New Directions in African Diaspora Studies
a lecture series featuring the works of prominent scholars in the field of african diaspora studies
The 2011-2012 Lecture Series, organized by Dr. Rhonda Frederick will focus on the theme of Popular Fictions in the African Diaspora. All lectures will be held in Devlin 101 at 4:30 p.m. To view flyer, click here.
Upcoming Events
Spring 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Title: “Liberian Calypsos: Nina Simone’s Global Civil Rights Movement”
Dr. Salamishah Tillet
Description: This lecture considers the intimate relationship between Nina Simone’s political allegiance to African de-colonization movements in the 1960s and her incorporation of West African and African Diasporic songs and musical genres in the 1970s. Biography: Dr. Tillet is an Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Duke University Press, 2012). She is currently working on book-length project on Nina Simone.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Title: “‘Languaging’ Electronic Media: Revitalizing Pre-Colonial Memory and Repositioning of African Languages and Culture in Kenya”
Professor George Gathigi
Description: This lecture looks at the relationship between the growing use of local language in electronic media and the re-emergence of Keyan traditional cultural discourses.
Biography: George Gathigi is the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in African Expressive and Material Arts at Hampshire College at Amherst, MA. George teaches courses on African popular culture and media for social change.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Title: “‘No Abiding City’: Theorizing Deportation in Caribbean Migrant Fiction”
Prof. Kezia Page
Description: This presentation uses the legal act of deportation as a socio-political tool to question and resist loose definitions of the Caribbean. As support for this critical approach, it pays close attention to fiction, music and legal cases.
Biography: Kezia Page is an Associate Professor of English at Colgate University. Her book, Transnational Negotiations in Caribbean Diasporic Literature: Remitting the Text, was published by Routledge in 2011. Prof. Page was awarded a Scholar-in-Residence fellowship awarded by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in 2006
Past Events
October 26, 2011
Lady Saw: Performing Sexual Politics at Home and Abroad
Professor Patricia J. Saunders
This presentation examines the social and political rhetoric of Dancehall artist, Lady Saw, and other women in Jamaican popular culture and nationalist politics, examining the intimate relationships between sexuality, nationalism and consumer culture
Patricia J. Saunders is an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Caribbean Literary and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Miami, Coral Gables. She is the Editor of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal and author of Alien-Nation and Repatriation: Translating Identity in Anglophone Caribbean Literature (2007).
November 9, 2011
African Muslim Parades: Politics, Performance, and Diaspora
Professor Zain Abdullah
Dr. Abdullah will speak about the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day parade in New York City, a major site where African identities are recreated, the stigma of blackness is refuted, and an anti-Muslim backlash is rebuffed.
Biography: Dr. Abdullah is associate professor in the Religion Department and an associate faculty in the Geography and Urban Studies Department, at Temple University. A Ford Foundation Fellow, he is working on a book exploring Black Muslim conversion and the Nation of Islam in 1970s.
October 28, 2010
Justice in the Sudan: The International Criminal Courts and the New Colonialism?
Prof. Charles Villa-Vincencio
Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and Visiting Professor of the Conflict Resolution Program at Georgetown University