Syracuse University honors Black History Month with Feb. 11 ‘Paris Noir’ discussion in Boston

Syracuse University adds new insights to Black History Month with a special Feb. 11 panel discussion, “Art-in-Progress: Paris Noir in Diaspora.” Organized like a jazz music composition, the interactive panel will engage dynamic variations and versions of a Paris Noir seminar theme. It will begin at 6 p.m. with a reception at the French Library Alliance Francaise of Boston, 53 Marlborough St., Boston, with the presentation starting at 7 p.m. A question and answer session will follow.

The panel discussion is based on the SU Abroad seminar “Paris Noir: Literature, Art and Contemporary Life in Diaspora,” which celebrates its 10th anniversary this summer and explores the work of writers, scholars, visual and performing artists, entrepreneurs and activists on questions of immigration, “French Africanisms” and everyday life.

Moderating the panel will be Janis Mayes, associate professor of African American studies at SU and literary critic, literary translator and Fulbright scholar with extensive research and travel experience abroad. Mayes’ areas of specialization are francophone African/Diaspora literatures, international black women’s writing and literary translation studies. Her books include “A Rain of Words: A Bi-lingual Anthology of Women’s Poetry in Francophone Africa” (University of Virginia, 2009); “The Blind Kingdom” (Ayebia Clarke, 2008) translated from Le Royaume aveugle by Veronique Tadjo; with Anne Adams, “Mapping Intersections: African Literature and Africa’s Development Africa” (World Press, 1998); “The City Where No One Dies” (Three Continents Press, 1986) by Bernard Dadie, translated by Mayes; and “Transatlantic Translation (SALT) into Black Literary Passage: Toni Morrison, Véronique Tadjo, and Bernard Dadié” in translation, her current work-in-progress.

Among the panelists will be Kim Powell, American artist and photographer who has lived and worked in Paris for the past 18 years. She studied photography at SPEOS and Parsons School of Design in Paris, and the International School of Photography in New York. In France, her work has been exhibited at UNESCO, the Logis Royal in Loches, Paris Photographique and the Mona Bismarck Foundation. Her latest exhibition, “Serendipity,” features images from Sri Lanka and was exhibited at the Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris in November 2008.

Powell will join students and Paris Noir alumnae Tess Bonn ’11 and Tuso Boothe ’11 in the panel discussion.

The Feb. 11 event is free and open to the public, but an R.S.V.P. is requested by Feb. 4 to regevent@syr.edu or Sherry Hayes at (315) 443-6157. For directions, visit: http://frenchlib.org/about/maps.cfm.