The Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics was delighted to co-host J.T. Roane’s talk about his new book, Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place, on 18 January at the University of Brighton, UK. J.T Roane’s full talk can be accessed here

Image of J.T Roane from his book talk at the University of Brighton

Drawing upon his book, J.T Roane talked about the history of Black urban placemaking and politics in Philadelphia from the Great Migration to the era of Black Power. Through rich archival research, critical and creative insight, and storytelling, J.T. Roane showed how working-class Black communities cultivated two interdependent modes of insurgent assembly—dark agoras—in twentieth century Philadelphia. He talked about the ways these communities transposed rural imaginaries about and practices of place as part of their spatial resistances and efforts to contour industrial neighborhoods. Through mundane acts of refashioning intimate spaces to expressly confrontational and liberatory efforts to transform the city’s social and ecological arrangement, he explained how these communities challenged the imposition of Progressive and post-Progressive visions for urban order seeking to enclose or displace them.

About the speaker: J.T. Roane is assistant professor of Africana Studies and Geography and Andrew W. Mellon chair in the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, at Rutgers University, USA.

Event details – 18 January 2023, 19.00-21.00, Sallis Benney Theatre, 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton BN2 0JY

About the event: This event was organised by Future Natures in collaboration with the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics at the University of Brighton, Brighton CCA, and the Politics of Nature reading group at the University of Sussex.