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

November 11, 2010; 110 St. Thomas More 1st Floor Lounge

Women Prophets in Africa: The Case of Kimpa Vita/ Doña Beatriz

Prof. Dianne S. Diakite

Associate Professor, Religion, Emory University

February 24, 2011

"Say More": The Public Life of Love

Prof. David K. Kim

Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Connecticut College

Associated Faculty, American Studies, Connecticut College

Co-Sponsored by The Asian American Studies Program and Dr. Min Song

March 31, 2011

No Balm in Gilead: Reflections on the Problem of the Black Church

Curtis J. Evans

Assistant Professor, History of Christianity, University of Chicago