A Spell to Save Your Life (in honor of Toni Cade Bambara)

Ancestral Listening Intensives 2019-2020

Undrowned Sun: An Ancestral Listening Intensive

“boda became. old as ocean. wise as whale. black as undrowned sun.  bold as what we been through.”

-quotation from Dub: Finding Ceremony

Saturday and Sunday Feb 29 & March 1 2pm-5pm Eastern 

This is part of Brilliance Remastered‘s series of intensives on Ancestral Listening celebrating the publication of Dub: Finding Ceremony, an ancestral listening text by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Duke University Press in February 2020.)

 

 

Cycles: The Unlearning Intensive

Saturday and Sunday December 28-29, 2pm-5pm Eastern Time

For our last writing intensive of the year (and the decade) we will focus on releasing what we need to unlearn to move into the next decade.  With writing and listening activities designed to help us pinpoint the personal patterns, intergenerational cycles and ancestral healing that our next level of liberation requires us to unlearn and release with gratitude, this will be a supportive space to clear space for the visions closest to our hearts.

The course will be limited to 12 participants.

Tuition is sliding scale $200-350. Sign up with a non-refundable* deposit of $75 here:

(Write “Unlearning” in the paypal notes!)

*If the course is full when you sign up, your deposit will be refunded. If you don’t attend the course, your deposit will be a cherished donation to the ongoing work of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.

Past Webinars

Friday-Sunday, November 29, 30th and December 1 2-4pm daily (Eastern Time) Online Intensive

As the days get dark and the holidays approach, those of us who have lost loved ones often feel grief reminding us, teaching us, sending us deep within.  As we confront the nationalist, colonial holiday “Thanksgiving” many of us are mourning genocide against indigenous people on this land, and grounding even more strongly in our connections to our own indigenous ancestors.  As we gather with given and chosen family, many of us need a nurturing space through which to retain our new insights while we confront old patterns.   For some of us what we have been through this year is piling up on us as we face a new decade.  This intensive is for me and for you, a place to focus and strengthen our ancestral listening.

This 3-day online intensive is a space for reflective writing, listening and discernment for people who are seeking to prioritize ancestral listening and find the insights their grief is offering. Participants will have access to advance excerpts from Dub: Finding Ceremony, but no reading is required in advance.  Participants will need to be available from 2-4 eastern on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Nov 29, Nov 30 and Dec 1) something to write with, a mirror and an open heart.

The course will be limited to 12 participants.

Tuition is sliding scale $200-350. Sign up with a non-refundable* deposit of $75 here:

*If the course is full when you sign up, your deposit will be refunded. If you don’t attend the course, your deposit will be a cherished donation to the ongoing work of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.

My Words Will Be There: Audre Lorde, Black Feminism and Ancestral Listening

Saturday and Sunday December 7 & 8 2pm-5pm (Eastern)

In an interview with Mari Evans for the classic text Black Women Writers Audre Lorde explained her own immortality.  “My words will be there,” she said, speaking about her relationship with a movement that would outlive her, and in fact, her words are here invoked in the streets, in the academy, in non-profit grants and even by football commentators.  This intensive is for those of us who not only live inside the brave words of Audre Lorde and other Black feminist ancestors, but who also feel accountable for the work our words are doing in the world now and beyond our lifetimes.  This is a space for writers, speakers, educators and organizers to hone our intergenerational listening and to enhance our own intentionality.   We will use individual and collective writing, and supportive listening and sharing as our primary methods.

The course will be limited to 12 participants.

Tuition is sliding scale $200-350. Sign up with a non-refundable* deposit of $75 here:

*If the course is full when you sign up, your deposit will be refunded. If you don’t attend the course, your deposit will be a cherished donation to the ongoing work of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.

 

 

2019

Deep Dive Solstice Prep Session: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals

 

December 19, 2019 7pm-9pm Eastern Time

It’s the last solstice of the decade, let’s go deep.  What do the dark places in our lives, usually at a depth beyond our perception, have to offer us as we move into 2020?  This writing workshop, drawing on a Black feminist interpretation of the actual diving strategies of the physeter macrocephalus (commonly known as the sperm whale who dives more than a mile into the ocean) will use writing as an immersion technology to look at the deepest lessons of this time in our lives and the intentions we can set for the coming year and beyond.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/deep-dive-solstice-prep-session-black-feminist-lessons-from-marine-mammals-tickets-86291166201

This workshop is based on Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s ongoing marine mammal apprenticeship, a process of listening and learning that takes the consequences of colonialism and species level alienation, and the resulting reality of rising oceans as an opportunity to study the salt-water strategies of marine mammals including her relationship to her ancestors who experienced the transatlantic middle passage, her ancestors with indigenous relationships to marine mammals spanning centuries and her own tears, sweat and emotional intellegence.  This workshop focuses on one element of that process which is about reframing our relationship to depth.

Come ready to write, to feel and to be in communion with everyone who chooses to gather online.

Participants will have the option to participate in text chat, via audio or video or any or all of those three modes as the workshop goes on. Participants will get the link to sign on the day before the workshop.  There are no refunds.  If you are not able to attend your registration will be become a cherished donation to the ongoing work of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.

 

 

 

Part and Parcel: Audre Lorde and the Idea of the Community Accountable Intellectual/Artist

Tuesday November 26th 7pm-9pm Eastern (Online Workshop)

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/audre-lorde-and-the-idea-of-the-community-accountable-intellectualartist-tickets-82879963201

In “Above the Wind,” one of her last public interviews, Audre Lorde explained what it meant for her to be an artist and intellectual whose poetic work was “part and parcel” of the life of her majority Black community in St. Croix.  Lorde’s theory and practice of what it means to be a community accountable artist and intellectual are the basis of Brilliance Remastered, and a model for scholars, artists and thought leaders who seek to be in ethical, sustainable relationship with the communities they love.  In this online writing workshop, Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs will lead us through a series of prompts designed to allow us to reflect on our roles in the communities that make us possible.  This session is particularly designed for those who are seeking clarity about their emerging relationships with or work outside of existing academic, arts and non-profit institutions, or who are seeking to deepen the complex work that they are already doing in community, and will include a robust Brilliance Remastered Q&A session for people designing their community accountable practice now.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/audre-lorde-and-the-idea-of-the-community-accountable-intellectualartist-tickets-82879963201

All registered participants will get access to the interview “Above the Wind” the day before the session, but there is no required reading in advance.

There are no refunds.  If you register and cannot participate, you will still recieve the article and your registration will be a cherished donation to the ongoing functioning of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.   Participants will recieve a video link to participate the day before the event.  Participants can engage via computer video, phone or computer audio, text chat or all of the above.

A Knowing So Deep: A Series of Online Writing Ceremonies in Honor of Toni Morrison 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Knowing So Deep is a series of 12 writing ceremonies in honor of Toni Morrison facilitated by Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs.  Based on Alexis’s archival research and deep study of Morrison’s work, these two hour sessions are an opportunity for people who want to honor the specificity and eternal impact of Toni Morrison’s body of writing.  The approach will be interactive and writing focused.  Participants can choose to participate via video, audio, chat or all three. The sessions will not be recorded to honor the confidentiality of the participants.

Session 1:  A Knowing So Deep: An Underwater Writing Ceremony for Black Women and Femmes  August 15 6-8pm EST

“You had this canny ability to shape an untenable reality, mold it, sing it, reduce it to is manageable, transforming essence, which is a knowing so deep it’s like a secret.” – Toni Morrison, “A Knowing So Deep” Essence Magazine 15th Anniversary Issue 1985

When my mentor, now ancestor Cheryll Y. Greene compiled the special anniversary issue of Essence Magazine with the collaboration historian Paula Giddings, they asked Toni Morrison to offer the last word.  Morrison sent a letter to Black women that reads as a collective praise poem, a reckoning and an intergenerational clarification that includes herself, her sisters, her ancestors and those to come.  The depth of the poem and its oceanic rhythm was informed by the writing she was doing at the time, which would become the novel Beloved.  In this moment when we are reaching to honor the depth of Morrison’s impact and the imperative messages her legacy offers for our living, loving and creative action, I offer a writing ceremony specifically for Black women (trans and cis) and genderqueer Black femmes who see themselves in Morrison’s lineage and legacy.

Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-knowing-so-deep-a-writing-ceremony-in-honor-of-toni-morrison-for-black-women-and-femmes-tickets-68863684133

Jan-March 2018

M is for M/othering Ourselves

The M is for M/othering Ourselves Webinar Series is celebrating the release of M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs on March 9th 2018.  This webinar series offers a deep dive into the key concepts of Audre Lorde’s work as a queer regenerative resource.

 

 

 

 

Audre Lorde, Worlds Without End: Audre Lorde as Mother of a Black Queer Speculative Future

Tues-Thurs May 29-31, 2018

6pm-9pm Eastern

Audre Lorde has not been celebrated as a founding figure of speculative literature, but she is.  Her mentorship of Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories a Black lesbian feminist vampire novel that travels through time into a a dystopic and transformative future is just one major act in a writing and activist life that was characterized by creating possibility and connection where there seemed to be no future and by imagining mothering as an impact on the future that went beyond patriarchal forms of parenting or reproducing.

This intensive will look at some of the queerest, spaciest, most futurist and fantastical works by Audre Lorde as a resource for the ongoing Black feminist work of queering the future and will explore the connections between Lorde’s work and the work of Gomez, Octavia Butler, Janelle Monae and most importantly those of us involved in the intensive.

This online intensive is for people who see daughtering as a queer non-binary futurist work that is accountable for excavating the (sometimes suppressed) queerness of our collective history. We will activate Lorde’s legacy to queer our own understanding of our families, our futures, our freedom and our far-flung fields of influence.  (Some of this work will be based on the essay “Speculative Poetics: Audre Lorde as Prologue for Black Queer Futurism” which was published in The Black Imagination in 2013.)

Tuition for this three day online intensive is sliding scale $125-275.   All possible payment plans are available. Just let me know.

This intensive is limited to 9 participants.

Reserve your spot with a $50 (non-refundable) deposit here: 

Send an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions (dreams) for the course by May 25th.

This intensive is part of the M is for M/othering Ourselves Webinar Series, celebrating the release of M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs on March 9th 2018.  This webinar series offers a deep dive into the key concepts of Audre Lorde’s work as a queer regenerative resource.

Legacy:  Lorde and Daughtering in the Face of Death

Friday-Sunday March 30th-April 1st.

Friday  6pm-9pm Eastern

Saturday and Sunday Noon-3pm Eastern

“When I have been dead four and a half seasons, dry my words, seek the roots where they grow, down between the swelling of my bones…” —Audre Lorde in her personal diary for 1974, archived at Spelman College

“There is no guarantee that we or our movements will survive long enough to become safely historical…”- Barbara and Beverly Smith, Conditions Four, 1978

Audre Lorde mourned her parents in her writing.  She mourned the relationships she longed for with them, that were never realized.  She mourned them during their lives and after their deaths. And then she wrote about her own confrontations with death as a Black lesbian feminist cancer survivor, who survived until she did not. Almost 20 years before she died, she wrote the epigraph that appears above. Instructions for what to do four and a half seasons after her death.   During her last interview “Above the Wind” she spoke of legacy.  “This work began before I was born and it will continue…but my words will be there.”

This intensive is an opportunity to look at some of Audre Lorde’s published and archival writings and interviews for insight on legacy and daughtering in the face of death.  This is for those of us who are grieving the deaths of people who we have daughtered, parents, mentors and other loved ones.  This is for those of us who play unique roles in caring for the legacies of mentors and historical figures, archivists, literary executors, unlikely heirs.  This is for those of us who are navigating terminal illness in our families and in our own bodies.  This is for all of us, because daughtering is intimate work beyond binary gender and death shapes the urgency of our work to create another world.

Tuition for this three day online intensive is sliding scale $125-275.   All possible payment plans are available. Just let me know.

This intensive is limited to 9 participants. When signing up please remember that this is what some people celebrate as Easter weekend.  Yup. I know.  Death, rebirth and all of that.

Reserve your spot with a $50 (non-refundable) deposit here: 

Send an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions (dreams) for the course by March 25th (that’s Toni Cade Bambara’s birthday by the way!)

 

M/otherlands: Audre Lorde and Daughtering In Diaspora

Feb 26-28 6pm-9pm Eastern Time

“To the average Grenadian, the United States is a large but dim presence where some dear relative now lives…Grenada is their country.  I am only a relative.”

-Audre Lorde, Grenada Revisited

“But blood will tell, and now the blood is speaking.”

-Audre Lorde, Apartheid USA

Audre Lorde paused the publication of her enduring book of essays Sister Outsider to write about her second visit to Grenada, the country where her mother was from and where her parents met.   In her bio-mythography Zami,
Lorde explains that though she grew up in Harlem, her family never considered the United States “home.”  Home was always in the Caribbean.  And yet, as an adult when Audre Lorde “returned” to Grenada for the first time, it was more complicated.  She learned family secrets that had been hidden for years, she found siblings she had never known about, and when shortly after her first visit the US invaded Grenada, she had to decide how to relate to her power and privilege as a US citizen alongside her solidarity with Grenada as a place of shared and distinct heritage, identity and politics, as a majority-Black socialist state.

Many of us have complicated relationships to parentage, heritage and the idea of home.  This intensive will draw on Audre Lorde’s exploration of this theme especially in regards of her lived and imagined relationships with Black women in Grenada and Carriacou, St. Croix, Anguilla, and South Africa in order to prompt our own insights about daughtership, migration, belonging, longing and ideas of accountability and responsibility.  This intensive is for all of us, and with special accountability to participants who are part of immigrant families or who have migrated without their families, those of us who have been displaced through gentrification and other forms of colonialism, those of us who have had to flee political and/or interpersonal violence and anyone who had a complicated intergenerational to the idea of “home.”

Tuition for this three day online intensive is sliding scale $125-275.   All possible payment plans are available. Just let me know.

This intensive is limited to 9 participants.

Reserve your spot with a $50 (non-refundable) deposit here: 

Send an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions (dreams) for the course by February 22nd.

If you cannot attend the course and want access to a specialized bibliography of readings on this topic by Audre Lorde, APG and other Black feminist and transnational feminist scholars (curated by APG) offer a donation of $25 or more with the note “m/otherlands bibliography” here:  

This intensive is part of the M is for M/othering Ourselves Webinar Series, leading up to the release of M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs on March 9th 2018.  This webinar series offers a deep dive into the key concepts of Audre Lorde’s work as a queer regenerative resource.

Daughter Dreams:  Audre Lorde and the Darkness We Need Now

Tues January 30th to Thurs Feb 1

7pm-10pm Eastern Time

“mother I need your blackness now”

-Audre Lorde in “From the House of Yemanja”

Some say daughters are made of dreams. The unfulfilled dreams of mothers, the unspoken dreams of fathers. In capitalist patriarchy the word “daughter” carries with it obligation, unrewarded labor and generational anxieties that are gendered, racialized, and economic. But what if we can have an experience of daughtering that is NOT bound by patriarchal or binary gender? What if the nightdreams of those of us who are here daughtering escape the predictability of our days?

Audre Lorde documented her dreams and the dreams of her children.  She wrote of nightmares about her mother, police violence, and the academy in her poetry.  She assigned her poetry students to keep dream journals as a major source for the poem that would construct what she called “the skeleton architecture of our lives.”

This intensive is the place where daughter meets water.  Based on Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s essay “Daughter Dreams and the Teaching Life of Audre Lorde,” which activates Audre Lorde’s poetry, essays and journaled dreams to argue for a deep dark queer archive of mothering and daughtering, this online intensive will use writing, reflection, oracles and Black feminist theoretical and poetic praxis to connect each of us to our individual and collective archives of alternate possible lives and a transformed relationship to the complexity of daughter-work.

Tuition for this three day online intensive is sliding scale $125-275.   All possible payment plans are available. Just let me know.

This intensive is limited to 9 participants.

Reserve your spot with a $50 (non-refundable) deposit here: 

Send an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions (dreams) for the course by January 26th.

If you cannot attend the course and want access to a specialized bibliography of readings on this topic by Audre Lorde, APG and other Black feminist scholars (curated by APG) offer a donation of $25 or more with the note “daughter dreams bibliography” here:   

Summer 2017

Water in the Desert: Brilliance Remastered Summer Intensives 2017

Begin: Seven Possible Futures for the Black Feminist Artist: Weds and Thurs June 21st and 22nd 3-6pm Eastern

In apocalyptic times all futurists are artists.  This is for those of us creating despite everything.  Whether you are a self-identified “artist” or a self identified “black feminist” or a person identifying as some other creative force, some other version of black love you are welcome.  Based on Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s piece “7 Possible Futures” in the most recent issue of Obsidian ( which is an excerpt from her forthcoming book M Archive: After the End of the World), this is a space for us to activate a creative approach to our futures.  To face the apocalypse capitalism has created with exactly the tools capitalism can’t value.  This online intensive will use meditation, individual and collective art-making and a plethora of black feminist references (especially to Jacqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing) to offer insight and energy towards your creative future.  The course is limited to 7 participants.

Reserve your spot with your $50 deposit towards the sliding scale ($150-250) fee here, and email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions for the course by June 18th.

 

Becoming Turquoise: Intergenerational Accountability  Mon and Tues July 24 & 25 3-6pm Eastern

This intensive is designed for those of us who are ready to deepen the practice of dedicated art-making, intellectual work, activist work and community building. Who is your work dedicated to? If your work is accountable to multiple generations, how do you generate practice, measures and resources that sustain that work in the moment?  Based on “Xuihatl: Becoming Turquoise” a poem by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Imaniman (a recent anthology of poetry in honor of Gloria Anzaldua), this online intensive is for old souls and young elders whose work would not be imaginable without deep relationships of longing and accountability to the very old and the very young, the dead and the not yet born.  We will use individual and collective poetry, stone and crystal work and meditation and conversation to deepen and resource our intergenerational work.  The course is limited to 9 participants.

Reserve your spot with your $50 deposit towards the sliding scale ($150-250) fee here, and email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions for the course by July 18th.

 

When Wind and Water Got You: Place, Purpose, Past and Presence: Weds and Thurs August 23 & 24th 3-6pm Eastern

 

This intensive is for those us listening for place.  Are you listening for signs to guide you as you decide the place you want to live?  Are you listening for guidance on your place in our intersecting movements? Are you seeking more creative and spiritual technologies to use as you listen to the place you love, the place you live, the place that you are from?  Drawing on a forthcoming experimental map and series of vignettes by Alexis Pauline Gumbs in issue 23 of Ecotone Magazine (the vignettes are excerpted from her forthcoming book Dub: Finding Ceremony which draws on the work of the theorist Sylvia Wynter) we will use individual and collective mapping, poetry and meditation to face displacement, place ourselves newly and open our senses to what place is teaching us right now.  The course is online and is limited to 8 participants.

Reserve your spot with your $50 deposit towards the sliding scale ($150-250) fee here, and email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions for the course by August 18th.

 

Also Summer 2017: Brilliance Remastered Q & A Wednesdays 

Brilliance Remastered will no longer be offering one-on-one coaching or office hours.  Also Alexis has noticed that y’all keep asking her the same questions at social encounters. And she loves you, but as an evolutionary being and a Gemini she don’t really want to have the same conversation over and over again. So while we work on Brilliance Remastered: The Get Yo Life Guide (not the real title of the very real forthcoming book) over here, Alexis is using Summer 2017 to host some recorded Q & A sessions.  These special webinars specifically designed for this transitional moment in the life of Brilliance Remastered will consist completely of answers to the questions closest to your heart regarding intellectual life, community accountability and getting free in/from institutions.    Sign up for the session that best suits your life and offer a question.  Attend and hear the answers live or not.  Everyone who signs up will get the recording and your question will be addressed!

How Did You…?: Brilliance Remastered 101 Q & A Weds, June 7, 2017 6pm Eastern

This webinar is open to anyone with any question related to intellectual work, community accountability, publishing, freedom, life etc.

Sign up here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-did-you-brillianceremastered-qa-for-everyone-tickets-34930966461

Because…: Brilliance Remastered Q & A for Current and Prospective Grad Students  Weds, July 26, 2017 6pm Eastern

This webinar is specifically for people who are applying to graduate school, thinking about applying to graduate school or currently in graduate school who are interested in clarifying purpose, strategizing freedom, finding balance or building alternatives.

Sign up here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/because-brillianceremastered-qa-for-current-and-future-grad-students-tickets-34931279397

At this point…: Brilliance Remastered Q & A for Faculty, Admins and Independent Scholars Weds, August 16, 2017

This webinar is specifically for people who are finished with school (at least for now) and are looking to craft a community accountable career or to transition from one institutional relationship to a different approach.

Sign up here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/at-this-point-brilliance-remastered-qa-for-faculty-and-independent-scholars-tickets-34931416808

January 2017

How She Knew: The Fugitive Epistemologies Intensive

Weds-Friday, January 4-6, 2017  6pm-9pm Eastern 

*epistemologies = ways of knowing

The Spill Series is a  group of 10 webinars activating the literary archive, technology and text of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity as a resource for our far-flung community of freedom seekers.  (You don’t have to have read Spill to participate, but you might as well read it anyway

Fugitive Epistemologies is based on the first chapter of Spill “How She Knew” and honors black women’s intimate ways of knowing.  Drawing on the chapter’s literary influences (Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks) and using the chapter itself as oracle and meditation, the purpose of the intensive is to start the new year and time of this renewed blatantly violent global regime with access to forms of knowing that go beyond the dominant news media, beyond intellectual reaction catch phrases and beyond the systemic pull of institutions to make fear fundable.

This online intensive is for freedom-seekers who are interested in intimate knowing, knowing otherwise, refusal as knowledge and trusting forms of knowledge that have been criminalized.  Some of the forms of knowledge we will explore together will include working with dreams, divination, internal and external meditation and recipes.

Registration is limited.  Reserve your spot with a $50 deposit here and write “How She Knew Intensive”: 

Full tuition is sliding scale $185-225.  Payment plans are available.  Your deposit goes towards the full tuition.

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your goals for the course by Monday January 2nd.

Dig: The Womanist Archeologies Intensive

Weds-Friday, January 11-13, 2017 6pm-9pm eastern

This intensive is for anyone interested in deepening their knowledge of womanist practice, expanding their idea of the archive, and finding ways to research and listen without reproducing patriarchal and capitalist values.

Drawing on Alice Walker’s work, her concept of work, her digging for Zora and her poetic invention of womanism, this intensive looks at Walker’s work itself as a planting, excavating and harvesting ground for generations of long-memoried, ready-to-be-nourished seekers.  Celebrating the work of Cheryll Greene, Kai Barrow and more, this online intensive will be a place where we reconceptualize mothers, gardens, and the dirt that has (not yet) been done.   Come ready to get virtually dirty and to dig deep.

Registration is limited.  Reserve your spot with a $50 deposit here and write “Dig Intensive” in the notes section: 

Full tuition is sliding scale $185-225.  Payment plans are available.  Your deposit goes towards the full tuition.

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your goals for the course by Monday January 9th.

 

Winter 2016

The Evidence Intensive: Futurists Beyond Fear

  Thurs-Fri, December 8th and 9th 6pm-9pm Eastern

The last online intensive of the year is especially for those of us brave enough to envision a visionary liberated future during a time when the present seems bleak. Based on her short story “Evidence” from the collection Octavia’s Brood, Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs will facilitate a guided intensive that allows us to vision seven generations into the future and to grapple with the time we are living through now:  the time of the silence breaking.  Using meditations, letter writing, listening, ancestral and futuristic connection and legacies of earlier Black feminist futurists including June Jordan and Audre Lorde, we will close 2016 with the energy of multitudes, with a profound connection to those who have crossed over during this time and with revolutionary availability to the future generations are calling for from us.

Reserve your spot with a $50 deposit here:

The full tuition is sliding scale $175-225. Payment plans are available.

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions for the course by Tuesday December 6th.

P.S. If you live in or around Durham, NC attend an in-person Evidence workshop on December 10th:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/evidence-a-writing-workshop-for-futurists-in-durham-tickets-29817401651

Past Webinars

Fall 2016

Sister is a Verb: Love Beyond and Through

November 21-22nd 12pm-3pm Eastern

Building on the success of the 2013 Brilliance Remastered Sistorian Webinar and drawing on the intellectual work of Cheryll Greene, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Toni Cade Bambara, Hortense Spillers, Phillis Wheatley and Assata Shakur, the Sister is A Verb Intensive is a space for revolutionary collaborators to clarify and nourish a lifetime of intimate, transformative, capitalism-ending action.

Through two days of collaborative writing, facilitated reflection and sacred black feminist text activation, we will explore the challenges of our existing sistering contexts, deconstruct and reconstruct our definitions of sistering and investigate the possibility of being sisters through a shared chosen intellectual and activist lineage.  This intensive is open to people of any identification who are committed to the possibility of sistering in a black feminist revolutionary context.

Reserve your spot with a $50 deposit here:

and email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with a description of your hopes, dreams and intentions for the course by November 19th.  The prices for the entire intensive is $120-$200 and every imaginable payment plan is available.  Just let me know.

Kakuya Collective: A Visionary Daughtering Webinar

Tuesday Nov. 15, 2016  6pm Eastern

Register here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-kakuya-collective-visionary-daughtering-tickets-29081078288

They wanted Assata Shakur to spend the rest of her life in jail.  And Assata herself didn’t see any way out.  Her daughter Kakuya was of a different opinion.  Barely more than a toddler, Kakuya expressed her outrage at her mother’s imprisonment and her belief in her mother’s power.  “You don’t have to stay in prison.  You just want to stay in here,” she screamed.  According to Assata Shakur in her autobiography, this was the determining factor in her decision to escape prison.   And Kakuya won.  Thanks to a coalition of brave freedom fighters Assata Shakur escaped prison and eventually moved to Cuba where she and Kakuya could be together.

How often do we think about the fact that one of the rare success stories of the Black Liberation Army or of the effective escape of a political prisoner is at it’s heart a story of black mother/daughter rage and love?  This webinar is for self-identified visionary daughters who are committed to the freedom of their mothers.  Sometimes the freedom we see for our mothers is beyond the freedom they have imagined for themselves.  Sometimes the freedom we seek in honor of our mothers is happening after our mothers have left this plane.  Sometimes the freedom we are asking of our mothers is in service of our own impossible freedom.

Sista Docta Lex has created an online session specifically for visionary daughters based on Assata’s description of her daughter’s anger and the first interview with Assata Shakur after reuniting with Kakuya in Cuba, which was published by Lex’s mentor and chosen Cheryll Greene in Essence Magazine.

This session is for anyone who identifies as a visionary daughter (regardless of gender or background) and will be a participatory space that will draw on our ability to support each other with the collective power of visonary daughters.

*Gratitude to artist, librarian, healer Ola Ronke for sharing this beautiful photo of Assata and Kakuya via social media.

Place and Social Space: In Memory of Gloria Naylor

In response to the unexpected death of crucial author and thinker Gloria Naylor due to heart failure, Brilliance Remastered is offering a special series on her work in the month of October.  This is a guided opportunity to reread some of Naylor’s work or to learn about her work before engaging it for the first time.

 

The Black Boundlessness Intensive:  Monday Oct 24-Tuesday Oct 25 10am-12pm Eastern

Drawing primarily on Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Bailey’s Cafe, this intensive activates land memory and time travel as crucial resources for contemporary Black life and operationalizes Naylor’s magical realist, speculative historical work as a basis to inquire about how we remember, how we time travel, we we become unwound and how to get unbound.   Participants do not have to have already read Mama Day and Bailey’s Cafe (though you will definitely want to once we are done!).   Come to this intensive ready to interrogate your own boundaries, remember the storms that precede you and clear out the back alleys of your spirit.  This is open to all people. 

Registration is limited.  Reserve your space with a $50 deposit here:

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $120-200.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by October 20th.

Soul Talk: Legacies of Black Feminist Magic

September 28-29th, 2016

5:30-9:39pm Eastern Time

Inspired by Akasha Gloria Hull’s foundational work Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women, this 2-day online intensive invites participants to engage an unstoppable and unending tradition of magic within the context of the political and literary legacy of black feminism.  Featuring original music composed by Sangodare (Julia Roxanne Wallace) and Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s intimate archival elaborations and ritual prompts drawn from some of the most untaught work by Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Toni Cade Bambara, Alexis De Veaux and other black feminist artists identified by Hull’s work, this course will encourage participants to renew, recontextualize and reaffirm their own magic as a crucial resource for wide-reaching political transformation.

This course is open to anyone, and priority will be given to black women in general and other comrades who know how we do (aka allies who have participated in Brilliance Remastered or Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind spaces in the past.)

Registration is limited, hold your spot with your $50 deposit here:  

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $185-250.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by September 25th.

Last is a Verb: Archiving After the End of the World September 9-11, 2016 2pm-5pm Eastern Time

For some of us it feels like the world is about to end.  Some of us have seen the world end over and over again for our communities, and yet we feel the impulse to document, to keep, to share or as the every day archivists at Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths say to “know and remember.”  This is a course for archivists in the broadest sense of the term who want to think together about what is worth saving, or how WE are worth saving in this moment.

This is a space for community archivists, academic archivists, experiential archivists, DJs, researchers, community organizers, media makers, mapmakers, curators, geneaologists, documentary artists, historians, writers, family recipe recipients, collectors, oral history-makers, filmmakers, family reunion planners, Nina Simone fans and any one who feels called to think about what it means to keep material, digital, mental or embodied records at/after this time.  What lasts at last?

Our black feminist references for apocalypse will include Octavia Butler, Jacqui Alexander, Audre Lorde, Marlene Nourbese Philip, Hortense Spillers, Alice Walker, June Jordan, Nina Simone, Janelle Monae and more.

Registration is limited, hold your spot with your $50 deposit here:  

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $175-275.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by September 5th.

Summer 2016

The Difference Between Poetry and Rhetoric: Responding to Police Violence August 4th 6pm-9pm Eastern

“The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready…”  -Audre Lorde in “Power”

We have recently heard quite a lot of rhetoric, during an election cycle where (thanks to intentional organizing and horrific acts of harm caught on video) police violence cannot be ignored.   And we have continued to see the judicial system offer anything but justice.  Due to repeated requests, we are offering another one night webinar on how writers, scholars and artists can respond to police violence in this moment.

This online course is for those of us who are scholars, writers and artists who are figuring out our role in a moment characterized by (a need for) drastic change. This one night workshop draws specifically on ways that Audre Lorde and June Jordan responded to police violence as poets, university teachers and public intellectuals. We need the depth of their legacy right now as much as we ever have.  More info here.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-difference-between-poetry-and-rhetoric-responding-to-police-violence-tickets-26877479264

Breathe Underwater: A Baptismal Intensive for Ancestor Accountable Artists, Activists and Scholars  July 25, 26, 27  3pm to 6:00pm Eastern.

There is so much to react to in this moment.  The media and the ongoing triggering reality of intersecting oppressions has us frantic.  We have to do something.  We feel we aren’t doing enough.  Haven’t we been doing this forever? Why isn’t this over yet?

Breathe Underwater is designed to wash us clean, reset our clarity, renew us for the long-term.  Recognizing the unsustainability of reaction-mode alongside the urgent need for meaningful action in this moment, we call on the ocean as the oldest place we know and as a repository of resistance, memory and rebirth.

This online intensive uses a curriculum informed by June Jordan’s Who Look at Me, Jaqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing and M. Nourbese Philip’s Zong along with guided meditations, writing exercises and facilitated conversation to immerse participants in the peace, urgency and depth of ancestral accountability.  Building on the work of the Guardian Dead Retreat, this online experience will provide tangible ways to root your action steps, creative decisions and intellectual offerings in a profound connection to legacy and power.

Hold your spot with your $50 deposit here:  

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $175-300.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by July 23rd.

Nobody Mean More: One Night Webinar for Artists/Writers/Scholars/Teachers Responding to Police Violence 6:30 pm eastern July 14, 2016 

We are out in the streets.  We out of words to describe this.  We are walking in circles.  We are out of our minds. We are out of our bodies.  We are everywhere.  And we are nobody.  And it hurts.   This course is for those of us who are scholars, writers and artists who are figuring out our role in a moment characterized by (a need for) drastic change.  This one night workshop draws specifically on ways that June Jordan and Audre Lorde responded to police violence as poets, university teachers and public intellectuals.   We need the depth of their legacy right now as much as we ever have.

The class will draw on Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s chapter “Nobody Mean More: Black Feminist Pedagogy and Solidarity” in the book The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent (eds. Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira.)

As she says in the chapter itself “This chapter is a meditation on what it means to be nobody in a university economy designed to produce somebody inviduated, assimilated and consenting to empire.  Is it possible to instead become nobody in the academic space? Is it possible to align with the illegible oppressed/contemporary subaltern, the falling apart abject nonsubject, inside a university English class?” (Participants in the course will get a pdf of the full chapter to refer to for the class.)

If you, like Audre Lorde and June Jordan, are a writer or teacher or a theorist or a thinker or an activist or a mother or all of these things at the same time, join us for a supportive space where we tap into the the power of black feminist legacy and empower each other (the nobodies that we are) to face this moment.

Sliding Scale Registration here.

FAQs

Who should take this course?

Anyone who identifies as an artist, writer, scholar or intellectual who wants to clarify their revolutionary role in this moment by learning about the approaches that black feminist ancestors June Jordan and Audre Lorde took.

 

Free Enterprise: Towards an Autonomous Sustainable Writing Life (After Michelle Cliff)

July 11, 12, 13th 12pm Eastern, 9am Pacific

The late  Jamaican black lesbian feminist genius Michelle Cliff wrote a historical novel about Mary Ellen Pleasant aka Mammy Pleasant, a freedom-fighting radical who collaborated with John Brown and also funneled escaping enslaved Africans through a hotel that serviced the richest white folks in San Francisco and who also disagreed and theorized across space and time with black and indigenous thinkers about what how black freedom could im/possibly exist in capitalism.

What does that have to do with you?

You are a writer from and accountable to oppressed communities still seeking freedom through black words  on the white paper and screens of an anti-black capitalist context.  This three day online intensive connects the freedom-seeking in Free Enterprise to our fugitivity in this moment and offers exercises, insights and technologies to go deep and emerge with tangible strategies and goals for your autonomous sustainable writing life.

Hold your spot with your $50 deposit here:  

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $150-300.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by July 9th.

Write This In Fire (In Memory of Michelle Cliff): Thursday June 30th 6:30pm EST

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/write-this-in-fire-tickets-26207353901

On June 12, 2016 on the same day as the Pulse massacre, we lost the genius, jamaican, black feminist lesbian author Michelle Cliff.  In honor of Michelle Cliff and her legacy and all of our unkillable queer of color flamboyance this one-night webinar is for writers who want their words to make the impossible possible, those of us who will not be content until the bodies of our readers answer the challenge of our words. Through exercises inspired by Michelle Cliff’s work and in honor of our loved ones at Pulse we will bring our words together in a cleansing, purifying, unforgettable flame.  In preparation (or to convince yourself it’s worth it) read Alexis’s 2009 essay on Michelle Cliff’s book If I Could Write This in Fire:  http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=jiws

Summer 2015

Maroon Studies: A Brilliance Remastered Summer School Series

Intensive #1: Debt and Black Unbelievability:  June 15-17, 2015  (12pm-2pm Eastern)

This is a webinar intensive for bad credit/bad debt intellectuals committed to unbelievable futures. Engaging ideas of debt, credit and the incredible this webinar draws on texts by Evie Shockley, Fred Moten, Jamaica Kincaid, Sylvia Wynter, Gayatri Spivak and of course our real life experiences of pulling our realities out of thin air.  This is especially necessary for broke and brilliant creatives committed to black life.

8 spots are available. $175-225 sliding scale (payment plans available).

You can reserve your spot by offering a $50 non-refundable deposit here (please include the name of the webinar in the notes):

Intensive #2: Necessary as Water: July 15-17, 2015  (12pm-2pm Eastern)

This is a webinar intensive for thirsty visionaries who value transnational/intercommunal connections and a planetary scale of transformation.  Transubstantiating the poetry of Audre Lorde, the theoretical work of Jacqui Alexander, Chandra Mohanty, Michelle Wright and Katherine McKittrick and the activist legacies of June Jordan and Lydia Gumbs, this webinar is especially necessary for thinkers connecting basic needs to brave visions.

8 spots are available. $175-225 sliding scale (payment plans available).

You can reserve your spot by offering a $50 non-refundable deposit here (please include the name of the webinar in the notes):

Intensive #3: Blood, Water and Land August 10-12, 2015 (12pm-2pm Eastern)

This webinar is for ride or die radicals who live to love the people. Drawing on the legacy of Sisters in Support of Sisters in South Africa, the solidarity journalism of Alexis DeVeaux, the blood ecologies of Jewelle Gomez and Audre Lorde and the salience of spit, saltwater and sangre, we will explore connections, contradictions and discursive possibilities across imperial divisions towards tangible outcomes.

8 spots are available. $175-225 sliding scale (payment plans available).

You can reserve your spot by offering a $50 non-refundable deposit here (please include the name of the webinar in the notes):

Past Webinars:

Bright Black Broadcast #1:  Benjamin Banneker  (Nov. 13 7pm Eastern Time)

The Brilliance Remastered Bright Black Broadcast Series is an opportunity for contemporary black intellectuals to glean lessons from black intellectuals during the era of US enslavement.  Anti-blackness and structures of exploitation continue to impact the lives of black intellectuals in the United States.  With guest experts, poetic activities and archival information the intellectuals gathered will support each other in imagining intellectual freedom in our time.

Broadcast #1 is in honor of Benjamin Banneker and occurs the week of his birthday.  Looking Banneker’s mathematical, poetic and astronomical work as an oracle for freedom now, this broadcast will invite participants to map the stars differently and claim the power of a bright black universe.

There are 8 spots for live participation.  You can participate in one session or the whole series. Reserve your spot for session #1 on eventbrite here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brilliance-remastered-bright-black-broadcast-1-benjamin-banneker-tickets-14080634557

Bright Black Broadcast #2: Sojourner Truth (Nov. 20th 7pm Eastern Time)

Broadcast #2 is dedicated to Sojourner Truth arguably the first black public intellectual in the United States.  We will look at Truth’s practices as an itinerant intellectual, an artist and a thinker actively working to end slavery and live free as an inspiration and a guide for how contemporary intellectuals can navigate speaking out, survival, sustenance and (not) being for sale in an information economy.

There are 8 spots for this session.  Reserve your spot at eventbrite here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brilliance-remastered-bright-black-broadcast-2-sojourner-truth-tickets-14080853211

Bright Black Broadcast #3 Phillis Wheatley

Thursday December 4th at 7pm Eastern Time

Session #3 is dedicated to Phillis Wheatley poet, prodigy and pathmaking intellectual and will occur on the night before the 230th anniversary of her death.   Phillis Wheatley’s brilliance was co-opted and controlled by her “owners” within the context of the institution of slavery and  after she achieved legal freedom (aka without the funding of the slave-owning family that benefited from her brilliance) she died.  The collection of poems she created as a free black woman is lost to posterity.  Honoring Wheatley’s example of shining through the system and taking seriously the difficulties of intellectual practice outside of enslaving institutions this session will be an opportunity for contemporary black intellectuals to imagine the networks of support it takes to live free.

There are 8 spots for this session.  Reserve your spot at eventbrite here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brilliance-remastered-bright-black-broadcast-3-phillis-wheatley-tickets-14080923421

 

 

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.”

― Audre Lorde

7pm Weds Oct 29th

This is an informational webinar with Alexis Pauline Gumbs especially for people who are applying or considering applying to graduate school THIS WINTER.   Our conversation will include the crucial aspects of:

• remembering your purpose for going to graduate school and your accountability to the communities you love
• distinguishing YOUR application from the record number of applications graduate schools are receiving this cycle
• the steps to identifying an intellectual community you WANT to be part of for the next phase of your life

The Spill Intensive: Sustainable Strategies for Exceeding the Boundaries of the Academic Industrial Complex   Webinar October 20th-24th 9pm EST  more info here:

Coming out of the insights of the recent Shape of My Impact back to school webinar, The Spill Intensive is an experimental space for those visionaries who want to honor the ways their inspiration, spiritual imperatives and accountability to oppressed communities EXCEED the boundaries of the University system.

Using an innovative curriculum based on Sista Docta Alexis Pauline’s decade of work on the brilliant excess of the language practice of black feminist literary critic Hortense Spillers, the Spill Intensive invites 9 webinar participants to

• inhabit scenes of stolen freedom
• interrogate internalized capitalist default practices
• and activate practices that make tangible space in our lives and in the world for the unruly brilliance that our ancestors and our communities demand!

The intensive will meet online every night for 1 hour and 30 minutes at 9pm EST Oct 20th-24th. Fee: $200  Reserve your spot with an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com explaining what you hope to get out of the course and your $50 deposit:

 

 

September 2013

The Sistorian Webinar (co-facilitated by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Elle Gray)  

As Toni Cade Bambara taught, sister is a verb!  This webinar explores sistering as an intellectual practice and standard for engagement in an intellectual marketplace that encourages competition, tokenization and shade.   Join sister-comrades Elle and Lex  on Wednesday evenings this September as they draw on texts by black feminist historians, lead discussions on sistering as an intellectual practice and live interview black feminist historian sheroes!  

More information here.

Fee: $200  Reserve your spot with an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com explaining what you hope to get out of the course and your $50 deposit:

 

 October 2013 (Tuesdays at 7pm)

The Bright Black Webinar (facilitated by Alexis Pauline Gumbs)

The Bright Black Webinar draws on the brilliance of black intellectuals from the era of US slavery to imagine black intellectual practice in a post-university post-non-profit economy. How do the contradictory conditions of black intellectuals like Phillis Wheatley and Benjamin Banneker reflect the vexed situation of contemporary black intellectual practice in the university and non-profit industrial complexes?  How do the works of brilliance created by black intellectuals during slavery point a way past the limiting contexts of the present moment?  Join us on Tuesday evenings in October to draw infinite strength and tangible strategies from black genius ancestors!

Fee: $200  Reserve your spot with an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com explaining what you hope to get out of the course and your $50 deposit:

The Maroon(ed) Intensive (one week online intensive) 

November 18-21, 2013

 Are you living in a place you would never otherwise live in order to do the intellectual or activist work that calls to you?   Many intellectuals and activists are risk geographic isolation in order to have a career that speaks to their purpose and skills.  What are the digital, logistical and spiritual resources that can enable community accountable intellectual and activist practices no matter where you are?  What are the strategies that can enable you to live in the community you love and do the work you love?  Join us for a 4 day intensive on ending isolation and building robust community.

Fee: $200  Reserve your spot with an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com explaining what you hope to get out of the course and your $50 deposit:

Remastered Tools:  A Do It Yourself Online Curriculum (ongoing)

Remastered Tools is a series of 4 e-book self-guided courses based on our first year of webinars and my alchemy of the insight of Audre Lorde into practical tools for community accountable scholars.  If you purchase the ebook you also have access to exclusive digital material and Lex’s online office hours!  This curriculum is also available by request for facilitated workshops for campus organizations, classes and community groups.  More details here.

1.  Remastered Tools 101  (Now Available as a downloadable Do It Yourself Course!!!)

Remastered Tools 101 Course for Community Accountable Intellectuals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Remastered Tools 101 is an opportunity to examine our relationship to knowledge and our theories of change as they relate to the work we do as scholars and the work we empower with our scholarship.   We will investigate how dependence on systems that are NOT community accountable are cultivated even in the most seemingly radical fields and support each other in creating visions for our own community accountability.

Required Reading:  Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House 

More info here.

2. The Angry Intellectual: Channeling Rage for Transformation

The Angry Intellectual is an opportunity for visionary underrepresented scholars to transform our venting about the injustice we experience in the university industrial complex into clarity, decision and motivation in our own lives and in the institutions we want to create.  It is also an opportunity to see connections between the different nonsense that is making us all rightfully angry and to make partnerships to transform the conditions of our outrage.

Required reading:  Audre Lorde’s The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism

The Angry Intellectual: A Brilliance Remastered Course by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

More information here.

3.  Eye to Eye: Radical Collaboration for Community Accountable Intellectuals

Eye to Eye is an opportunity to get real about how individualism, internalized oppression and a capitalism-produced need to seem smart can get in the way of creating meaningful collaborations and useful intellectual partnerships with the communities that we love the most.  It is also an opportunity to find partners to collaborate with and to create plans for becoming the unstoppable, interconnected, community accountable scholars we want to be!

Required reading: Audre Lorde’s Eye to Eye: Black Women Hatred and Anger

More information here.

4.  Beyond the Feel-Good: A Sustainable Erotics of Community Accountable Scholarship

The Beyond the Feel-Good Webinar is an opportunity to get in touch with our deepest desires and passionate motivation in our community accountable scholarly work.  It is also an opportunity to find scholars that share your passions and to support each other in transcending superficial university-serving  (aka phony) community engagement and to step up our transformative impact on the world!

Required reading: Audre Lorde’s Uses of the Erotic/ Power of the Erotic

More information here.

Join the Brilliance Remastered community the first week of March for an interactive webinar investigation of performance and online ritual in relationship to community accountable intellectual work.  Participants may be from any field (including performance studies) and will learn about performance practices from Audre Lorde’s Chorale Need, and the shared experience of creating a healing multi-media cyber performance for our community about who we are and what we need as community accountable scholars.

Registration Due by Feb. 18, 2013 (Audre Lorde’s Birthday!)

*the ensemble will be limited to 9 participants

Intensive dates: March 4,5,6,7,8  2012   (9pm Eastern Time)

More info and registration details here.

Coming Soon!

Been There:  Genius Interactive Interviews on Community Accountable Scholarship

Stay tuned for the Been There Webinar series featuring senior community scholars doing collaborative work while inside the university and who have taken their brilliance outside of the academy.