This roundtable explores "The Afterlives of Memory" through Black studies and Black religion. It examines memory as a contested site, particularly for marginalized communities, where its defacement is a tool of domination. We investigate how Black cultural practices, from oral traditions of African societies to rituals of Afro-Diasporic traditions and cultures to contemporary links in Black literature and social movements, have interrupted and pushed back against the violence of captivity and erasure through the preservation of ancestral memory. Indeed, memory, in its reclamation and preservation, becomes a site of struggle and freedom-dreaming.
Topics include cultural-afterlife and haunting memory, Hoodoo understanding of death, Haitian Vodou practices, the impact of incarceration on memory, Black ecological deaths, and the role of grieving rituals in social movement. The roundtable aims to demonstrate memory's dynamic force in shaping Black religious, political, and cultural landscapes, emphasizing re-membering as sacred-duty in ongoing struggles for justice and liberation.