Fred Moten and Stefano Harney on the undercommons, in conversation with Umniya Najaer

Fred Moten is Professor in the Departments of Performance Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University, where he teaches courses in black study, poetics and critical theory. He works with lots of social and aesthetic study groups including Stefano Harney & Fred Moten, the Black Arts Movement School Modality, Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective, the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy, Moved by the Motion, the Institute of Physical Sociality and the Harris/Moten Quartet.

Stefano Harney is a teacher and writer who works collaboratively and collectively in the classroom, in research, and in social practice. He is a black studies scholar who has taught in the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, art criticism, American Studies, and business & management. Stefano has held appointments at Pace University and at CUNY in the US, at the University of Leicester and Queen Mary University of London in the UK, at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia, at Ton Duc Thang University in Vietnam, and at Singapore Management University in Singapore. During 2020-2021, he was Hayden Fellow and Visiting Critic at the School of Art at Yale University and Honorary Professor at the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.

Umniya Najaer is the 2025–2026 Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Ethnic Studies and the inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS). She is an interdisciplinary Black Studies scholar who draws on Black Studies theories in conjunction with literary, archival, and social science methodologies to illuminate urgent socio-political issues. Grounded in the thought of Jamaican philosopher Sylvia Wynter, Dr. Najaer’s current book project investigates alternate epistemologies and non-homogenizing metanarratives of the human. Her in-progress manuscript, Sylvia Wynter and Black Study: Experiments in Metasystemic Inquiry and Transcalar Reworlding, offers a conceptual toolkit for future scholars to engage Wynter on her own terms.