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• Myrtle Sodhi, York University

This panel invites submissions that explore Afrofuturism, “endarkened storywork” (Toliver, 2022), and “Black geographies” (McKittrick, 2006) as ways of speaking to displacement and reclamation, revisiting and re-envisioning, and survival and flourishing through artistic scholarship. How might we explore the places, times, and approaches where Blackness speaks from, speaks to, and speaks back in ways that creates or acts as a “homeplace” (hooks, 1990) for Black scholarship and artist scholars? Submissions that explore Black epistemologies and ontologies by utilizing written, sonic, visual, embodied, and integrative art practices are welcome.

keywords: Afrofuturism, Black geographies, endarkened storywork, Black studies, Black life

session type: panel

They Say We Can’t Breathe Underwater

• Natalie Wood, York University

I propose to conduct a performance of my solo exhibition, They Say We Can’t Breathe Underwater (A Space Gallery, 2022). I plan to take viewers on a tour under the waters in the Black Atlantic where we follow the Orisha deity Yemaya and navigate the history of the slave trade and the middle passage as we descend to the ocean floor. She acts as a guide taking us to depths where we encounter epistemologies of Black care and where we are reminded we can learn to breathe in unbreathable circumstances and can find and recover healing practices for ourselves and others in the Black community facing anti-Black racism. This is a meditative journey taking viewers down to the ocean floor and back up again to find the crossroads of Carnival, to encounter joy in movement and breath. During the tour the viewers become travellers who are encouraged to flow with and be open to the healing gifts of Yemaya and our Black ancestors. This exhibit was designed to promote practices of collective care for Black communities struggling to navigate anti Black racism and other forms of oppression. In my artwork the Black Atlantic becomes a Black geography, a tidal map to reclaim our practices of care and work towards abolition and re-worlding.

keywords: Black Atlantic, collective care, Afro surrealism, Black life, abolition

Black mother scholars as public storytellers

• Stephanie Fearon, Toronto District School Board

A burgeoning body of literature explores the experiences of Black mother scholars. Such works underscore our use of artistic inquiry processes to assert ourselves as knowledge producers within university settings. Scant Canadian literature explores the ways that we, Black mother scholars, use the art of storytelling to prioritize knowledge production and dissemination within public spaces. In fact, Canadian literature on Black mother scholars continues to overlook our rich legacy of using stories to ask, answer, and share epistemological and ontological questions in our own voices (Onuora, 2012, 2015). In fact, we enjoy a rich research tradition grounded in the art of storytelling. We share our ideas through writing, dancing, drawing, spittin’ rhymes, and other expressions of storytelling (Love, 2019). Indeed, the academy has long shunned the artistic ways we leverage our storied lives to engage our children, families, and communities in research (Toliver, 2021).

My talk explores how Black mothers use the art of storytelling to challenge governing notions of academic scholarship. Centring my work with a group of Black immigrant women who are adult literacy learners, I showcase my use of visual and oral storytelling to reimagine knowledge dissemination processes as homeplace for Black mothers. I draw on Black feminist notions of homeplace, Black motherwork theory, and Endarkened storywork to discuss the ways I continue the legacy of Black mothers as public storytellers serving our communities. I close my talk by offering researchers a series of reflection questions to facilitate the reimagining of knowledge dissemination as homeplace for Black mothers.

keywords: Black mother scholars, storytellers, arts-informed research, adult literacy learners