This two-year project advances a startup program designed to create annual graduate seminar sessions at the IIRP. This ongoing initiative was supported with a 2024 two-year IIRP grant for one annual seminar each in the 2024-26 period. We now have strong initial evidence of the success of these inaugural seminars. The current project is designed to extend and complete this trial period through the creation of two more travelling graduate seminars (2026-27 and 2027-28). The new proposed seminars expand upon the interdisciplinary ambitions of the program (to include art history, theatre and performance studies, postcolonial and decolonial studies, critical race studies) as well as its geographical reach (to include Africa and the Indian Ocean region). We will held two interdisciplinary graduate seminars which would, after the regular quarter term in Chicago, travel to the IIRP for one week in order to engage graduate students in workshops and collaborations with colleagues and institutions in the IIRP’s targeted geographical areas. Seminars will also include onsite work in Paris with archives, museums, and other cultural institutions. The seminars will enhance the research and professional networks of graduate students and faculty through sustained engagement with relevant scholars, writers, and academic and cultural institutions.