Since this is a summer institute dedicated to thinking about the African diaspora, this is a special occasion to reflect on what is often taken for granted or not talked about and that is the social, political and spiritual aspects of the experience of community making. In our focus on the analysis of a Diaspora phenomenon, which is central to our research, it is easy to not take a moment to reflect on the importance of the practice of community that allows us to be able to pursue our intellectual endeavors.

What does community mean for many of us who are at times isolated, embattled, and long to make connections with people across various forms of difference without eradicating them? It is hard to theorize the winks, the kisses, the hugs, the smiles, the “you’ve done goods,” and the many expressions of love and camaraderie that are not easy to come by in most aspects of our lives. How do we grasp, in this short moment, the deep feelings involved in the community meals, the dancing, the laughs, the “mangos,” and the constant expressions of affirmation and solidarity? Of no less importance than the many things we learned about each other’s research is the fact that we actually experienced the making of a community.

I cannot speak for all of us, but I can speak as one of us by saying that this summer institute has made an indelible impact on me and has transformed my perspective on what it means to do the work that I do. Although everyone, including myself, did not always feel included all of the time and even though we did not always get along all of the time, we experienced what Cherríe Moraga calls, “making familia from scratch.” And for me, this is what Diaspora is all about.

Marlon M. Bailey, University of California at Berkeley

The 2004 Interrogating the African Diaspora seminar served as a place were students could reflect intellectually on the great diversity of black subjectivities and African diasporic communities and experiences. Because the African diaspora is conceptualized differently in various locales, participation in this seminar helped me understand what the African diaspora is, and why and how it is thought about differently in other parts of the world. Now that I have completed the program, I feel that I am in a better position to conceptualize my project, situating my work within an African diasporic paradigm, and move forward towards advancing to candidacy.

LaToya Beck, University of California, Berkeley

Interrogating the African Diaspora (IAD) has been one of the most influential experiences of my graduate career. It offered me a “safe space” within which I could explore the intricacies of my own doctoral project and explore a variety of potential understandings of my research community. On a wider theoretical level, we frequently engaged in productive discussions that explored and problematized some of the conventional polemics between black and white, Diaspora and Africa, and West and Non-West. These discussions will have significant influence over the ways I interpret and connect with what I read and research. Also, because of the constructive engagement between the students, the professors, and the facilitators, IAD became a space where I finally felt free to integrate my personal and professional selves. The community created by IAD is a family and heaven for me, with relationships that I believe will sustain me throughout the rest of my graduate experience and my professional career. I will continue to turn to this new “family” for support, feedback, suggestions, critiques, and opportunities for collaborations. I believe that these collaborations will have a significant and positive influence over the future of research and theory on the African diaspora, as well as the communities that they represent.

Mikaila Brown, Columbia University

The FIU Interrogating the African Diaspora 2004 Summer programme was truly a remarkable experience. It is very rare to find a space in which one can discuss the African Diaspora with a community of like-minded scholars in the academy. It is even more difficult to find a group of graduate students who were as generous with their comments to one another, and as willing to engage critically with each other's work as the seventeen participants of summer 2004. The combination of seminars, lectures, discussions of fellow participants' work and the final conference meant that there were far greater opportunities to receive feedback on your ideas than in either the usual graduate class or conference. This month in Miami was truly unforgettable and a time I will treasure for a long while to come.

Aaron Kamugisha, York University, Toronto, Canada

This experience changed my academic life! The Interrogating the African Diaspora Program was the most intense, expansive and rewarding academic experience that I have ever had. To be in the midst of emerging scholars who were absolutely committed to pushing the limits of African diaspora studies was at times, simply profound. Ultimately, this program has given me a life-long community of scholars to share the challenges, struggles and successes of doing African diaspora studies. I'll always remember my four weeks, studying at FIU's Biscayne Bay Campus, as one of those definitive moments when a disparate group quite unexpectedly started something special. Long live the Biscayne Bay Collective!

Lyndon Phillip, PhD, University of Toronto

The summer seminar and its participants offered a month of intensive intellectual engagement, combined with an inviting social environment. I found here a rare, productive balance between the rigorous scrutiny of ideas and concepts (our own and others'), on the one hand, and the constant extension of respect, generosity, and goodwill, on the other. Few other venues have offered helpful, specific feedback the way this seminar has. The collective commitment to knowledge-building was undeniable and, in turn, the bonds forged here were solid. In short, my participation in this seminar stands as one of the highlights of my entire graduate experience.

Stéphane Robolin, Duke University

Participating in the “Interrogating the African Diaspora” (Interad) 2004 summer seminar has been an invaluable experience for me. As a graduate student of Martinican-descent born and raised in France and currently living and studying in the United States, I have enjoyed every minute of the four-week seminar. Too often, African diaspora studies speak from an American perspective rather than from multiple points of view. This formative and challenging program has proved visionary in its diverse assemblage of seventeen graduate students from Italy to the Ivory Coast, Trinidad to Tanzania, and Barbados to Brazil, just to mention a few locales, and five confirmed scholars from an array of disciplines.

As participants to the seminar not only did we interrogate but we also experienced the African diaspora beyond it limitations and in its various possibilities. The debates and exchanges that took place between emerging and established scholars strengthened our mutual understanding of the challenges of re-examining the African diaspora as a theoretical idea. Indeed, the “Interad” seminar is ideal for graduate students in the writing stage because its format allows them both to test the larger contribution of their work as they introduce it to the other participants, and to submit a section of their dissertation to the scrutiny of professors and advanced students responsible for giving constructive criticism. In my case, systematic references to recent seminal scholarship from a variety of disciplines as well as commentaries situating the complexities of race, of course, but also class, gender, and sexual orientation in the work submitted by participants proved extremely significant. Last but not least, the pristine Biscayne Bay campus in Afro-Caribbean Miami is the ideal location for this seminar. Thank you to the organizers: Rosa, Richard, Jean and their families.

Sophie Saint-Just, The City University of New York Graduate Center

It all started with a simple, but attractive ad received by email. A summer seminar questioning the African diaspora. What a great idea, for such a talked about as well as thought and written about topic. How interesting! Everybody wanted to be a part of it, well everyone should have.

The genius of the seminar lies in the way in which it is designed. This month-long seminar is divided into four weeks, each taught by a different instructor. This helped us to get a wide range of knowledge, following each instructor’s field of specialty. Different approaches, different pedagogies, one same topic the African diaspora.

We found ourselves, a group of international students, strangers to each other at first, then colleagues and now grown to become friends.

I would recommend this seminar to all Ph.D. students whose interest lies in the study of the African diaspora. Especially to those students who, as myself, are coming from Europe where the training is different than that of North America, and where the questions on race can sometimes be a bit shunned. “Interrogating the African Diaspora” truly offers students a safe space (both physical and psychological) to undertake serious indepth reflection. Finally the very fine selection of participants gives the group dynamic intellectual impulses to reach unimagined great levels of achievement.

Maboula Soumahoro
Ph.D. Candidate
Université François Rabelais, Tours
UFR d’Anglais,France

The seminar is certainly an intense, unforgettable experience for whomever wants to explore the field of the African diaspora. To me, as an International student, it has been a challenge: it was not that easy to keep up to non-European academic standards and there was some cultural shock. But in the end I found the seminar the most enriching and stimulating environment I have ever had both intellectually and personally. There was energy, strong will, commitment, help, understanding. All you need to keep going on in such a demanding research field.

Maria Taglioli, University of Padua, Italy

This seminar was quite simply phenomenal! The organisers are to be commended for convening something that is truly special and life changing. Our group (literally) instantly connected, and we each have made sixteen life-long friends and academic advisors. This was an environment in which we could freely express our ideas, and in which those ideas were rigorously, truthfully and respectfully engaged. The academic experience was one of the most profound I have ever had; it has stretched me immensely both as a scholar and a citizen of the world. The facilitators and instructors were truly interested in our wellbeing; they were always accessible and always helpful. For each of us, our work was read and discussed (by instructors and fellow students) with care, concern, and a genuine desire to see us improve. This is one of the best things that I took from the seminar; I was able to read my work through the eyes of others. Certainly we interrogated the contemporary and the historic, the theoretical and the practical, but I also felt as though we were agents actively forming these things.
Of course, socially, we had an incredible time. I cannot but highly recommend the experience.

Melisse Thomas-Bailey Ellis, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Trinidad