“Of the (Re-)Construction of African American Male Identities in 21st-Century Popular Cultures”
Presentation at the one-day conference “Regards croisés sur le genre” organized by Erwan Pépiot (TransCrit), Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis. November 17, 2023.

“Construction (Queer) Counter-Models of Masculinities in Hip Hop: A Few Case Studies”
Presentation at the one-day conference “Cultural Representations of Masculinities: Models and Counter-Models in the English Speaking World” organized by Chloé Bour–Lang, Tim Heron and Juliette Misset (SEARCH), Université de Strasbourg. May 12, 2023.

This presentation aims at understanding the ways in which Black gay rappers such as Le1f, Big Freedia, Lil Nas X, Kevin Abstract, Thed Jewel, or even Bob the Drag Queen have queered a theoretically fixed Black masculinity. My analysis will mainly consider lyrics, music videos, and dress codes to probe the manifold interrogations, reinventions, and reappropriations of said masculinity(-ies)—with performances at the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality.

“Shifting Canons in Hip Hop: African American Gay Rappers and the Visibility of Homosexuality”
Presentation at the 53^th AFEA Symposium “Légitimité, Autorité, Canons”. Workshop No.14 “Faire, défaire, refaire le canon poétique” (“Making, Unmaking, Remaking the Poetic Canon”) suggested by Abigail Lang (Université de Paris) and Vincent Broqua (Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis), Université Bordeaux Montaigne. May 31-June 3, 2022.

This paper probes the shift in the hip hop movement in terms of lyrics, representation, and behavioral codes. Hip hop culture has codified its participants’ attitudes and oral expressions, even their clothing styles. These are fixed in traditions that are inextricably linked to the song lyrics. I examine the way words and postures are being de-canonized to create new canons. As Black gay rappers (and other LGBTQ+ individuals) are increasingly visible, I concentrate on Lil Nas X—whose notoriety has brought new light to the presence of Black gay men in hip hop culture—and on Kevin Abstract.

“Queer(ing) Masculinity in Hip Hop Culture: The Case of Lil Nas X”
Presentation at the one-day conference “Gender Trouble 2020: Queering art/Queering society?” organized by Juliette Mélia and Emmanuelle Delanoë-Brun (LARCA), Université de Paris. October 9, 2020.

This paper tackles how Lil Nas X uses his artistic platform to reveal a different agenda of Black masculinity. Decried in TV shows and on social networks because he is gay and flaunts his sexuality, Lil Nas X also raises the question of agency in the way it is correlated to the performative acts coming from being queer and Black—especially in the hip hop industry. The analysis focuses on the representations that he enacts—whether they are his youth, his blackness and queerness, his defense of positive representations, etc.—to break heteronormative codes and speak to/for those whose voices are not heard. Yet, his ambiguity on social media can sometimes disconcert observers, raising further questions about “authenticity.”

« Subvertir les clichés : Moonlight et la reconstruction des identités masculines noires dans le ghetto »
Presentation at the 51^st AFEA symposium “Disciplines/Indisciplines”. Workshop No. 14 “Les indisciplinés du cinéma” (“Undisciplined Movies”) suggested by Emmanuelle Delanoë-Brun (Université Paris Diderot) and Delphine Letort (Université du Maine), Université de Nantes. May 21-24, 2019.

Reposant sur l’analyse du film Moonlight (2016) de Barry Jenkins, cette communication observe la façon dont, dans cette œuvre, le ghetto est représenté en contradiction avec les lieux communs. Elle s’attache également à montrer comment les identités LGBTQ+ africaines américaines peuvent se construire, à la fois grâce et à cause du quartier défavorisé qu’est le « ʼhood ». En plus d’être un territoire géographiquement isolé et emprisonnant, c’est aussi celui où une culture propre aux communautés noires et Latinx se crée autour de certaines normes limitant les libertés individuelles. C’est dans ce milieu que Chiron évolue et qu’il découvre son homosexualité. Mon étude se concentre sur l’évolution et l’acceptation de cette sexualité qu’un milieu hétéronormatif et homophobe identifie comme déviante. Elle se penche aussi sur la question d’ipséité en regard de l’identité communautaire.

“Memoir, Memory and Conceptualized Identities in William Melvin Kelley’s Narratives”
Presentation at the CAAR “Mobilising Memory: Creating African Atlantic Identities” symposium, Hope University, Liverpool. June 24-28, 2015.

My aim in this paper is to understand how William Melvin Kelley enacts the pride of the African American past through the literary field for the nonfictional creation of African American identities. The phenomenological approach of his works copes with a conceptualizing process and is the basis of my argument.
Kelley’s hermeneutics questions the society itself as well as literary norms. On the one hand, he focuses on the ambiguity of the African American identities in American society as a result of the White American society pressures on them. On the other hand, he interrogates Black literature as separate, but also as one responding to well-defined criteria. Because all these preexisting conditions are part of the common ideology of a Black psyche, culture and past, they have become the norm. Kelley deconstructs them to create anew. His approach is both creative and of agitprop.

“Chig Dunford and the Idea of Life in Cycle – From Insouciance to Awareness, and Conversely”
Presentation at the CAAR “Dreams Deferred, Promises and Struggles: Perceptions and Interrogations of Empire, Nation, and Society by Peoples of African Descent” symposium, Agnes Scott College, Decatur/Atlanta. March 13-16, 2013.

By focusing on Chig Dunford, one of the protagonists in William Melvin Kelley’s Dunfords Travels Everywheres, the goal of this paper is to show how the writer creates a never-ending story to expose the everlasting struggle African Americans must fight for their rights and self-determination.
In the novel, Chig’s insouciance is not that of an African American who does not know what it is to be Black in the Unites States in the 1960s, it is that of a Black man who has never faced the realities of being black in his own country. As the story unfolds, he rediscovers his blackness in two ways: first through the plot itself and its events, then through the secondary story told in “dream language,” a language invented by Kelley to reveal the truth of U.S. society to his African American characters.

“Making Blackness Meaningful or When William Melvin Kelley’s Characters Become Self-Conscious”
Presentation at the CAAR “Black States of Desire: Dispossession, Transformation, Circulation symposium, Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot. April 6-9, 2011.

Because they are constructed in an intertextual context, the characters in William Melvin Kelley’s stories expand a lot. These characters are aware of their skin color in a context defined to make them realize it and as they grow to understand the consequences the color of their skins has on them and on those around them.
In stories set in the 1960s, Kelley’s characters go from a life of submission to a fully lived life, i.e., without pretense or assimilation. This is a fact Kelley endeavors to pass on to his reader, the final person he wants to convince into a life without boundary due to the color of their skins. His mission is to make blackness meaningful again for Black people who must become confident of their own worth.