Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, an assistant professor of African American religions at the Divinity School who participated in the roundtable discussion, spoke about the changing notion of diaspora.

“We have started thinking about diaspora…as the globalized relationships of power, not only within a few different cases, but in the ways people imagine homeland, and experience and think about it,” she said.

Adom Getachew, a graduate student from Yale, said the multidisciplinary nature of the conference gave it wide appeal.

“Of course, a lot of us here are specialists who are interested in this for very specific reasons, but hopefully if we do our job right, the idea is that anyone who is interested in modern intellectual history or culture should find something important about this topic,” she said.

Christopher S. Taylor, a graduate student from Western University in Ontario whose family is from Barbados, agreed with Plácido’s sentiment about the conference’s dual meaningfulness.

“The personal supports the academic, and the academic supports the personal,” Taylor said. “My life and my work are symbiotic. You can’t separate the two; it’s who I am.”