, particularly Black families and Black women. Her work on gender and state violence looks at the lingering, deadly impact of state terror on Black women, which she theorizes as sequelae. She has written extensively on this lingering deadly impact and her research has been featured on Democracy Now!, PBS Newshour and The Feminist Wire among others. She is the author of Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence and Performance in Brazil (University of Illinois Press, 2016).
Black Women Radicals
Jaimee A. Swift (she/her) is the executive director, creator, and founder of Black Women Radicals, a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender expansive people’s radical activism in Africa and in the African Diaspora. She is also the creator and founder of The School for Black Feminist Politics (SBFP), the Black feminist political education arm of Black Women Radicals. She is the co-creator of the Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities Project, a collaboration between Black Women Radicals, the Asian American Feminist Collective, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. The project looks to Black and Asian American feminist histories, practices, and frameworks on care, community, and survival for the tools and strategies to continue to build towards collective liberation.
Swift is also on the board of The Gloria Naylor Archive and is the co-curator of The Grassroots Archivist Collective of Black Women (GACBW). A collaboration between Black Lesbian Archives and Black Women Radicals, the GACBW is a transnational virtual convening of Black women and gender expansive grassroots archivists and/or aspiring archivists. Swift has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Howard University. Her dissertation, Towards A Queer Amefricanidade: State, Structural, and Symbolic Violence and Afro-Brazilian LGBT Women’s Resistance in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil examines Afro-Brazilian queer and transgender women’s historical and contemporary political struggles against multiform state and quotidian violence since Brazil’s democratic transition from military dictatorship from the 1980s to present day.
Closing Keynote conversation moderated by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz
Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz is a co-convener for the METRO Reference and Instruction Special Interest Group, and previous co-chair for LILAC (when at CUNY where she spent 9 years as a faculty librarian at the Graduate Center). She is a recipient of the 2020 WGSS Award for Significant Achievement in Women’s & Gender Studies in Librarianship from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). She is co-editor for an upcoming publication, Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations in Librarianship, Litwin Books. She is a co-coordinating volunteer archivist at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, co-chair for the board of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY) and chair of the CLAGS Archives committee. Shawn has a BS in Queer Women’s Studies from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program, an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction, and an MLS with a focus on Archiving and Records Management from Queens College. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt School of Information and an Assistant Curator and Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning, and Engagement at New York University Division of Libraries.
Opening Keynote Address
Monday, May 17th | 11:00am – 12:30pm EST
An opening keynote address by Jamillah R. Gabriel.
Jamillah R. Gabriel is a fourth-year PhD student in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She holds a Master of Arts in Museum Studies from Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, Master of Library and Information Science from San Jose State University, Bachelor of Arts in Black Studies and Journalism from California State University, Long Beach, and an Associate in Arts in English from Cerritos College. Her professional experience includes 21 years in public and academic libraries as a librarian and library paraprofessional, most recently as Black Cultural Center Librarian and Metadata Specialist at Purdue University. Her research focuses on issues at the nexus of information and race via a critical theorist lens, and interrogates how hegemonic information systems and institutions impact Black people and communities. Other research interests include information behavior, information literacy, data, critical theory, Black radical thought, archives, and museums. Jamillah is also the founder of Call Number, a book subscription box specializing in Black literature and authors, and co-host of LibVoices, a podcast that interviews BIPOC librarians and information professionals about their experiences in LIS.