The event will center around National Coming Out Day. The event will serve as an exploration of Barbara Smith's work on intersectionality, identity, sexuality, politics and community.  The panel of speakers will use clips from the Marlon Riggs film to comment on the theme's highlighted above and how they intersect with Barbara Smith’s work (Smith herself is featured in the film). After the panelists' discussion, students, staff and faculty present at the event will be asked to join the conversation. 

 

 

TO VIEW THE FILM ONLINE: Stream here.

TO VIEW THE FILM IN-PERSON: There will be an in-person screening of Black is...Black Ain’t on Thursday October 6 from 12:30-2PM at the Women’s Center, 227 New Ingersoll. 

TO ATTEND THE PANEL EVENT ONLINE: Pre-register here.

TO ATTEND AN IN-PERSON LIVE STREAMING OF THE EVENT: The Women’s Center will host an in-person live streaming of the Thursday October 12 panel event. Light refreshments will be served. Women's Center, 227 New Ingersoll  

 

Stephen Winter (he, him) is an award-winning filmmaker and writer. His 2015 feature film Jason and Shirley premiered at BAMCinemaFest, was called “one of the year’s finest” by The New Yorker. His debut Chocolate Babies premiered 1996 at the Berlin Film Festival. Both Chocolate Babies and Jason and Shirley premiered on the Criterion Channel in Fall, 2021. His Webby nominated fiction podcast series Adventures in New America, an afrofuturistic polyglot sci-fi political satire, premiered Fall 2018 and was compared by The New York Times to Jordan Peele and Boots Riley. Stephen’s next fiction podcast will be The Space Within on Audible, starring Jessica Chastain in Spring 2023. Stephen teaches for Brooklyn College’s Film Department.  www.stephenwinter.me
 
Kiara St. James (she, her) has been a community organizer and public speaker. She has used her intersectional identities as a platform to highlight and bring tactile and systemic change. She has been instrumental in changing shelter policies that were discriminatory towards the Trans community, and presented workshops concerning marginalized communities at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria and the United Nations, as well as at other conferences and academic institutions. Kiara coordinated meetings with legislators to discuss the importance of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act. The  bill was passed in 2019 and enriched the lives of all New Yorkers through creating culturally affirming spaces.  Kiara is the Founder and current Executive director of the New York Transgender Advocacy Group (NYTAG Inc), a grassroots  501c-3 non-profit organization, that is Trans-led and intent on creating new opportunities for the Trans community.
 
Joe Baez (he/him, she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of American Studies at George Washington University. In her dissertation research, Joe looks at how queer, trans, fat women and femmes of color represent themselves in the arts and in media, with chapters focusing on Laura Aguilar, Mark Aguhar, and TS Madison Hinton. In 2018, Joe received his Bachelor of Arts in Women’s & Gender Studies and Political Science from Brooklyn College. At Brooklyn College, Joe was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, a CUNY Pipeline Fellow, and an alumnus of the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers (IRT) summer internship program. As a scholar, Joe dreams of radically transforming the way we love ourselves, our bodies, and each other.
 
Kaneïta Marcelin (they, them) is an artist and activist. Their work focuses on intersectional feminism across various mediums.  As a panelist/artist at the Patti Pace Performance Festival, Kaneïta created a short film centering on Haitian womanhood. In efforts to enact an inclusive and anti-racist future with works engaging Black womanhood and identity. As a Black queer activist and scholar, Kaneïta is committed to empowering the BIPOC/LGBTQ+ community and achieving social justice. They are the co-founder of Lakay Nou Organization, an organization providing aid to migrants at the Mexican borders.
 
B Lee-Harrison Aultman, Ph.D. (or B, for short; they, them) is a political theorist, educator, and trans activist. They received their doctorate from The Graduate Center, CUNY, but has been teaching at CUNY since 2008. Their teaching philosophy is that the classroom is about conversation and interdependent thinking. Their research is situated where the borders of Trans Studies, Critical Theory, and Black Feminist Thought converge. B’s current book manuscript, The Trans Ordinary, is under contract with SUNY Press. Their work has appeared in various peer-reviewed journals such as TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Wagadu: A Journal for Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies and Writing from Below. They have also contributed peer-reviewed chapters to LGBTQ Studies: A Critical Reader (NYU), The Oxford Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Politics and Policy, and The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies. Their forthcoming research on trans masculinity will appear in the Routledge Handbook of Men, Masculinities and Organizations: Theories, Practices and Futures of Organizing. They’re also excited about contributing a chapter to the anthology Futures of Cartoons Past: The Cultural Politics of X-Men: The Animated Series (Mississippi).

 

The event is co-sponsored by:
Africana Studies Department; American Studies Program; Anthropology Department; Caribbean Studies Program; Brooklyn College Office of Diversity and Equity Program; Communication Arts, Sciences and Disorders Department; Dominican Student Movement; Film Department; GLBTQ Advocacy in Research and Education (GLARE); History Department; Honors Academy; Judaic Studies Department; the LGBTQ+ Center; Mexican Heritage Student Association; Modern Language and Literatures Department; Philosophy Department; Political Science Department; Puerto Rican Alliance; Puerto Rican and Latinx Studies Department; Sociology Department; Television, Radio and Emerging Media Department; We Stand Against Hate; Women of Color Association; Women’s and Gender Studies Program; the Women’s Center

"Calling to Witness: Complicating Autobiography and Narrative Empathy in Marlon Riggs's 'Tongues Untied'" by Leah Anderst
in Studies in Documentary Film, 2019