Black Sexualities and the Twin Pandemics of COVID-19 and Anti-Black Racism (video roundtable)

UC Santa Barbara is poised to become an anchoring hub for scholars engaging in and producing innovative research contributing to the field of Black sexualities studies and investigations of anti-Blackness. Through funding from the Feminist Futures Initiative, we began the work of institutionalizing a Black Sexuality Studies Collective (BSSC), convening in Spring 2021. The BSSC brings together an interdisciplinary collective of scholars from the Social Sciences and Humanities to create a space to discuss and build the future of Black sexualities studies, an indispensable arm of the Feminist Futures Initiative at UCSB. During Spring 2021, we focused on the specific themes of intimacy, touch, and desire under the rubric of “Intimate Futures: Black Sexualities and the Twin Pandemics of COVID-19 and Anti-Black Racism.”