Lectures and Events

This talk explores the Black musical forms and songs of artists that have expressed African American freedom-seeking strategies and related political ideologies. Music has always been a major mode of expression for African Americans, connecting the group to their African homeland and deeply rooting them to American soil.

On February 16th, Lisa Collins will give a reading from her new book about a quilt made in mourning and the memory of its making.

Join Michael Gomez, Silver Professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University and the Director of NYU’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora, for this comprehensive discussion.

Professor Miles P. Grier (Queens College, CUNY and CUNY Graduate Center) offers a lecture based on his research on the transatlantic performance history of Shakespeare’s Othello, Shakespeare and early modern science, and Black Atlantic responses from Wheatley to Toni Morrison.

Campus community only, please.

From October 30 to November 1, 1969, Vassar’s Main Building was taken over and occupied by thirty-four Black female students. They demanded the creation of a program awarding a major in Black Studies. Far from being an isolated event, the takeover was part of a nationwide wave of student-organized sit-ins and protests to expand the boundaries of college and university curricula.

A poetry reading and conversation on women, home, exile, and identity featuring poet-scholar and activist Saba Hamzah.

In the U.S., black leisure and tourism have long been used to resist entrenched systemic racism. Prof. Elizabeth Patton (UMBC) uses photographs, documentary films, and guidebooks, advertisements, and personal home movies to shed light on the multifaceted ways African Americans harnessed media and cultural memory to document leisure.

Presentation on the history of classical Arabic scripts like Thuluth and Naskh. Students will have a chance to practice Arabic letter art with reed pens during the workshop.

Come out to our Professor-Student mixer to network within the program, learn about Africana Studies courses, and build and engage with the community! Food and beverages will be provided.

Film Professor Mia Mask examines the African American Western hero within the larger context of film history by considering how Black westerns evolved.

Campus community only, please.