Join us to hear from emerging voices researching the intersections of Black placemaking, futurity, and ecology

Taking seriously the politics, particularities, and potentialities of place, the 2023-2024 Mellon Sawyer Seminar at Georgetown University explores the creative placemaking of historical and contemporary Black subjects and communities; the stewardship of land, resources, and relationships in restorative Black ecological practices past and present; and, the openings for Black spatial futures informed by and grounded in these considerations of space and place. As part of the Seminar, we are excited to offer a forum for emergent scholars at institutions across the DMV region who engage these questions and related lines of interdisciplinary inquiry.

Panel 1: Black Placemaking in the Mid-Atlantic Region
Moderated by Dr. Amani Morrison

Commemoration versus Community: The Establishment of the National Park Service’s Chimborazo Medical Museum in Richmond, Virginia in the 1950s
Laura Fretwell, George Mason University

“Any Piece of Land We Can Claim”: Black Power Legacies and the Politics of Urban Agriculture in Contemporary Washington, D.C.
Dominique Hazzard, Johns Hopkins University

The “Chief Haunts” of Washington: Insurgent Geographies of Black Alley Life in D.C.
Brendan Hornbostel, The George Washington University

“To Become a Part of a Society that is Meaningful”: A History of the Ella Jo Baker Intentional Community Cooperative
Jessica Rucker, The University of Maryland – College Park

Panel 2: Embodied Epistemologies of Refusal and Reimagination
Moderated by Dr. Carlyn Ferrari

Eco-literary Epistemologies in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
Sabrina Bramwell, Howard University

Unbound By Time and Space: Black Food Geographies as Sites of Aliveness
Cambria Conley, The University of Maryland – College Park

Activist Ethnography, Mutual Aid, and the Myth of Objectivity
Raychel Gadson, Johns Hopkins University

Panel 3: Forging Otherwise Worlds Amidst Dystopia and Empire
Moderated by Dr. Zandria Robinson

Outside the Constitution But Under the Flag: African American Migratory Politics in the Insular Territories
Matthew Rohn, The George Washington University

“Space could be our future”: Parable of the Sower and the Unmoored Spatial Project of Earthseed
Isaiah Washington, Georgetown University

Aman Iman, Water is Life: Mapping Marinescapes in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon
Paola Yuli, Howard University