Event and Exhibition opening ‘Politics of Conversation : 70th anniversary of the Black Writers' Congress’, celebrating the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris - Sorbonne (FR), 1956. It inaugurated the "postcolonial moment" in Europe and Africa, quickly followed by a lesser-known second one, in 1959 in Rome.
What would a congress be today? Namely, how did the 1950's stakes evolved? Which territorities, minorities and discourses have been left apart? What can these two Congresses teach us today and what can we add to them?
Event day and Exhibition month will include unreleased footage of Édouard Glissant in dialogue with Patrick Chamoiseau, part of 'Abécédaire' / Edouard Glissant Art Fund archives.
At New York University, La Maison Française, New York (US).
16 Washington Mews, New York, NY 10003, USA
Conference event on Friday November 6th, 2026, 10am - 6pm
Exhibition / Archival display from November 5th through December 5th, 2026.
Free entrance
With 10 Speakers/Artists:
. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut
. Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Associate Professor at the NYU Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture
. Grégory Pierrot, Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Stamford, specializing in the cultural networks of the Black Atlantic
. Mame-Fatou Niang, Professor of French & Francophone Studies and founder of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University
. Junior Mintt, Brooklyn-based drag artist, comedian, and Black trans activist, host of The Junior Mintt Show, an independent late-night program centered on Blackness, queerness, and radical positivity
. Brent Hayes Edwards, Peng Family Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University
. Mistura Allison, independent researcher, curator, and art historian based between London and Milan, Curator and Project Coordinator at Villa Romana in Florence
. Seumboy Vrainom, French artist, writer, and self-described "digital shaman apprentice", contributor to the media outlet Histoires Crépues
. Denise Ferreira da Silva, Samuel Rudin Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at New York University
. Robert J. C. Young, Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University.
Event organized by Chris Cyrille (member of Edouard Glissant Art Fund Scientific Committee) and Alexis Dutrieux.
Exhibition / Archival display co-curated with The Recovery Plan (IT).
With the support of NYU, NYU Arts & Sciences, NYU Center of the Humanities, NYU La Maison Française, NYU REMARQUE, NYU Africa House, Edouard Glissant Art Fund, and NYU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Made possible by the generous support of Diana Moore, PhD.
Photo copyrights: Photographer unknown, from the Second Congress, Rome (IT), 1959. Left to right: Édouard Glissant, Louis Béhanzin, Léonard Sainville, Cheikh Anta Diop, Bernard Binlin Dadié.
