The Black Feminist Study Group is a four-part program shaped by the poetics and practice of Afro-Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino, recipient of the Vera List Center’s 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice. Assembled within Paulino’s prize exhibition ¿História Natural? (October 9–November 1, 2026), the study group is anchored by seminal texts that touch on interconnected struggles for liberation and resistance throughout the African diaspora.

The study group assembles weekly from October 9 to 31. Rooted in the practice of collective listening and call and response, each study group session features an invited writer reading from a text of their choice from the reading list by another author, followed by a group discussion. As a joint dialogue, the study group is designed to open encounters and invite collaboration, bringing the disparate into proximity. 

The series commences on Friday, October 9, launching the VLC Forum 2026 and the opening of Paulino’s exhibition. Writer and editor Jessica Lynne leads the first session of the study group, with a reading from The Dialectic Is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento (Princeton University Press, 2023). On October 17, writer and critic Zoë Hopkins reads from Dionne Brand’s “Nomenclature for the Time Being” (Duke University Press, 2022). On October 24, New School scholar Cresa Pugh reads Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Unpayable Debt (Sternberg Press, 2022). And rounding out the series on October 31, interdisciplinary artist and founder of the Free Black Women’s Library, OlaRonke Akinmowo reads from Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (Serpent’s Tail, 2019).

The study group is hosted and co-convened by Re’al Christian, VLC Assistant Director of Editorial Initiatives.

Study Group Sessions

Session 1 | Friday, October 9, 4 pm
Jessica Lynne, writer, editor, and art critic
On Beatriz Nascimento’s The Dialectic Is in the Sea (Princeton University Press, 2023)

Session 2 | Saturday, October 17, 2 pm
Zoë Hopkins, writer and critic
On Dionne Brand’s “Nomenclature for the Time Being,” in Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems (Duke University Press, 2022)

Session 3 | Saturday, October 24, 2 pm
Cresa Pugh, Assistant Professor of Sociology, The New School
On Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Unpayable Debt (Sternberg Press, 2022)

Session 4 | Saturday, October 31, 2 pm
OlaRonke Akinmowo, interdisciplinary artist and founder, The Free Black Women’s Library
On Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (Serpent’s Tail, 2019)