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Conferences and Publications

​​Call For Nominations

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​50th annual ncbs conference

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The Center for Black Diaspora invites students to apply and present at the 50th Annual National Council for Black Studies Conference in Baltimore, Maryland in March 2026. If accepted for this conference, students will be provided with some funding opportunities for travel and lodging at the conference location. Nominations are due on or before 5:00 pm CST on November 7, 2025. 


Students that are eligible to apply must be: ​​

  • LAS Undergraduate or Graduate student with a 3.00 GPA or higher   
  • Written and submitted a fully developed research paper on topics related to African & Black Diasporic studies, African American/Black studies, Black Feminism, Black literature and cultural studies, Black environmental studies, Pan-Africanism, Afro-Futurism, etc. in your class  
  • Proposals should include an abstract, a faculty letter of recommendation, and sample of research paper  

About NCBS: National Council for Black Studies exists to promote academic excellence and social responsibility in the discipline of Africana/Black Studies through the production and dissemination of knowledge, professional development and training, and advocacy for social change and social justice. NCBS accepts new, emerging, and ongoing scholarship on current issues and innovations of importance to Africana communities in the United States and throughout the global African world. This year’s theme “Sankofa: Celebrating Solidarity, Power, and Pan-Africanism in the 21st Century,” allows us to reflect upon the foundation of the organization while honoring the institutional legacy created for future generations of Black scholars.

Link to nominate students​

 

Thanks for your applications! If you have any questions, please reach out to us at centerforblackdiaspora@depaul.edu. 


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49th annual ncbs conference panel

Abstract

In Fall Quarter 2024 the Center for Black Diaspora, opened applications for the second year to DePaul undergraduate and graduate students in the College of LAS to present at the 49th Annual National Council for Black Studies in March 2025. After a rigorous selection process, the Center invited undergraduate students, Naomi Love, Joseph Aidan Tennant, and Kayla Hodge to present their research papers. The title of the research panel is “Perspectives of the African & Black Diaspora: Conjure, Culture, and Community” and will examine the communal and creative, artistic practices in popularized music, spiritual tradition of Conjure written in literature, and radical movements that struggle to connect community resources and progress in Chicago. 

Naomi Love’s paper, “Redefining Religion: Challenging Eurocentric Narratives Through Conjure,” will open the panel to explore the history of Conjure and how it has been used to resist anti-blackness and colonial powers. Naomi’s investigation will show the African diasporic connections between how spiritualists challenge strict boundaries between magic and monotheistic religions, and literature that plays a role in African American women’s imagination. Joseph Aidan Tennant’s paper, “Machine Realism: The Collapse of Bring Chicago Home and Chicago's Radical Black Politics,” will follow to examine how a divide is created amongst a machine political environment and community organizers efforts of Bring Home Chicago. His conclusion will demonstrate that the divide is not simply a byproduct of racial animus and instead has decades-old roots in Chicago’s Black political scene. The panel will conclude with a presentation by Kayla Hodges and her research titled “Hip-Hop Feminisms: The Femme Rapper’s Remix for the Digital Age.” Kayla will demonstrate that Hip-Hop has the ability to convey a side of the Black femme experience that has never been as widely accepted. She will examine America’s hyper-capitalist ethos that potentially align with systemic racist practices against Black Creativity in the music industry. 

 

 

48th Annual Conference - March, 7, 2024

Abstract

The fate of the African Diaspora’s relationship to Europe, White America, and the rest of the world is well-represented in the acts of colonization and enslavement. The subjugated systems that form from this relationship have minimized the importance of identity, memory, and imagination on the experiences of African and African Diasporic peoples. This panel will host research from several students who will examine popular culture and artistic reverence through music, examine resilience through an African Organization, and invoke the framework of Ezili to open new registers of living and unlimited possibilities for the freedom of Africans across the Diaspora.

Whitley Baggett’s paper opens the panel by examining Black identity and colonized minds as a subject that Black people continue to struggle with. This observation becomes crucial to any Pan-African efforts that seek to ameliorate Black people’s condition. Her paper encourages Black people to understand their identity outside the gaze of white supremacy. Danielle Chat Nickaf’s essay will explore how the Sub-Saharan African organization, Street Business School, addresses poverty through empowering women. Samara Smith, the final panelist, will address how Beyonce’s Lemonade draws connections between popularized African American culture, Haitian spiritual practices, and Black Feminist theory. She investigates how forms of the Haitian Vodou Lwa Ezili appear visually in Lemonade to problematize feminine constructions.

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