Join us at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music for a two-day commemoration of the 35th anniversary of Marlon Riggs’ groundbreaking documentary, Tongues Untied, a film that Riggs famously described as an effort to “shatter the nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference.”

On Wednesday, February 12, 2025, from 6–8 p.m., there will be a screening of the film, followed by a talkback session where scholars, artists, and practitioners will reflect on its lasting impact on Black queer representation and Riggs’ powerful use of art to confront silence around race and sexuality.

On Thursday, February 13, a keynote lecture by Jafari Allen, professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University and the author of There’s a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life (Duke, 2022), will delve deeper into the intersections of Black queerness, politics, and the sacred within Riggs’ work.

Sponsored by Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Lex Hixon Fund, Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Location: Humanities Quadrangle (HQ) L01
(320 York St, New Haven, CT 06511)

Free and open to the public!
(No registration required.)