Mar 12 2025

Black Earth Study Club: Militant Education with Sónia Vaz Borges

Wed | 7PM

On the occasion of Nolan Oswald Dennis’s exhibition, overturns, SI is delighted to present the third convening of the Black Earth Study Club—a series of transdisciplinary gatherings informed by Dennis’s artistic, scientific, and philosophical ruminations on the material and metaphysical conditions of decolonization.

This event centers the indispensability of alternative pedagogical models in the production, transmission, and sustenance of socially transformative knowledges. Recalling the emergence of militant educational spaces during the anti-colonial liberation struggles in the mid-twentieth century, this event considers the necessity of continuing to foster sites of anti-imperial thinking and epistemic de-linking in the present.

The evening will open with a screening of Mangrove School (2022), a film by Sónia Vaz Borges and Filipa César. Shot in the mangroves of contemporary Guinea-Bissau, it retells the history of makeshift schools built in the forests of the liberated zones by the PAIGC during their armed struggle against Portuguese colonial forces in the 1960s and 70s. Following the screening, Borges will deliver a presentation that unpacks these resonant histories in addition to her ongoing research on militant education and ecology.

On March 15, from 2-4pm, artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed will lead a collaborative workshop that further elaborates these themes of pedagogy and knowledge production. 

Please RSVP to rsvp@swissinstitute.net.

Black Earth Study Club is organized by KJ Abudu, Assistant Curator, Public Programs and Residencies.

Sónia Vaz Borges is a militant interdisciplinary historian and social-political organizer. She received her PhD in History of Education from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU). She is the author of the book, Militant Education, Liberation Struggle, Consciousness: The PAIGC education in Guinea Bissau 1963–1978 (2019) and Ragás, because the sea has no place to grab: A memoir of home, migration, and African liberation (2024). In 2024, she co-curated the Portuguese pavilion at the La Biennale di Venezia with the project, Greenhouse. She is currently an Assistant Professor in History and Africana Studies at Drexel University in Philadelphia (USA).

Image: Filipa César and Sónia Vaz Borges, Mangrove School, 2022. Still.