Dr. Esmeralda Thornhill Black Feminist Speaker Series
An annual series on Black feminisms at Concordia
The Dr. Esmeralda Thornhill Black Feminist Speaker Series brings scholars, artists and community organizers who work on Black feminisms to Concordia University.
This annual series, organized in collaboration by Harambec and the SdBI, is a platform for Black feminist research, art and activism, inviting speakers to present their current work and works in progress that center on race, gender and sexuality.
Conceived out of the historical and archival work produced by Harambec in collaboration with the SdBI, the Speaker Series is named after the 2023 SdBI Prize recipient and inaugural speaker, Dr. Esmeralda M.A. Thornhill.
The series draws connections between the study of Black feminisms and its practices across academic, cultural and community contexts and is a platform to advance Black-led and Black-centered feminist research.
Annual events reflect on how Black feminists in Canada have historically mobilized theory and praxis to expose and interrupt asymmetrical power relations within and beyond the academy.
Speakers, selected annually through an open call for applications, engage with different community members, students, staff and faculty alike, on the potential of Black feminisms to imagine and enact new possibilities for social change.
The series was launched on Oct. 25, 2023.
Esmeralda Thornhill
Background
Dr. Esmeralda Thornhill was the first Black woman in Canada to hold a tenured position as Full Professor of Law in 1996, when Dalhousie invited her to inaugurate the distinguished James Robinson Johnston Endowed Chair in Black Canadian Studies. Among her many accomplishments, she was a member of the Quebec and Nova Scotia Bars and was Quebec’s 1992 Lauréate de l’année for Humanitarian and Social Action, as well as a past Fulbright Scholar and Concordia Honorary Degree Recipient and Convocation Speaker.
In Montreal, she was a founding member,and later national president, of the Congress of Black Women of Canada. At Concordia, she conceptualized, developed and taught the first ever university-accredited course on Black Women’s Studies in Canada at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute in 1984, titled: Black Women: The Missing Pages from Canadian Women’s Studies
On October 25, 2023 she became the first speaker for the Simone de Beauvoir Institute’s new Dr. Esmeralda Thornhill Black Feminist Speaker Series, named in her honour. In collaboration with Harambec: Reviving the Black Feminist Collective, the Simone de Beauvoir Institute celebrated the momentous occasion by awarding Dr. Thornhill the Simone de Beauvoir Institute Prize in recognition of the 40th anniversary of her groundbreaking course at the institute.
