UPDATE (10/24): The rescheduled conversation between Nikki Giovanni and Fred Moten will no longer take place on 10/24 and will be rescheduled for a later date. Details will be provided as they are available.
Join us on Thursday, October 10 & Thursday, October 24, 2024, for special events with Nikki Giovanni and Fred Moten.
The ‘Princess of Black Poetry’ Nikki Giovanni and MacArthur Foundation Fellow Fred Moten will bring their genius to Tallahassee for two days of musing about the future of Black artistic expression and activism, including a talk from Moten, a screening of the Sundance-winning GOING TO MARS: THE NIKKI GIOVANNI PROJECT at the Challenger Planetarium, and a once-in-a-generation conversation between these luminaries about their work in poetics, film, theory, music, and other art forms inside academe and around the globe over the past six decades.
Thursday, October 10
Fred Moten “a forward thrust of blackness”
3 PM
FSU Main Campus: Conradi Theatre (Williams Building 0123)
631 University Way
Abstract: This talk, beginning with its title, which echoes a phrase uttered by Nikki Giovanni in an interview featured in the documentary Going to Mars, is meant to induce and enact meditation on black poetry as the infinite rehearsal of an infinite conversation, an improvisational movement that Prof. Giovanni’s work exemplifies. By paying a little close attention to the radical and genre-redefining richness of the interview in her work, we’re going to try to see and hear how we can taste and feel as we come and go how black poetry-verse or prose, jazz or drill, quilt or callaloo-recursively advances.
Fred Moten’s talk will be live-streamed and available in webinar format to the public.
Join Zoom meeting here: https://fsu.zoom.us/j/98469473344
View the full album and download the original resolution images on Flickr!
Screening of “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project”
7 PM
Challenger Learning Center Planetarium
200 S. Duval Street
Free registration is required at: https://bit.ly/GOINGTOMARS2024
Thursday, October 24
UPDATE (10/24): The rescheduled conversation between Nikki Giovanni and Fred Moten will no longer take place on 10/24 and will be rescheduled for a later date. Details will be provided as they are available.
The ‘Princess of Black Poetry’ Nikki Giovanni and MacArthur Foundation Fellow Fred Moten will engage in a once-in-a-generation conversation about their work in poetics, film, theory, music, and other art forms inside academia and around the globe over the past six decades.
If you have an FSU ID, you can access the live stream here.
All events are free and open to the public, and accessible.
These events are co-sponsored by Florida State University’s Civil Rights Institute and Department of English with additional support from the Challenger Learning Center of Tallahassee, FSU’s African American Studies Program, and the Frances Cushing Ervin Chair in American Literature.
Please reach out to event organizers and Assistant Professors of English Alison Sperling and L. Lamar Wilson if you are interested in collaborating or for more information.
For access to the readings, please email Asperling@fsu.edu.
We look forward to sharing up-to-date information through this page, so check back frequently and be sure to follow us on social media for additional updates.
Additional Special “Lead-In” Events
Friday., September 13th
READING GROUP – Fred Moten and Stefano Harney: THE UNDERCOMMONS: FUGITIVE PLANNING AND BLACK STUDY (2013)
Room: SKYBOX, Williams Bldg 461 Time: 3:00-4:30
Tuesday, September 17th
INTERACTIVE EXHIBITION, hosted by The Kudzu Review
Room: SKYBOX, Williams Bldg 461 Time: Drop in any time between 1:00-4:00pm
Friday, September 20th
SCREENING and DISCUSSION
Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in Conversation (From PBS SOUL! 1971) (58 minutes)
Room: SKYBOX, Williams Bldg 461 Time: 3:00-4:30
Friday., September 27th
LISTENING and WRITING WORKSHOP
From Nikki Giovanni’s “Ego-Tripping” (1968)
Room: SKYBOX, Williams Bldg 461 Time: 3:00-4:30
Friday, October 4th
READING GROUP
Fred Moten: BLACK AND BLUR (2017) and/or THE UNIVERSAL MACHINE (2018) (excerpts)
Room: SKYBOX, Williams Bldg 461
Time: 3:00-4:30