Sarah Fila-Bakabadio
Sarah Fila-Bakabadio is historian in American and African American Studies and Associate Professor at CY Cergy Paris Université. She is the editor-in-chief of African Diaspora (Brill), a member of the research center AGORA (EA 7392), and member of the editorial committee of Ròt-Bò-Krik publishing house.
Her research explores the Black Atlantic. It addresses the intellectual, cultural, and political circulations of African-Americans and European Afro-descendants in the 20th and 21st centuries. She has studied African American revolutionary connections to Africa in the 1960s and 1970s; the formation and migration of studies (Black Studies and African Diaspora Studies); the visual representations of the black body and black beauty.
In 2016, she published Africa on my mind : une histoire sociale des afrocentrismes afro-américains (Les indes savantes). This study traces the origins of the notion of Afrocentrism and describes the practices of reafricanization it initiated in the United States from 1965 to the early 2000s. She also co-edited several special issues and wrote many articles and books chapters.
Forthcoming
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"Être une femme noire en France : corps, regards et stratégies de protection", La suite dans les idées, France culture, Thursday 7 May 2026.
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Book Launch: Être une femme noire en France, Wednesday 13 May 2026, Le Monte-en-l'air, 2 rue de la Mare, Paris, 7.30pm.
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"Dans la peau d'une femme noire en France", 8 milliards de voisins, Radio France Internationale, 22 May 2026.
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Seminar : Undiscipline, Decolonise, Repair: See, https://undisciplinedecoloniserepair.wordpress.com/
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Newly published by Ròt-Bò-Krik! Visit : https://www.rot-bo-krik.com/
Recent publications
Colloquium
Overflowing the Black Mediterranean.
Creations,cultures and identities across the Euro-African borders
June 2 - 3, 2026, Marseille
Convenors:
Alice Aterianus-Owanga and Sarah Fila-Bakabadio
Book
Black Studies in Europe :
An Anthology of Soil and Seeds
Nicole Grégoire, Sarah Fila-Bakabadio and Jacinthe Mazzochetti (ed.), Chicago, Northwestern University Press, 2025
Être une femme noire en France, éditions du Seuil, collection "Traverses", 2026.
Translation of the back cover:
“Madam, how do you as a Black woman?” This question comes from Maëlys, one of my students. It is the starting point and the raison d’être of this study on the status of Black women in France.
This book blends my voice as an academic and a mixed-race Black woman with those of four other Black women: Ayana, Marie-Anne, and Pélagie, in addition to Maëlys. Each of them shared their daily lives with me: the weight of patriarchy, racism, but also the diversity of Black communities, the beauty of the body, sisterhood, and empowerment.
Black women are often invisible, and their voices are silenced. Yet they embody a dual modernity, at the intersection of gender and race, in an intersectionality they experience firsthand. As bearers of a crucial experience, they are today at the heart of the debates and contradictions of our society.
S. F-B.
Africa on My Mind : Histoire sociale de l'afrocentrisme aux États-Unis.
Les Indes savantes, 2016.
Africa on My Mind offers an in-depth look at Afrocentrism. The term Afrocentrism refers to an ideology, practices, and schools of thought aimed at viewing the world from a so-called “African” perspective. In the United States, it gained traction in the 1990s with the emergence of academic Afrocentrism led by three historians: Molefi Asante, Maulana Karenga, and Leonard Jeffries. It subsequently gave rise to social and cultural concepts and practices whose origins are unknown to many today. From lessons on the history of ancient Egypt to Kwanzaa, “Black Christmas,” and the sale of Ghanaian Barbie dolls, through rites of passage, Afrocentrism has gradually transformed into various forms of Afrocentrism and has permeated the daily lives of African Americans to embody their African heritage.
Through this multidisciplinary study, SSS undertakes a groundbreaking exploration of environments traditionally difficult to access. It offers a genealogy of these phenomena and highlights the close ties between African and African-American histories, which—from African-American nationalisms to African independence movements—interact within spaces now referred to as the Black Atlantic or the African diaspora.
This study offers an original perspective on a phenomenon that remains largely misunderstood beyond the sometimes controversial debates it sparks. It is a journey that, from the churches of Washington to the ghettos of New York, examines the construction of identity, memories, and imaginaries of Africa.
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New issue of African Diaspora (Brill) is available:
Volume 16, issues 1-2 (2024)
More information on African Diaspora: 👇
https://brill.com/view/journals/afdi/afdi-overview.xml
#AFDIAfricanDiaspora