Notes from the eighth session (Adam Ferner)

This Wednesday, the group convened at lunch-time, in the IoE's PC Lab, to discuss:

• Frances Beale – "Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female"
• Linda La Rue (introduction)
• Patricia Haden, Donna Middleton and Patricia Robinson – "A Historical and Critical Essay for Black Women"
• The Combahee River Collective – "A Black Feminist Statement"
• Cheryl Clarke – "Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance"

Laurencia Sáenz Benavides gave an overview of the readings and facilitated the discussion. We were lucky to be joined by members from the Netherlands and Bristol (around 16 people in total), and very lucky, again, to have Kristie Dotson joining us from the States.

Among other things, we spoke about how the different texts articulated and problematised hierarchies of oppression, and about the process and functions of myth-making, as it appears in e.g. 'A Historical and Critical Essay for Black Women'. In relation to myth-making, we split up into break-out groups to discuss how philosophical, intellectual labour can be performed in media other than texts (e.g. films, television, music).

We were also fortunate to be joined by Samia Malik, from the Women of Colour Index, who gave us an insight into the work that WOCI do – focussing on improving the visibility of women of colour artists – and how that bore on the discussions being had.

We were in a new room this week, and had a few technical and practical issues – but Zoom continues to work well (once it's up and running) – and we look forward to the next group, in a fortnight's time (which will be held exclusively on Zoom, because of UCU strike action).

If you would like to contribute your thoughts or comments – on the session, or the readings – please do so below, or email them over to applebaumreading@gmail.com.

Notes from the seventh session (Adam Ferner)

This Wednesday, we restarted our work group at the Institute of Education. Over the last few weeks, Zara Bain has been working with Kristie Dotson to devise a reading list to parallel the course that Kristie's running at Yale, on Black Feminist Philosophy. The readings for this session were primarily taken from Beverly Guy-Sheftall's anthology, Words of Fire:

• Sojourner Truth – Woman's Rights
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper – Woman's Political Future
• Anna Julia Cooper – The Status of Woman in America
• Ida Wells-Barnett – Lynch Law in America
• Claudia Jones – An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!
• Lorraine Hansberry – Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex: An American Commentary
• Kristie Dotson – Between Rocks and Hard Places: Introducing Black Feminist Professional Philosophy

Zara and Kristie ran the session, which was well attended (around 22 people). We were particularly lucky to have Kristie joining; many of us (certainly at the IoE) were unfamiliar with the literature and the general intellectual context – and it was incredible to have her input and insight, and generous of her to take the time to help us get our bearings. In relation to this, the point was also made that while the first session may serve as an orientation, there should be greater sharing of intellectual labour in the later ones.

This was also the first time we used 'Zoom.us' to live-stream the event (at Kristie and Zara's suggestion). Despite a couple of small, teething issues, it worked very well – and we were joined by a satellite group in Bristol, and a number of individual researchers from the States and the Netherlands, as well as elsewhere in the UK. The system allows for greater participation from online attendees – and also allows us to side-step many of the usual obstacles faced by reading groups and work groups restricted to specific spatial locations. It also has a 'break-out' room function, which we deployed during Wednesday's session to generate questions about Kristie's introductory remarks and the readings.

• What do you [Kristie] mean when you say everything is reduced to ontology and is there an underlying critique of analytic philosophy?
• How can we meaningfully engage with Black Feminist thought without appropriating it or flattening it?
• What is the relationship between Harper's work and current philosophy and thinking about the epistemology of ignorance being (potentially) redundant?
• Do existing tools for critical engagement – such as ideology critique – contain the resources to provide solutions to the problems black feminists are trying to solve?
• How do we balance the theoretical virtue of intellectual diversity with the potential political utility of intellectual unity?

If you would like to contribute your thoughts, or comments – on the session, or the readings – please do so below, or email them over to applebaumreading@gmail.com.

Webinaring with Zoom!

After a couple of (successful) trial sessions, we've now decided to switch from live-streaming via YouTube, to Zoom.us. YouTube worked relatively well last term but didn't really allow the people in the room to interact with virtual attendees. The only means of interaction was via the YouTube live-chat function.

Zoom.us offers a variety of ways for online participants to engage with the work-group – either via video, audio, or live-chat. It also has a 'break-out room' function, which will allow online attendees to discuss the readings in smaller groups.

Joining us via Zoom.us is relatively straightforward. You need to have a Zoom account – which you can sign up for free, here: https://zoom.us/. Before every session, I'll send out a unique sign-in number, which you can enter into your Zoom account (having clicked 'Join meeting') – and that should patch you through.

Because we're going to be using the free version of Zoom, our meetings can only be 40 mins – so we're going to set up 3 meetings to run consecutively. I'll email out a list of sign-in numbers.

If you have any issues setting it up, please get in touch (at applebaumreading@gmail.com) and I'll see what I can do to help!