News for the People - Virtual Roundtable Webinar Discussion

This virtual roundtable discussion on zoom will bring together historians and journalists to discuss the relationality of the practice of history and importance of the news in this age of misinformation. Black journalists and historians have historically and continue to report stories outside of the mainstream news and curriculum. Mary Ann Shadd, Ida B.Wells , Una Marson, and Carrie Best fought to report news that was relevant to their communities and to make sure that Black perspectives were taken up in print. From the ‘grapevine’ to the Provincial Freeman, Black people across the diaspora created their own alternative press communicating a multiplicity of perspectives. This virtual roundtable discussion will bring together historians and journalists to discuss the relationality of the practice of history and importance of the news historically in this age of misinformation. Panelists will speak for 10-15 minutes on how Black News Presses have informed their research; followed by a roundtable conversation that forges connections between historians and journalists. How do historians and journalists record events? Why are newspapers such important sources for historians? This virtual roundtable will take up these questions and think through history and news across the Black Diaspora.  

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https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/86875620960 

Meeting ID: 868 7562 0960

Passcode: 080207

Keynote Speaker Dr. Karen Flynn
Karen Flynn is the Terrance & Karyn Holm Endowed Professor in the Department of Population Health Nursing Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago. College of Nursing and director of the Midwest Nursing History Research Center. Flynn is author of the award-winning book, Moving Beyond Borders: Black Canadian and Caribbean women in the African Canadian Diaspora. Flynn is in the process of completing a second book project tentatively titled, The Black Pacific: The African Diaspora in East Asia that maps the travel itineraries of young Black English as Foreign Language teachers across borders, which will be published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Flynn is also a public scholar who believes that theory must not be both accessible and translated into practice. Thus, she writes passionately about contemporary issues considering issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, nation, and equity. Flynn had a column in Share, Canada's largest ethnic newspaper. She has written oped articles for Now Magazine, the Toronto Star, and Rabble.ca. She was also a freelance writer for Canada Extra, Swaymag.ca and most recently for Origins. In addition to her own writings, Dr. Flynn has been tapped for expertise for the Toronto Star, U.S.A, Today, and ESPN’s, Undefeated and other mediums.

Dr. Chris Johnson
Dr. W. Chris Johnson is an assistant professor in the Women & Gender Studies Institute and the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Johnson grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama. His research projects and courses examine transnational histories of gender and black liberation. His current book project, Black Power for the Third Word, traces the interwoven itineraries of black revolutionaries who struggled for solidarity at the conjuncture of diasporas. Using postwar Black Britain as a point of departure, this study situates mobility, kinship networks, desire, and decolonial education projects as adhesives that knit together disparate but interconnected revolutionary movements across Africa, the Caribbean, North America, and the United Kingdom. During the academic year 2019-2020, he will research the decolonial pedagogies of Britain’s Black Liberation Front as an NAEd/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow.

Dr. Cheryl Thompson
Cheryl Thompson is an Associate Professor in Performance at The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University. She is author of Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty (2021) and Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture (2019). In 2022, Dr. Thompson co-edited Creative Industries in Canada. She is the recipient of multiple Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants. In addition, Dr. Thompson is currently principal investigator on “Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives: Building An Inventory Through Storytelling,” an Early Ontario Researcher Award project that is cataloguing Ontario’s Black archival collections that has produced an open-source website,
mobaprojects.ca. Dr. Thompson's fourth book, Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Transatlantic Slavery in the Age of Theatrical (Re)productions, 1604-1895 is currently under review with Wilfrid Laurier Press.

Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong is a journalist who has worked in radio, newspaper and television. A former reporter at Radio Jamaica Limited, he was the news director and program director at CHRY Radio at York University in Toronto, and editor at the Jamaican Weekly Gleaner (North American edition) and the annual Black Pages directory. He was a member of the editorial team of the book, Jamaicans in Canada: When Ackee Meets Codfish, published in 2012. He has also written for Toronto Star, Pride News Magazine, The York University Magazine, Interviewing the Caribbean, the Office of the Vice-President, Equity and Inclusion at Toronto Metropolitan University, and the Lifelong Leadership Institute. A strong supporter of initiatives that celebrate Black communities in Canada, Neil is the literary coordinator of the annual Black and Caribbean Book Affair and the monthly literary salons organized by Blackhurst Cultural Centre in Toronto, formerly A Different Booklist Cultural Centre. He has also edited several books.

Montel Gordon
I contribute regularly to The Voice newspaper, Britain's oldest Black newspaper and The Jamaican Gleaner. I have published articles in The Independent, The iPaper, The Metro, VICE and more. My articles are often interested in contemporary Black British culture, identity and the general Black diaspora.
I am the founder of Nostalgia'99 - a music blog that successfully released its first magazine in May 2021 and I endeavour to create and propel the brand further in the future by being open to connecting and networking! I was awarded the Youth Music Network ‘Next-Gen’ grant in April 2022 to work on my next creative magazine titled - “The Black British Experience Through The Eyes of Music” released in early 2023, which includes an array of writers and photographers documenting Black Britain.
I am one of the first recipients of the inaugural James McCune Smith scholarship from The University of Glasgow as I am a candidate in the Sociology doctoral programme exploring the academic attainment of boys of Black Caribbean heritage in Britain and their alarming exclusion rates to examine the proposed school-to-prison pipeline. I have a fervency for writing about education and educational inequalities.

Dr. Hadiya Roderique
Hadiya Roderique is a writer, cultural critic, speaker, researcher, lawyer and consultant. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Vice, Macleans, The Toronto Star, The National Post, and more. She is the winner of the National Magazine Award for Best Short Feature for her piece Black in the Ivory, and is best known for her piece Black on Bay Street, a cover story for the Globe and Mail that outlined her experiences as a young, Black woman working in a large Bay Street law firm. An ex-McKinsey consultant, Hadiya's consulting work focuses on workplace equity, diversity, and inclusion. Hadiya is currently an assistant professor of journalism in the Department of Arts, Media, and Culture at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She has a J.D., M.A. (Criminology), and Ph.D in Organizational Behaviour from the University of Toronto.

Moderator
Catherine Grant-Wata is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation focuses on the history of Jamaican culture and placemaking in Toronto, Canada and Birmingham, England 1948-1985. This research project reviews the ways in which Jamaican born black women in Toronto and Birmingham formed community connection and cohesion in the 20th century. Using oral histories of approximately 30 women (15 from Birmingham & 15 from Toronto), Black newspapers, reggae music/lyrics, and Black community organizations’ archives, this project situates a transnational and regional/urban analysis to consider the ways Black Jamaican women’s identities facilitated diasporic community mobilization. A central component of this project seeks to expand current archival research on Jamaica -Canadian and Black Canadian stories by centering black digital humanities and digitization. Human rights rhetoric and the rise of Black power characterize this period. Jamaican women lean into their own Black Radical Tradition, establish community and mobilize in hostile and unfriendly environments. Catherine completed her MA at York University, The Darkside of the Canadian Dream: A History of Housing Discrimination in Toronto 1961-1977 in August 2020. Catherine writes poetry and collects reggae records in her free time.