Black Studies in Media & Technology Talk Series: Robyn Maynard

Robyn Maynard

Borders, Im/mobilities, and the Transnational Politics of Black Struggle

Talks will be held over Zoom and are followed by a Q&A session.

Registration: https://mcgill.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEscO-gqDspE9xJ7r-iPQHzdKMDRFTmH3_-

Abstract: This talk examines how past and present technologies of Black containment inform the politics governing border enforcement and explores Black diasporic organizing around racialized and gendered regimes of im/mobility. It is centered around two inter-related questions: “How can we understand bordering practices differently when we center technologies of control over Black mobilities?” and “What can contemporary Black organizing around bordering and mobility teach us about political life?” The talk forwards a transition, abolitionist analysis of how carceral state technologies developed to control Black mobility during and after the transatlantic slave trade has shaped the emergence and proliferation of border controls across the West. Additionally, Maynard engages the intellectual contributions of contemporary Black diasporic social movements against border controls, exploring topics such as the colonial afterlives of extractivism, climate catastrophe and infrastructural disruption, border violence, and the sexual and gendered politics of sanctuary in urban spaces.

Bio: Robyn Maynard is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto where she is a Vanier scholar and holds a SSHRC Talent Award (2019-2022). She is the author of Policing Black Lives (Fernwood, 2017) and the co-author of Rehearsals for Living (Haymarket: Abolitionist Papers/Knopf Canada), forthcoming in June 2022. She has peer-reviewed publications in Critical Ethnic Studies, Scholar & Feminist Online, and most recently, “Police Abolition/Black Revolt” in TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.