Centering Black Childhoods: Engaging Voices and Collaborative Conversations

On behalf of the Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University–Camden, we are delighted to extend an official invitation to our upcoming event, “Centering Black Childhoods: Engaging Voices and Collaborative Conversations,” which will take place in the Multi-Purpose Room of the Rutgers–Camden Campus Center on October 4th, 2023, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. This two-part event is organized by our department with support from the Mellon Foundation as part of a broader initiative that seeks to challenge the whiteness of childhood studies and provide institutional support for racial justice work in the field. In launching this initiative, we seek to foster connections among critically engaged scholars, practitioners, activists, and young people in the Camden and Philadelphia region who are centering Black childhoods in their work.  

Event Details

The event will unfold in two parts. Part 1 will feature a panel of researchers, activists, and young people engaged in participatory, community-based storytelling projects centering youth perspectives. Attendees will hear from members of the University Community Collaborative at Temple University, including the social justice media team of  POPPYN (Presenting Our Perspectives on Philly Youth News). With this panel, we seek to highlight POPPYN’s work bridging scholarship, community, and activism through youth media, and to reflect upon the goals, challenges and generative possibilities of doing this work. Immediately following this panel, the second part of the event will feature a networking reception, where we will serve light refreshments and offer opportunities for youth, scholars, community organizations, community members, and students to connect, collaborate, and share how they are centering Black children and childhoods in their work. While seeking to foster connections among scholars, practitioners, and young people within the Camden and Philadelphia region, we welcome global and transnational perspectives on these issues.

The Centering Black Childhoods speakers’ series uplifts scholarship, art, and activism with Black children. We value the contributions Black children make to how we know and theorize our everyday worlds. We center Black children’s ways of knowing, playing, dreaming, and loving, in order to create new, more just futures in the present.  This Speakers’ Series involves translating and lifting Black children’s complex realities and ways of knowing to wider consciousness, while simultaneously working with youth and communities to sculpt critical strategies for freedom and liberation. We engage in this Speakers’ Series hand-in-hand with activists, artists, practitioners and young people who work to alleviate contexts that harm Black children while envisioning and creating caring community. We envision each of these gatherings as building community and launching ongoing working groups in racial justice scholarship and praxis.

Registration required

We hope you can join us, and we ask that you please register by using this form. This event is free and open to the public. Please share widely!

Past Black Childhoods Speakers Series events

“Centering Black Childhoods: Scholars, Activists, and Communities in Conversation,” our inaugural Black Childhoods Speakers Series event took place virtually on Wednesday, March 9 from 6-7:30 p.m.  The event brought together scholars, graduate students, undergraduates and community members from Rutgers-Camden and the wider Camden community. Participants also included attendants from across the U.S. and abroad (including India and the UK among other locations).

We recorded the event and you can view it here: