Black Metropolis. Une ville dans la ville. Chicago 1914-1945

The Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme propose you a half-day presentation and study of the book Black Metropolis. Une ville dans la ville. Chicago 1914-1945, published by Éditions Maison des Sciences de l'Homme on 17 October 2024.

2:30 pm | Welcoming remarks by Pascal Rouleau, Director of Éditions de la MSH

2:40 pm | Book presentation

With Anne Raulin, anthropologist, Université Paris Nanterre, author of the preface to: Black Metropolis, the 'missing link' in the history of urban socio-anthropology.

Giving its rightful place to this monument to urban socio-anthropology, whose authors St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton are part of the long tradition of African-American social science research inaugurated by W.E.B. Du Bois. A major survey carried out during the New Deal in the black ghetto of Chicago, it gives an account of this period of crisis and of trade union, civic and political mobilisation; it sheds retrospective light on the forms of the Great Internal Migration and, beyond that, considers the repercussions of the Second World War on the demands of African Americans. The book had an immediate impact on work in the social sciences and humanities, and this is still felt today.

Black Metropolis. Une ville dans la ville 1914-1945, une entreprise de traduction collective et multiculturelle, with Frédéric E. Illouz, translator and editor of the French version, Sarah Atukpe, co-traductor, Arnaud Coulombel (University of Chicago in Paris) and Simon Ridley, co-traductors of Black Metropolis.

Tiphaine Samoyault, literary critic and novelist, director of studies at EHESS: On the translation of Black Metropolis (title forthcoming)

3:40 pm — Coffee break

Nicolas Martin-Breteau, historian, University of Lille, translator of W.E.B. Du Bois's Les Noirs de Philadelphie (1899), Éditions La Découverte 2019, and author of the introduction for the French version, and of Corps politiques. Le sport dans les luttes des Noirs américains pour l'égalité depuis la fin du XIX^e siècle, Éditions de l'EHESS, 2020.

4:20 pm | Black Metropolis, what is it playing out today in France and the UK?

Danièle Joly, sociologist, Warwick University, co-translator and coordinator of the book.

What perspectives can a study of the city of Chicago and its ghetto in the first half of the twentieth century bring to existing work in France and Great Britain? Certain themes, such as the urban riots that gave rise to in-depth sociological research from the early 1920s onwards, which Black Metropolis describes in detail, provide a basis for reflection that transcends the differences in time and social realities - racial discrimination stemming from the slave-owning past and/or linked to colonial origin, colour and religion.

4:40 pm | Discussion and debate with the speakers

With the possible participation of Christian Topalov, sociologist, director of studies at EHESS.

Organisation

Laura Catala : laura.catala@msh-paris.fr