Welcome! This is a temporary landing page while our full website (in English and French) is under development.
about the collective
black symposium noir is an independent bilingual Black Studies collective based in Montreal, QC. The collective was established in 2023 with the intention of creating opportunities for intellectual exchange among emerging & established scholars, artists, cultural workers, activists and organizers invested in Black study. The collective hosted its first two-day bilingual conference in March of 2024 at the Maison de la Culture Côte-des-Neige. black symposium noir is currently in collaboration with the Global Media Journal - Canadian Edition, working on a special issue on Quebec Black Studies.Co-Founders //Kevin Ah-Sen is a PhD student in the Communication Studies program at McGill University, working across Black critical theory, psychoanalysis, performance studies, and the aesthetic and literary representations of racial slavery. His dissertation explores how antiblackness (re)configures the psycho-political function of grief, further elaborating on grief as a theory of violence. Kevin is also a member of the Sex in Theory working group.Bryan Chan Yen Johnson holds a master's degree in Religious Studies from Concordia University. His research focused on the history and philosophy of music and Buddhism in China.Philippe Néméh-Nombré is an Assistant Professor at the Elisabeth-Bruyère School of Social Innovation at Saint-Paul University. His research focuses on Black radical and decolonial possibilities, critical methodologies, and Black ecologies, literatures, and poetics. He is the author of Seize temps noirs pour apprendre à dire kuei (2022) and Improviser le reste : Études noires, risques poétiques, relationalité décoloniale (2024).Désirée Rochat is a community educator, historian and memory worker. Her research focuses on community, cultural and knowledge activism by Black communities in Quebec during the 20th century, through an approach bridging historical research, community archiving and popular pedagogy. She has worked on various initiatives for the preservation and promotion of Black community archives, a commitment that remains at the heart of her latest project Black lives in/and archives. Rochat co-edited Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper (2023) with historians Sean Mills and Eric Fillion, and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Concordia University.Some of our collaborators include //Montreal Steppers, Black Lives in/and Archives, Chalet Kent (Maison des Jeunes de Côte-des-Neiges), among others,
Black Community Archives Discovery Days
May 21-22, 2026 - Registration is required
We are collaborating with the Black Lives in/and Archives project for an event to collectively engage with archives of Black Montreal history. The Black Community Archives Discovery Days brings together invited collectors, archivists, scholars, and artists. Through a mix of round tables, discussions, and hands-on workshops, we will explore collaborative ways to learn from archives held in various institutional and private collections. The first day will focus on Black collecting and community publishing practices, while the second day centers on creative ways to cultivate stories from Black archival sources.The event is open to all, but places are limited. Priority will be given to students, community and memory workers, and artists, as well as people who can attend both days.Date & time: May 21-22, 2026; 9am - 5pm
Location: Concordia University, Webster Library (LB.322) & the SHIFT Centre (LB.145), 1400 Boul de Maisonneuve West.
Registration: Registration is mandatory. Participants can register using this form until April 24 and will be advised once the registration period is closed.The event is organized in collaboration with the Office of Community Engagement, Special Collections and Archives and COHDS from Concordia University; the Sankofa Archives and Collections and the Department of Rare Books, and Special Collections at the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library (University of Toronto).For more information, please write to Désirée Rochat [email protected] or Kristen Young [email protected]
Reading Group: Thought and Motion
(October 2025 - present)
The Thought and Motion is a reading group for the members of the Montreal Steppers, a performance collective and non-profit organization committed to the Black diasporic percussive dance form of step. This reading group explores texts that center the intersection of (anti)blackness and movement, specifically where movement is understood through the registers of the Middle Passage, migration, marronage, fugitivity, organizing, motion/gesture, dance and performance. This space centers the critical juncture where artistic practice and theory meet.With the support of black symposium noir, the goal is to create opportunities for academic texts within the interdisciplinary field of Black Studies to be thoughtfully engaged with outside the university setting and with a broader public. Thought and Motion is also joined by guest speakers, offering opportunities to learn directly from their expertise and critical insight.
March 12, 2026
The Thought and Motion reading group welcomed their first guest speaker, Marcelle-Anne Fletcher, author of Blue Dreams, Black Sleep (2023). We had the opportunity to discuss with Fletcher about her article and the critical insights this piece offers, what Fletcher has referred to as the effortfulness of living, dreaming, and sleeping in an antiblack world, and what is at stake for freedom.Speaker Bio: Marcelle-Anne Fletcher is a doctoral candidate in Social and Political Thought at York University. Her research explores historiography, racial slavery, museums, and the geopolitics of travel exhibitions. Her most recent publications can be found in CR: The New Centennial Review and TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.
Exhibition: REGARDS
March 15 - May 19, 2024
“Tenderness might just be a gesture, it might just be a look, a Black look, some regard, relayed between people in peril.” —Christina Sharpe, Ordinary NotesThe regard is not only a look, but as Christina Sharpe suggests, a habit of care that strips the asymmetrical power dynamics in the act of looking and replaces it with a bid for tenderness — a fleeting juncture of connection fostered through mutual vulnerability. This exhibition examines the porous nature of regard, exploring it as a visual encounter, a practice of Black care, and a method of Black aesthetics. Featuring the works of Amber Rose Johnson, GeeFaizel, Cora-Lee Conway, Black Art Histories Montreal, and Chalet Kent, REGARDS explores the notion of regard as a form of Black care. How does the act of looking expand and extend into the realm of the unknowable? What are the modes of expression required to understand such ineffable gestures? Through these questions, REGARDS considers what lies beyond the look, its affective register within a fleeting exchange, and its unknowability, or more precisely, its ephemerality.Location: First floor gallery at the Maison de la Culture Côte-des-Neiges
Photos by Amelia Segrera
Conference: Black Radical Thought & Praxis in Montreal
March 15 -16, 2024
black symposium noir's inaugural two-day conference in March of 2024 at the Maison de la Culture Côte-des-Neiges. The conference brought together graduate students, established scholars, artists, and organizers in conversation around its theme, Black Radical Thought and Praxis. Discussions centred on Black Studies in the context of Montreal, its significant role within mid-twentieth-century histories of Black organizing, and its contemporary reverberations across disciplines in both anglophone and francophone spheres. We were honoured to welcome Dr. rosalind hampton as our keynote speaker, joined by Dr. Stéphane Martelly and Dr. Robyn Maynard at the closing plenary.
Contact us
If you'd like to support our work, feel free to reach out to us. We welcome all kinds of support and collaborative inquiries.