Traversées

Please join us for a musical conversation between Laurent Dubois and Felwine Sarr, featuring performance and reflections on the practice of music as a way of knowing, interpreting, and approaching the intertwined cultural histories of Africa and the Americas. They will be joined by philosopher and professor in NYU's Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture Nadia Yala Kisukidi.

Laurent Dubois is John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor of the History & Principles of Democracy and the Academic Director of the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia.  From 2007 to 2020, he was Professor of Romance Studies & History at Duke University, where he co-directed the Haiti Laboratory from 2010-13 and then founded and directed the Forum for Scholars & Publics. He is the author of seven books on Haitian and Caribbean history, music and sport, including Avengers of the New World (2004), Soccer Empire: The World Cup & the Future of France (2010), Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (2012), and The Banjo: America’s African Instrument (2016). His writings have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His album Traversées was released in 2024 with Woti Records.

Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese academic and writer. He is Anne-Marie Bryan Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, after teaching at the Université Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal, where he is Professeur Titulaire des Universités and agrégé in economics. His academic work focuses on economics, the ecology of knowledge, contemporary African philosophy, economic policy, epistemology, economic anthropology and the history of religious ideas. He has published Dahij (Gallimard 2009), 105 Rue Carnot (Mémoire d'Encrier 2011), Méditations Africaines (Mémoire d'Encrier 2012), Afrotopia (Philippe Rey, 2016), Ishindenshin (Mémoire d'Encrier, 2017), Habiter le Monde (Mémoire d'Encrier, 2017), Ecrire l'Afrique-monde (collective work co-edited with Achille Mbembe, Philippe Rey/Jimsaan, 2017), Restituer le patrimoine Africain (Philippe Rey/Seuil, 2018) with Bénédicte Savoy, Politique des Temps (co-edited with Achille Mbembe, Philippe Rey/Jimsaan 2019), La Saveur des derniers mètres (Philippe Rey, 2021), Traces (Actes Sud, 2021, translation into Wolof Watit, 2023, éditions EJO), l'Économie à venir (Les liens qui Libèrent, 2021) with Gaël Giraud, Les Lieux

qu'Habitent mes Rêves (Gallimard, 2022) and Le Bouddhisme est né á Colobane (Philippe Rey /Jimsaan, 2024). He is the founder of Woti Records.

Nadia Yala Kisukidi was born in Brussels (Belgium). Agrégée, she taught in Switzerland (University of Geneva) and France (University of Paris 8 Vincennes Saint Denis) .She was vice-president of the Collège International de Philosophie (2014-2016) and fellow at the Institute for Ideas and imagination/ Columbia University (2022-23). Member of the editorial committee Les Cahiers d’études africaines (CNRS, Ehess), she was co-curator of the Yango II Biennale, Kinshasa / RDC – a process that took place in Kinshasa from february 2020 to august 2022.

Nadia Yala Kisukidi is specialized in french and africana philosophy. She has published Bergson ou l’humanité créatrice (Paris, CNRS, 2013), directed collective essays ( Afrocentricités (Kisukidi, Guedj dir.) for the revue Tumultes in 2019 ; Kinshasa Star Line (Kisukidi dir.) for the revue Multitudes in 2020) and written many articles in french and africana philosophy. She has written a book with the feminist and Brazilian philosopher Djamila Ribeiro, Dialogue transatlantique (Paris, Anacaona, 2021), and her first novel, La Dissociation (Paris, Le seuil, 2022).

Under the supervision of Pierre Singaravelou, she coordinated with the historians Melanie Lamotte, Arthur Asseraf and Guillaume Blanc, the book : Colonisations. Notre histoire, Paris, Seuil, 2023. She also published “Walking barefoot”, in Dele Adeyemo, Natalie Diaz, Rinaldo Walcott, Nadia Yala Kisukidi and Christina Sharpe, Borders, human itineraries, and all our relation, Toronto, Knopf edition Canada, 2023.

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